Guest Column

BP Disaster Reveals Differences in Political Philosophy

By Marjory Holder

Sitting up here in our mountains, waiting for the tomatoes and squash to ripen, it’s easy to forget that a few hours south of us, the world has caved in on working Americans along the Gulf Coast -- again.

Most of us have seen the photos -- globs of oil floating in the Gulf, aerial shots of huge oil slicks, sickening brown fingers sliding across a blue sea, ineffective oil booms lying in fouled marshes, shrimping and fishing boats moored at docks while the families who work on them worry about how to feed their children when they can’t go out and earn a living.

And this is a direct result of 30 years of de-regulation by the politicians in Washington.

The people whom we elected to look out for our interests, to keep our country safe and our air and water clean and our banking system stable, have been asleep at the stick. They’ve raked in money from corporate lobbyists to pad their re-election coffers while allowing these same corporations to write their own rules on how to conduct business -- making enormous profits at the expense of the people to whom this country actually belongs.

The disaster in the Gulf is a direct result, and a perfect example of why that particular laissez faire system doesn’t work.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe the business of America is business. Small businesses and independent entrepreneurs, including farmers, are what built this country, and industry is what made us prosperous. But what’s going on now isn’t business and industry ... it’s pillage.

To quote from Congressman Henry Waxman’s letter to the BP CEO in mid-June, “Five days before the explosion, BP’s drilling engineer called [it] a ‘nightmare well.’ In spite of the well’s difficulties, BP appears to have made multiple decisions for economic reasons that increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure. In several instances, these decisions appear to violate industry guidelines and were made despite warnings from BP’s own personnel and its contractors. In effect, it appears that BP repeatedly chose risky procedures in order to reduce costs and save time and made minimal efforts to contain the added risk.”

The letter then cites five specific decisions that BP made to save time and money that ran against accepted standards in drilling for oil -- decisions that cost 11 men their lives and are costing thousands of working people along the Gulf Coast their livelihoods, decisions that may foul the coast for more than a generation. And if you think I’m being alarmist, remember the Exxon Valdese. That ship ran aground in 1989. Even though the “clean-up” ended three years later, the beaches around Prince William Sound still produce pools of toxic oil and probably will continue to do so, according to recent reports, for another century.

Most of the spill-response suggestions coming from the most famous spokespeople for the Republicans have been simplistic at best and misleading at worst. Sarah Palin accused the feds of refusing help from other countries and small entrepreneurs -- ignoring the fact that resources from both are working in the Gulf to try to contain the damage. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is upset the feds want BP to pay for the damage they’ve caused, suggesting the idea is some sort of Socialist “redistribution of wealth” plot; and Congressman Joe Barton actually apologized to BP because the White House expects that oil company (rather than American taxpayers) to foot the bill for the disaster! Our own Congresswoman suggested in her recent Town Hall phone-in that the feds could solve the whole problem with some ships carrying really big sponges. I didn’t have big enough sponges when my water pipes burst last winter; I have no idea where to find sponges big enough to sop up 1.7 million gallons of oil per day.

So far, BP has spent $2 billion fighting the oil spill. They’re facing billions more in lawsuits. Nothing they’ve tried so far has been terribly effective. The two relief wells being drilled won’t be completed for at least 6 weeks and may still take months to plug the leak. But though you and I may be thinking BP was penny-wise and pound-foolish in drilling the Deepwater Horizon at all, we know that corporate memory is notoriously short. Next time some oil corporation is drilling a mile beneath the ocean floor off another American coast, the managers at the scene are just as likely to cut corners on time and money and safety.

In the wake of the Gulf disaster, Canada has once again tightened its offshore drilling regulations (relaxed just last year at the request of that industry north of our borders). They’ve ended so-called “goal-oriented” standards for spill-response and gone back to “prescriptive” regulations that require companies to use specific environmental safeguards to prevent spills in the first place. I think it’s well past time for the U.S. to do the same.