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Global Warning - Aug 28, 2010 - Printable Version
- Fishable, Swimmable, Drinkable
by Robin Buckallew
This week, President Obama took his daughters for a swim. That’s right, he’s a good dad, and he wanted to spend time with his daughters. I don’t really have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is WHERE he took them for a swim…or rather, where he SAID he took them for a swim…the Gulf of Mexico. Why did he swim in the Gulf, and why does it matter? Well, by way of analogy, think back about ten years, when we had a different president, you know, what’s ‘is name, the fellow who couldn’t say “nuclear” correctly? We had a little problem with mercury in our water, and the EPA was attempting to rewrite the mercury standards to reduce the amount of mercury that people were consuming. Ol’ what’s ‘is name decided to block the rule change, because big bidness didn’t like it…then, just to show that there wasn’t anything wrong with the current standard, he drank a glass of water with mercury in it…to show he wasn’t scared. If he’d drink the stuff, it must be all right. Right? Right. Fast forward to August, 2010. Now, we have a little problem with oil in the Gulf…lots of oil in the Gulf, but the people who put it in the Gulf are telling us it’s cleaned up…all gone away, nice and clean, but…no, don’t look under the rug. The government is siding with the oil company…Gulf all clean, no need to worry, go back home and think slow and beautiful thoughts. We’ve got it under control, no need to worry your pretty little (empty) head…yes, that’s a good fellow. Where did the oil go? Well, I guess the oil fairies must have done a little bit of magic. But, hey, that’s on a need to know basis and, to tell you the truth, you don’t need to know. Some people are having trouble with the story…their reality meter is on red alert. They remember that the government told us that Ground Zero was safe to return to…although the air was still toxic. They also remember that the government told us not to worry, the levees wouldn’t break when the Category 5 hurricane hit New Orleans. Some of them even remember that these same people said that there was no danger from offshore drilling, because oil rigs today don’t tend to spill. Ouch. So, to drive the point home that the Gulf is, in the words of the Clean Water Act, “fishable, swimmable, and drinkable”, the president went swimming, with his two precious young daughters. No father as devoted as Obama would take his two precious little girls into the Gulf for a swim unless it was safe, right? Right.
OK, so it would be a bit…cynical…of me to note that there are some things that don’t quite add up. Obama wasn’t actually swimming in the Gulf. He was swimming at a private beach in Florida…NEAR the Gulf. Oh, near the Gulf, in the Gulf…what’s the difference? A matter of semantics…well, no, actually, it’s a matter of geography. And a matter of publicity. Positive publicity…no risk. Sort of like Dubya, drinking ONE glass of water with mercury in it, Obama takes ONE swim at a beach that’s near the Gulf. This, of course, is going to demonstrate just how safe it is to drink mercury every single day of your life, and how safe it is to live, work, and play in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of New Orleans every single day. Gee, I feel better already. I’m sure the tourists and the fishermen in New Orleans are cheering, now that Obama feels he can swim off a private beach in Florida. Optimism…yes, dare I say it?...Hope. The AUDACITY of hope. No, in this case, I think we need to label it the Audacity of HYPE.
Why is Obama swimming in the “Gulf”? What is the purpose? Is he just trying to make us feel better, to boost our spirits so we don’t slide into despair, so we keep moving forward? Is he trying to trivialize the impact of the Gulf spill, because he sincerely believes it isn’t that bad, and we need to move on? Is he trying to protect profits for BP, or to justify opening up more of the coast to offshore drilling? Is he just doing a publicity stunt for his own public relations, because the right wing has been so relentlessly referring to this spill as “Obama’s Katrina”, hoping to defray some of the negative publicity and prevent his reputation from getting mired down in the slimy gunk that oozed into the Gulf? I don’t know…I probably don’t want to know. Most the people I talk to believe it’s the last reason, protection of his reputation. That probably does have at least some truth in it, but it isn’t mutually exclusive with some of the other reasons, particularly the desire to allow more offshore drilling in the face of relentless pressure from the oil industry, the drivers who want cheap gas, and the politicians in Louisiana, who value gas and oil income much more than they value the lives of whales, dolphins, or those citizens who are “irresponsible” enough to live and work right in the path of a major oil spill.
We are living at a crossroads of history (to be fair, most times could be called that…we just don’t always know it until afterwards). The decisions we make now could have a substantial impact on the world for not only our children and our grandchildren, but potentially for many generations to come. The changes we’ve caused aren’t short term. Global warming is going to be with us for a long time. The ozone hole may take two generations before it’s fully healed. Many of the pollutants in our water won’t just go away, they’ll stick around and leave a not-so-gentle reminder that we were here. The plastic that we throw out will still be around a thousand years from now. The radioactive waste we leave behind will still be around hundreds of thousands of years from now. The species that have gone extinct aren’t ever coming back, and more are joining them everyday. This is a serious situation, and a pool party is hardly the reaction of a responsible adult. It’s more like what you’d expect from a rebellious teen who can’t figure out why his parents won’t let him do what he wants.
Oil disasters are happening all the time, all over the world. We rarely hear about most of them, because they happen in places far away from home – Nigeria, Venezuela, Kuwait, Australia – and we’re able to fool ourselves into thinking everything’s working right, just because there hasn’t been a horrible spill in the news for several years. This spill should have been a wake up call…it’s not as big as some of the other spills that have happened elsewhere, but it’s big enough to be noticeable, and it’s right on our shores. It should be impossible to ignore, but for some reason, the furor has already died down…just like the furor over the Exxon-Valdez spill quickly died down, as soon as people could manage to put it to the back of their mind and move on to something else.
With the recent court decision to overturn Obama’s all-too-brief moratorium on offshore drilling, with the constant cheerleading of Louisiana politicians such as Mary Landrieu, with the overheated rhetoric of Mrs. Drill Baby Drill Palin, and now, with Obama’s swim in the ocean, I fear the handwriting is on the wall. This may be our last opportunity to ease ourselves out of the oil addiction; instead, like a chronic recidivist, we turn back from the news about oil rig explosions and dying coasts to pay another visit to the gas pump. Yes, we’re addicted…and we prefer it that way. I don’t foresee any major popular movement to protest drilling…at the very height of the oil spill, some polls were still showing people in favor of drilling. We’ll convince ourselves that, this time, we’ve got all the safeguards intact, and that it will be IMPOSSIBLE for any disaster to occur. We’ll remind ourselves that this one was cleaned up so quickly that Obama would let his precious little girls swim kinda sorta in the Gulf within four months of the spill. We’ve got all the technology, we’ll tell ourselves, to keep it from happening, and to clean it up if it does happen. We can drive a little safer, we’ll tell ourselves, if the oil companies will just take a few more precautions…preferably voluntarily, because if we interfere with the action of the free market by imposing regulations, the price of gas might go up. We’ll be able to beat this someday, we reassure ourselves, bur right now, there just isn’t anything else we can do. We have to drive. We have to use plastic. We have to drill, baby, drill.
At this point, more than half of US waters do not meet the requirement to be fishable, swimmable, and drinkable. How many more water bodies will we sacrifice before we finally get the message, as Popeye once said, “Enough is too much”?
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