Poxes On Both Houses

In the previous Tuppence I took Environmentalism, and specifically the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia, to task for promulgating a religion that demands orthodoxy of all, believers to infidels, to such an extent that they would actually use false data to promote their positions.  One more word about that:  after some investigation, it was determined that the "scientists" at the CRU did nothing wrong--did not, in fact, cook the data books, as had been charged.  [Full disclosure:  the investigators were environmentalists.  This is something akin to PETA pulling quality control duties in the tofu industry].

Unfortunately, we have allowed the principles of Manicheanism to dominate our world view.  Thus:  if one side is evil, then the other side must be good.  Witness our political processes:  if the Republicans are evil, then the Democrats must be good, so we throw the Republicans out and elect Democrats.  Oops.  Now the Democrats are proving themselves malignant and even a bit beyond, so now we're going to throw them out and elect Republicans.  It never seems to occur to us that BOTH parties could be utterly wrong . . . the bank bailouts and CEO bonuses, supported by both parties, and NAFTA, supported by both parties, come immediately to mind.

Though possessing demonstrably false dogmatic aspects, Environmentalism, like any fully developed religion, has some good points--protecting the environment is inherently good, and we'll discuss that in a later Tuppence  For now, let's point out the Manichean aspects of the polar opposite of Environmentalism, which is . . . oh, let's call it Unsupervised Development.

We need look no further than British Petroleum and its utterly catastrophic inability to prepare for accidents.  Unless you are hiding in the hills of Yemen [and even they have DirecTV, so they can receive their marching orders from the al-jizzum broadcasting facilities], you already know that something has gone terribly wrong in the Gulf of Mexico:  an explosion wrecked the drilling system of a BP oil platform, leaving a gaping hole in the floor of the Gulf, through which unrestrained crude oil is flowing into the waters of the Gulf at the rate of . . . about one Exxon Valdez every four days.  It's been going on, as of this writing, for several weeks now.  Even in a body of water as vast as the Gulf of Mexico, that's a lot of oil.

And here's the kicker:  BP is asking the general public for solutions!!!

This is the question that everyone, especially Obama and his administration, is avoiding--so Sam's Dot Publishing will ask it for them, seeing as how Harvard graduates are unable to articulate it:  what were BP's contingency plans for breakdowns, spills, malfunctions, and so forth?

Think, for example, Fail-Safe.  A fail-safe is something you install--a device, a policy, a chemical dispersant, extra onions--in case something goes wrong with, say, a burglar alarm, a bombing run, a peaceful protest, a hamburger.  During the 50s, 60s, and 70s the Department of Defense did not inadvertently nuke the Soviet Union, despite several alerts that sent our bombers toward the USSR and caused the lids to missile silos to open, because the DoD had multiple [for Harvard graduates, that means more than one] fail-safes in place.  If the threat proved negative, we could recall the bombers, close the silo doors, and go back to our barbecues. 

A fail-safe is the reserve parachute in your pack.  It's the headache when your partner doesn't quite get "not tonight."  It's the Resident Evil series DVDs when there's nothing on TV but Friends and Twilight [which actually are the same show, one with fangs and one without].  It's the meat thermometer when you forget to set the timer for the pork roast in the oven.

Accordingly, an off-shore oil rig should--you would think--have game-planned all conceivable problems and prepared for their solutions.  So:  what can go wrong on an oil rig?

Well . . .

Hurricanes can't be good for it . . . and we suppose the structures have been reinforced against such storms.

A drill line could break . . . so you have a plan to send divers and/or robots down to repair it immediately.

Oil could leak or spill . . . so you have a plan to sop it up with Twinkies, or use a chemical dispersant, or whatever the current technology is, to remove the oil from the water.

Natural gases such as methane are co-located with oil deposits, and most such gases are explosive [one reason why there's no smoking in our house the day after the Annual Chili Festival] . . . so you have a plan to prevent them from exploding while you extract the oil.  You set devices in place, with fail-safes in case the devices should fail, for some reason.  That's step one.

Step two is, seeing as how we're talking about equipment here, you inspect it initially and then periodically, with qualified inspectors, to make sure that the devices and fail-safes are operational.  You take your car every 3-5,000 miles to get a lube-oil-filter, right?  You take it in for a tune-up every 50,000 miles, right?  Even a bike rider has his chains and sprockets oiled periodically, right?  [No, that's not a double entendre].

Step three is, if the worst should happen, you game-plan the responses, step by step.  Cars, frex, have brakes.  If they should fail, you have a step-by-step plan to deal with the failure.  The first is preventive:  don't buy a Toyota.  Other steps include:  take your foot off the accelerator; turn off the engine; finally, pull the emergency brake.  It's an emergency, right?

What were/are British Petroleum's plans in the event of emergencies?  What was their emergency brake?  Did anyone in our government bother to ask to see such plans, and to check those plans out with experts in the field?  Sure, now there's a rush to judgment, because political careers are now on the line.  But after the Visigoths leave town, it's too late to hide the womenfolk.

But wait!  It gets worse!

And here I have to allude to J Alan Erwine's upcoming [soon as he sends me the adjustments] novel Red Moon Rising.  J postulates, among other things, a corporate CEO who is basically all "Damn the torpedos, full profits ahead."  In order to save money [which means, for those of you who don't speak corporate, in order to make more money], this fictitious whiz-bang has used the cheapest equipment and materials possible in his developmental plans.

So here is British Petroleum, who we now have discovered opted for the cheapest possible equipment in this oil rig, and that is one of the two reasons why the &%$#ing thing failed.  We have the documents that cite and prove the use of said equipment.  BP did have the option of using equipment that would work and had more than adequate safeguards and fail-safes, and instead, deliberately and calculatedly, chose equipment that had no safeguards or fail-safes.  Let me repeat that:  BP chose to use equipment that had no safeguards or fail-safes. 

[In other words, had British Petroleum spent the additional money to install fail-safes and safeguards that would have prevented this catastrophe, they would have had no money left to clean up the mess they caused].

Don't you just wonder how many other BP rigs were set up the same way?  Hadn't we better find out?

Well, that brings us to the second of the two reasons the &^%$#ing thing failed:  there was no regulatory supervision of BP's development.  Oh, sure, the law called for supervision, for inspection of equipment to see that it conformed to standards.  There were and are government personnel who work for the Mineral Management Service and who are assigned to perform supervisory and inspection duties on this and all other oil rigs in the Gulf.

Only, they didn't do it.  They did not supervise or inspect, except in a very few instances where they showed up on the oil rigs, had coffee and donuts, and departed. 

But wait!  It gets worser!

Shortly before British Petroleum's drilling incompetence and the U.S. Government's dereliction of duty were exposed by the explosion and drill rupture, Obama opened the coastlines to offshore drilling.  He did not want to do this--he has zero interest in making our country energy-independent and taking action to help lower gas prices and their deleterious effects on your wallets; but he needed to appear concerned for the American people and, simultaneously, throw a bone to the political opposition.  When the oil rig blew up, he did a little dance in the Oval Office, because now he had a cause celebre, a reason to prohibit drilling.  Best of all, he can say that drilling is still open, while the department that issues drilling permits refuses to issue them "until further notice" [which is in fact the case], because nobody is going to connect the dots.

Already there are whispers among the paranoid in our society that the explosion was a deliberate act, by someone in the Obama administration, or by ecoterrorists or environmentalists, to create such a cause celebre.  Let me dispel these immediately:  neither the Obama administration nor the environmentalists possess the capability [or the intellectual wherewithal] to descend to a mile under the ocean, where the explosion originated, and sabotage the drill and rig.  No, the catastrophe in the Gulf had one, and only one, cause:  the obsession of British Petroleum with making an extra dollar by skimping on equipment, and the concomitant incapacity of the Executive Branch of our government [currently, that would be Obama] tasked with seeing that BP and others did not skimp.

Well, this is not an anti-Obama philippic [though God knows he deserves a hogshead of them].  Neglect and dereliction of duty, glowing hallmarks of his administration, are also attributable in large measure to the administrations of Bill Clinton, both Bushes, and Jimmy Carter, and to a somewhat smaller degree to that of Ronald Reagan.  Republicans and Democrats.  And it simply will no longer do to replace Republicans and Democrats with Democrats and Republicans. 

Which means the ultimate blame for the mess that is the Gulf of Mexico falls on you.  Yup, you.  If you voted for those currently in office, you are to blame.  If you did not bother to vote, you are to blame.  If you voted but did not vote for those currently in office, you need to look in the mirror and ask whether you did enough. 

No, don't look at me.  I already have enough trouble with my mirror.  To rectify that image, I'm going to speak out a lot more, and I'm going to get involved in political campaigns, and look very closely at third-party candidates, especially the Reform Party [Google their platform, you'll see why], and I'm going to try a little Windex this November.  What about you?

Past Tuppence:
March 2010
December 2009
September 2009
June 2009
March 2009
December 2008
September 2008
June 2008
March 2008
December 2007
September 2007
June 2007
March 2007
December 2006
September 2006
June 2006
March 2006
December 2005
September 2005
June 2005
March 2005
December 2004
September 2004
June 2004
March 2004
December 2003
September 2003
June 2003
March 2003
December 2002
October 2002
August 2002
June 2002
April 2002
February 2002
December 2001
October 2001
August 2001

Read more from Tyree Campbell in any of the following:

The Dog at the Foot of the Bed
by Tyree Campbell

Wondrouse Web Worlds Vol. 6

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 5

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 4

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 3

Sex and the Single Alien
An anthology

Nyx
A novel by Tyree Campbell

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 2