rhondabrwn
Posts: 2570
Joined: 9/29/2004
From: Snowflake, Arizona
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Doggie
It's still flowing because it hasn't done enough damage yet. Environmentalists want a catastrophe to support their agenda of prohibiting energy production by any American corporation and leaving the Gulf oil reserves to the Mexicans, Cubans, Russians, and Communist Chinese, who are also drilling oil wells off the United States coast with the blessings of American liberals.
The Obama administration must approve any efforts to minimize the damage, and they aren't doing it
For context, nazi U-boats sank hundreds of ships, including oil tankers, within sight of the American coast during world war II and nobody cleaned it up. There was no environmental disaster, and the wrecks of those ships as well as the U-boats themselves are now artificial reefs teeming with marine wildlife.
Oil in huge quantanties makes a mess for a few months but it will eventually evaporate on it's own.
I was going to say something sarcastic, but thought better of it.  Seriously though... you think this problem will go away on it's own in a few months? God, I hope you're right, but I saw a news report last week that described the major ongoing pollution remaining from the Exxon Valdez disaster and that was decades ago (and a lot less oil). My Geologist friend said 50 years for a natural recovery. That's a lot of idle fishing boats and empty beaches and depressed coastal economies for a lot of years.
And I do think your accusations that environmentalists are somehow delaying a solution in order to maximize the damage to score political points is ridiculous. I think their point that off-shore drilling is inherently dangerous and needs strong and viable regulation to stop further drilling until we can be guaranteed that adequate safety precautions are in place has already been made in a dramatic fashion. They don't need to make things worse... BP is doing quite well in that regard.
I'll concede that the Obama administration has mishandled this politically when they could have scored big political points by doing some fast posturing and futile gestures (mobilize the National Guard to stand on the beaches with shovels and plastic bags?), but what can they really do? The oil companies are the only entity with the personnel, expertise, and equipment to deal with this. Maybe one lesson to be learned is that the Federal Government may need to invest billions in stockpiling equipment, developing deep water submersibles, maintaining thousands of specialists on the federal payroll waiting for the next blowout. Is this expansion of big government be something you would support? Otherwise, we will remain totally dependent on the oil industry to clean up their own messes. We do need to raise their liability limits considerably over the $75 million dollar cap put into after the Exxon Valdez disaster. Of course, there will be massive civil suits against BP, but look at what happened in Alaska. The litigation took over a decade and the final judgements were significantly reduced on appeal. I'm sure most of the Gulf Coast citizens that are losing their livelihoods will never recover adequately from BP. They will be stalled in the courts and outmatched by BP Attorneys and in the end will get little or nothing.
The Hurricane season forcast is dismal, calling for a massive number of storms this season. The first Tropical Storm or Hurricane is going to blow that oil all over the Gulf Coast and dredging a few sand berms isn't going to protect anything other than allowing politicians to take credit for doing something... anything in this situation.
I would hope that we could all forget the politics and conspiracy theories and accept the reality that this is a disaster that we were not prepared for and that we'd better give serious thought as to how much off-shore drilling will be allowed, how it will be regulated, and whether deep water projects should even be allowed at all until it can be demonstrated that we have the technology to prevent blowouts at these extreme depths.
And remember... off-shore oil from our coasts is sold on the world markets. There is no guarantee that "American oil" has to come to American refineries. It is my understanding that most Alaskan oil goes to Japan. It is also my understanding that we will never be able to produce enough oil to affect the world price of oil so dreams that "Drill, Baby Drill" will bring us cheap gasoline at the pump are just that... dreams. We need to reduce our dependence on oil significantly - that can have an effect.
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Love & Peace,
Far Dareis Mai
My old Piczo site seems to be gone, so no more Navajo Nation pics :(
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