Oil Spills and the Big Picture
The Little Picture—the picture of what's happening right this minute—is what you get from the media, and that's to be expected. But the Little Picture has to fit inside a bigger one for news consumers rightly to appraise all the stakes and angles.
The news of the ominous oil slick from the offshore rig explosion is the Little News that has to be examined in the context of current energy needs. While we bite our fingernails over prospective damage to Gulf fishing and ecosystems, we have to ponder the country's nonnegotiable need for the black, yucky stuff from way below the seabed.
We can't get along without that oil, in other words.
Even President Obama, as of the weekend anyway, seemed to acknowledge as much. He deplored the mess from the explosion but reaffirmed that "domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security." When Obama—not famous as a cheerleader for marketplace economics—defers rhetorically to the need for capitalist-generated oil, you know Reality has paid the White House a visit.
Just because one drilling operation has gone bad—all right, very bad with the loss of 11 lives—we're not as a nation permitted suddenly to say, let's back off this offshore drilling stuff. Not with the United States, where the Fuel Oil Age began in 1901—importing around 60 percent of the oil it burns annually.
Not since discovery of oil in Alaska, half a century ago, have U.S. companies made a major onshore oil strike. That leaves offshore fields to draw from if we're to avoid enlarging our already huge dependency on foreign sources.
Which doesn't particularly bother Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the environmental activist. "We should be moving away," he said the other day, "from our deadly addiction to oil." The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman archly instructs the president this week to "take on the 'Drill, baby, drill' crowd, telling America that courting irreversible environmental disaster for the sake of a few barrels of oil, an amount that will hardly affect our dependence on imports, is a terrible bargain."
Easily said—but, then, in the political entertainment business, sweeping judgments come easily to figures dealing with the Little Picture, the colored image before them—the image, say, of oil making for the Louisiana marshes.
Breathes there an oilman with soul so dead he doesn't give a flip for pelicans and oysters? One can't presume to say no, but the question before the house isn't one-dimensional: how shall we save the oysters? Part two to the question is, how do we keep the economy running without resorting to things unlovely in the eyes of those who dwell on Manhattan's Upper West Side and like venues of perfect knowledge and objectivity?
The refined minds and sensibilities one finds outside the grungy oil patch know of course what's to be done: green energy is the ticket (solar, wind, etc.). One can sympathize. Green sounds so . . . green; cool, soothing earthy; most unlike the grunge from below. The trouble, of course, is that green is expensive compared to oil and coal. Nor, if we started today and didn't care about cost, could we replace eventually, the brown stuff—estimated 70 billion barrels of oil below the Gulf seabed? Or, as Krugman elegantly phrases it, "a few barrels of oil."
The British Petroleum accident—whose full consequences we obviously can't classify yet or predict—has plenty of forerunners in industrial history on land as well as at sea. The world would be altogether a nicer place if things perpetually went as planned. It wouldn't be the world, nonetheless—the place we yearn to make perfect while, if we have any sense, admitting to ourselves it ain't going to happen.
Away from the Upper West Side, in the real world, we strive for the best and the highest. And when we mess up, we get up; we move ahead, eyes on the Big Picture.
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"One can’t presume to say no, but the question before the house isn’t one-dimensional: how shall we save the oysters? Part two to the question is, how do we keep the economy running without resorting to things unlovely in the eyes of those who dwell on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and like venues of perfect knowledge and objectivity?"
Considering the Rahm Emanuel maxim, Part three to the question, if I may so suggest:
How does the Government exploit the "crises" so as to metastasize into yet another critical industry while answering part two of the question?
Well said about "Upper West Siders" and their ilk, who're poisoning every other metropolis in this nation. These cultural enemies will end up killing the economy they parasitize, and it's ironic these money interests will easily weather the economic cataclysm they'll bring down on the rest of us.
A silver spoon twit like RFK Jr thinks he's one of them, a leader no less, and they must be laughing in their sleeve. Destroying BP, a high dividend paying, superior oil company would be icing on the cake. But, maybe the GOP will come to the rescue with Lindsay Graham swatting the air with a limp wrist.
This is a very sloppy piece. Because the concerns of oyster farmers/fishers in the Gulf and others whose livelihood depends on an unpoisoned ocean happen to coincide with Upper West Siders' concerns does not mean they should be automatically dismissed, much less ridiculed. Nor does our need for oil necessitate the acceptance of whatever oil producers desire or claim (unless, of course, by need you mean the "need" for the cheapest oil possible without regard to the externalized costs forced upon people outside of the major population centers [NYC and Dallas both being examples of such]). Your "big picture" is just as small as the media narrative you've so grossly exaggerated for ridicule. Yes, of course we need oil, but that need does not give license to ignore every other competing concern. "Drill, baby, drill," is ultimately anti-market. It plows through the normal cost-benefit analysis that determines both government policy and economic investment. "At what cost cheap oil?" and "At what cost free love?" are the mirrored questions that express true conservatives' frustration and disdain for the libertine mindsets that have come to possess this country's two dominant political mobs.
"Not with the United States, where the Fuel Oil Age began in 1901—importing around 60 percent of the oil it burns annually."
And at least 75% of the Presidents since have said, "We deplore the mess from the...(spill,wreck,explosion, accident etc..) but reaffirm that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security.”
When Obama—not famous as a cheerleader for marketplace economics—defers rhetorically to the need for capitalist-generated oil, you know Reality has paid the White House a visit.
Maybe at least part of that "reality" is the huge donations which BP have contributed to maintain the status quo in both oil dependency and duopoly politics in America. I agree with fsd, this piece is not only sloppy journalism but a debased form of duopoly diatribe as well.
One ought to question the wisdom of drilling at such depths without the technology to contain subsequent spills.
I used to be in the marine construction, tunnel, and sewer pipeline business. When you deal with complicated engineering projects failures sometimes happen. You don't shut down the whole economy because of it. The oceans of the world have most of the world's oil under them. We have barely tapped what is there. The engineering advances in this field have been stupendious. All human progress has some failures. It is time to quit blaming modernity for every problem. I am not for going back to a civilization with a lack of technology and modern production. Sure we have to be careful of the enviroment but humanity should be the number one concern. I didn't see much coverage of the 11 hardworking oil field workers who lost their lives. I didn't see that much coverage of the Nashville floods where over 25 people lost their lives. The people in Nashville are getting on with their lives without waiting for the government to get there first.
John,
"When you deal with complicated engineering projects failures sometimes happen. You don’t shut down the whole economy because of it. The oceans of the world have most of the world’s oil under them. We have barely tapped what is there. The engineering advances in this field have been stupendious. All human progress has some failures."
This is quite true and needs to be understood in light of Karl Marx's assertion that the means of production determine our ends. Flying across the Atlantic in three or four hours is possible just as it is possible to sail it in five days by boat. The technology should serve the end or purpose and not the other way around. Technology on a human scale is a little different than Hiroshima. Human progress is a very different thing than technological progress. There are other ways to fertilize and increase the tilth and health of soil besides petroleum based chemicals,just as 86.00 a barrel oil produces more expensive fertilizer than 30.00 per barrel oil. To equate human progress with material progress, or the progress of technique, is one of the wrong headed notions that have turned our Universities into research institutues with sporting events on the weekend. Modernity enjoyed major prejudice for years but failing to understand it, was what lead us to the current predicament of blissful, arrogant, ignorance -- in my opinion.
Billions of people are alive and able to feed their families because of the use of fossil fuel. Would you have all these people dead or in bad living conditions because we haven't advanced in science and production? God gave us great resourses and an intellect to use them. We have to do so responsibly. Material things are not the end all and be all of life but there is nothing wrong with a nice home and other possessions, as long they don't become our main focus in life. There are probably enough fossil fuels in this world to last many centuries. Then there are many other sources of energy as well. We should be frugal with them and not wasteful. All production of material things requires some dislocation of people and landscape. The earth only had a billion people less than 200 years ago. It can sustain at least 8 to 10 billion and probably a lot more than that. There are a lot of new agers who want to go back to a billion. You can count me out on that idea.
I think it is debatable whether fossil-fueled industrial agriculture feeds that many more people than sustainable methods that might make use of intermediate technology.
Is it probable that this accident was sabotage?
#8John,
Thank you for your response. I think we agree or else might be talking past each other on only a few points. In any event it is good to see you posting again. I don't want to close down the oil producers or diminish their importance, but like all of us they should probably clean up their own messes, quit exaggerating their own importance,(I thought BP was British Petroleum?)and diminishing the importance of other folks who use the the same air,land and water which they use. The GOP has for too long made the environment of future generations less important than immediate profits for their own coffers. Thinking about the most recent spill, it seems
to me that most of the shrimp boats, fishing fleets and cargo ships in the gulf who will be adversely effected,were using petroleum products which BP was providing. Why would they want to put the concerns of their own customers second to their concerns about environmentalists?
Tarkin @10: my first thought was sabotage of some kind. My second thought was that if it was sabotage, my money is on the radical environmentalists like Greenpeace.
robert II @11: I believe that British Petroleum changed the name to BP to distance themselves from fossile fuels as they attempt to diversify. (Same reason Kentucky Fried Chicken is now just KFC.) (Remember, diversity is our strength.)
A real conservative reflection on the question at FPR stands in stark contrast to Murchison's apologetic for the status quo:
http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2010/05/contain-this/