Year 2012: End of the World

Well, it’s been a while since I last commented on the situation in the Gulf so it is probably well past time for an update. As of a few weeks ago there is a temporary cap that seems to have managed to stop the oil gusher. I did not make a joyous post right away because after BP’s previous efforts, I thought a “wait and see” position would be prudent. There was initially some concern that the cap might cause the seabed to destabilize or that there might have been a second leak, but supposedly that was not the case. At least, anything that was detected was “not consequential.” While I wont say there is a conspiracy, I find myself wondering how reliable BP’s reports to Thad Allen actually are, what with their assurances that they had plans to handle situations just like this one when they got permission to begin drilling.

Then there was the tropical storm Bonnie, the second tropical weather event to hit the gulf since the leak began on April 20th. Essentially this caused a delay of a few days in that the support fleet had to pack up all their pipes and sail away, until they decided the weather wasn’t really that bad. Still, between the tear down, the move, and then the reassembly of the pipes the plug process was delayed for several days.

The good news is that with the relief well essentially completed BP launched the first half of their plan to finally plug the well by injecting mud into the cap. (As of this writing the top injection is “done” and seems to have worked.) Once the relief well is completed they intend to inject a mud and concrete mixture into the broken well head from beneath the surface to finally put an end to this gusher, presumably once and for all. The relief well for the second injection is expected to be completed in less than two weeks at this point.

It is pretty clear that a lot of people are just hoping this thing will go away, so it is no surprise that many are beginning to ask where all of this leaked oil has gone. BP’s new chief executive Bob Dudley was claiming the leak was over as early as July 27th, and discussed scaling back clean up efforts. The scale back is apparently sensible, as most reports seem to indicate that the effort to keep the oil from reaching shore, (or the surface of the ocean for that matter) were for the most part effective. This is of course due to the unprecedented use of the dispersant Corexit. While Corexit is EPA approved, there have been findings of tiny droplets of oil making their way into the Gulf food chain thanks to Corexit’s efficiency at breaking down the black blobs into essentially too small to see particles. These particles actually have an easier time making it into the food chain.

At this point, of course, the threat that this combination might have on the ecology is being vastly downplayed, and some even claim that due to the rich ecosystem of the Gulf, oil is not something to be all that concerned about. Couple that with the proclamation that roughly 75% of the oil has been “cleaned” and I would be surprised if this was still a news story by September. Granted, it’s also just come out that apparently the estimated rate of the leak was still too low and this is in fact the largest off shore oil spill in global history.

But everything will be all right, I’m sure. The off shore drilling ban is going to be lifted sooner than anticipated, the judge who ruled on the case sees no conflict of interest between his own oil and gas investments and ruling on off shore drilling, and local politicians are hoping the Obamas will go swimming in the Gulf when they come down for a vacation! I mean, I’m sure this sort of thing will never happen again, it is not like we’re going to be letting the people responsible collect all the evidence or anything.

Oh, and in case you somehow missed it, there was also an oil spill in China, an oil spill in Michigan, a second blown oil head in Louisiana, and an Alaskan pipe line all happened while this was going on. The truth is that our own burn now, pay later attitude as a society is far more dangerous than any curse that the Maya(n) people never made in the first place. As long as we remain silent, nothing will change.

I wish I did not have cause to write this article. Unfortunately the problem that is the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico just does not seem like it will go away. The truth of the matter is the leak could be stopped today and the problems it presents us as a planet, ecologically and economically, will not go away. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex) had the audacity to call a 20 billion dollar restitution fund a “shake down.” If only that were true. The truth of the matter is that 20 billion dollars will not, can not, ever hope to “compensate” for the kind of damages this leak has and is continuing to cause. Sure it will cover the losses of some of the fishing and tourist industry losses for a few years, but to think that this problem is localized in space to gulf coast states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, or in time to a few seasons of fishing is more fantastic than believing a unicorn will enter your bedroom tonight and leave you a pile of diamond dung to cash in tomorrow.

Thanks to the Gulf Stream, the massive current that moves around Florida out of the gulf, up the eastern seaboard, and across the Atlantic to ocean where it becomes the North Atlantic Drift and North Atlantic Deep Water currents, this spill has the potential to effect beaches and fishing territory through out the whole world. There has been little to no testing on the environmental impact of the dispersants BP is using to try and break up the oil. In short, the oil, and the “solution” could result in serious damages to ocean beds and coast lines not just along the Gulf of Mexico, but across the entire eastern seaboard of North America, as well as Europe, and potentially even all the way south to West Africa. The ocean is not a contained body of water, it is interconnected and constantly flowing. While spills off other coasts may have been containable in the past having occurred in harbors or other areas not in such proximity to such massive currents, it is entirely possible that the rate of the current leak, and its proximity to this major ocean current (Seriously. Global weather patterns are effected by the Gulf and North Atlantic, not to mention untold billions in fishing and tourism jobs. There is also the impact on physical food supplies. It taints the fish, it taints the plankton, it taints the soil, it taints the plants, it taints the land mammals that eat the plants. Hopefully you get the picture at this point.) could result in this accident having a global impact for generations to come.

Like any oil leak, the damage is not a brief event that is quickly forgotten. Ecosystems recover, but slowly, and when we’re talking about things like fossilized carbon we’re not talking about processes that take years. We’re talking about decades, possibly centuries for the ecosystem to regain it’s tenuous balance. It is only in the last few decades that humans have consistently survived to the century mark, and perhaps that is part of the problem. Our perspective of life and the world is so often limited to what is ultimately the narrow window of our lifetime that we fail to really grasp the magnitude of things. You can still find oil along the shores of the Prince William Sound where the Exxon Valdez fatefully ran ashore 21 years ago. Just look under the rocks. The native communities who sustained their existence by fishing and living off the bounty of that sea are now decimated. Worst of all, Exxon ultimately was only held accountable for 10% of the punitive damages initially assessed, cynically deciding to tie up restitution in litigation so long that most of the injured parties would be dead. After all, Exxon is a corporation, it can’t die. While BP rushed to get booms in place to contain the spill, it is readily apparent that nobody at BP or anywhere else was actually prepared or capable of handling a catastrophe of this magnitude.

The truth is that a combination of lax oversight from friendly political allies allowed corporations to operate callously with disregard to their potential impact on the untold millions and billions who also make a living “mining” the sea. It was not in the best of interest of the bottom line for BP to install “optional” equipment that might have made containing this leak in a timely manner more possible. The technology was “too advanced, too fool proof” to spend any time seriously contemplating what to do if a well sprung a leak 5000 ft beneath the sea (That’s literally .95 miles or 1.5 km, which for those of you who took basic sciences might recall works out to roughly 166 times the atmospheric pressure here at the surface. In two words, “crush depth.” To put that into context the estimated crush depth of a US Seawolf class submarine is half the depth of this leak.) and as BP has made abundantly clear, nobody has any fucking clue what to do now that there is one.

We can only pray that this leak is somehow, miraculously, stopped sooner than later. Do not kid your self into thinking that the Russian suggestion of using a nuclear bast to turn the seabed to glass would be any safer to the ecosystem or industries that rely on that ecosystem either. What we must do is demand our leaders hold corporations accountable, not after the fact but before. It is the responsibility of government to make certain that private interests act not only on their own financial interests, but consider their impact on their neighbors, their employees, and our planet. The human race has found one planet in all the limitless cosmos that can support it’s survival needs. This one. If we don’t take care of it, it could very possibly mean our extinction coming sooner than later. We’re on the clock people,but not because of any prophecy. If we do not learn to control ourselves, we will destroy ourselves. It is that simple.

I was quite distressed last year about the BP oil spill. I honestly had a hard time bringing myself to write about it at the time. But after months, they managed to get the temporary cap in place, and suddenly the story was dead. Nobody wanted to talk about the underwater oil plume, or the “sniff tests” being used to determine if Gulf coast seafood was safe or not. The beaches were clean, the well had stopped leaking, the world moved on. The only problem is that if one looks at the amount of oil spilled (4.9 million barrels), and the amount captured (approx 600,000 barrels), and then makes wild guesses as to how much was burned, the rather significant remaining difference can only be one place. Still in the ocean.

Granted, the oil that remains in the ocean is probably not clumped together in obvious black clouds any more. BP dumped more dispersants than ever used before into the Gulf. The result being that large amounts of the oil were broken down into smaller clumps that quickly disappeared into the Gulf ecosystem. So, what kind of impact has this cocktail of chemicals and hubris had on the Gulf?

Well, for one, it is apparently killing dolphins. Yes, those ever lovable sea mammals have been experiencing an increase in both adult and infant mortality. At the earliest part of birthing season, baby dolphins were washing up dead at a frequency nine times the usual. While there will be those who point out that testing hasn’t confirmed the dolphins were poisoned by oil or Corexit, they are apologists and liars. Only a fool could deny that the Gulf’s ecosystem has been significantly altered, and that alteration is endangering the sea life that call it home.

Worse than that though, the oil is making it’s way into people’s blood. New studies have found hydrocarbons in the blood of gulf coast residents. These chemicals are making their way into people by air, water, and most frighteningly, food. The studies make it clear that the sniff tests were not enough, and that gulf seafood is capable of containing both oil by products, and Corexit, without any visible or “sniffable” indicators. Granted, the government agencies are trying to refute this study, but still by their own words recommend you “get your fish from a reputable source. Don’t catch it your self.” Not exactly a glowing endorsement. The reality is that the economy of the Gulf is so dependent on the sea food in the Gulf that people are afraid to openly discuss possible problems with it. The economy is in recession and millions of people make their living working as commercial fisherman, or guides for fishing tourists. To openly admit the Gulf has been contaminated would devastate the Gulf region’s economy.

Essentially the Gulf is damned either way, be it poison or poverty. Meanwhile the people at BP who made the decisions that led to this calamity, well, they’re doing fine.