Joan King

June 1, 2010

I suppose I should write a column about the Gulf oil spill. Everyone else has, but what is there left to say? Like so many other issues, opinions are divided into opposing camps: “See, I told you so” vs. “Drill baby, drill.”

It’s been six weeks now, and we still don’t know if the latest attempt to plug the well will work. So just how bad is it? We don’t know for sure. We can’t even agree on how much oil is pouring into the Gulf. BP’s figures have proved to be way below those of oceanographers and marine biologists. How could this happen?

Environmentalism was not popular during the Bush administration. Environmental regulations were rescinded or ignored, and in consequence, many of the EPA’s top scientists quit. Why are we surprised by the Deepwater Horizon debacle?

It wasn’t the first time BP had a pipe snap on the ocean floor. The first accident was in 2003, and the company had been warned in a trade journal that it wasn’t prepared for the long-term task of dealing with a deep-sea accident.

Even now the oil industry is pressing to drill in the Alaskan ocean, and the same scenario is playing out between the company and the regulators. Minerals Management Services office in Alaska granted initial permits for drilling but only after many of the agency’s most experienced scientists left because their concerns about environmental threats were being ignored.

The latest reports indicate that the BP spill is worse then the Exxon Valdez. Twenty years have gone by since the Valdez spill, and it still hasn’t been completely cleaned up. Is this kind of environmental damage the price we must pay to keep our cars running and our business humming? Or could we be well on our way to cleaner, greener energy sources if the oil companies weren’t so rich and powerful?

Call me biased if you like, but I think these are valid questions; and in truth, we really don’t know the answers. So much depends on where you stand. Big business depends on a ready flow of oil. Small businesses along the coast are suffering because oil has washed up on their beaches.

The Times covers a very Republican part of the state. Readers probably don’t care much for President Barack Obama. Fair enough, but what should he be doing that he hasn’t already done? He’s made two trips to the Gulf, sent the EPA chief to Louisiana to talk residents, called in the secretary of the Interior, the secretary of Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice.

Do Americans want the military to take over? If so, what is the military suppose to do?Suggestions from readers are welcome, but remember this: Obama may be beholden to Big Oil to a certain degree, but it doesn’t compare to our last president and his father, who were Big Oil.

Obama is between a rock and a hard place. Thomas Friedman, who has supported the president in the past, now chastises him for not taking more drastic steps. Friedman was the columnist who, after 9/11, proposed a $1-a-gallon “Patriot Tax” on gasoline as a way to reduce the deficit, fund scientific research, and diminish our dependence on foreign oil.

Friedman may have been right, but if Obama proposed such a tax, there would be riots in the streets. And how is the man to control future oil exploration in environmentally sensitive areas while loosening environmental regulations and reducing the size and reach of government at the same time?

Critics claim they just want to preserve “… our way of life as we know it.” OK, but with this way of life comes oil spills and other nasty, long-lived environmental problems. The public is also between a rock and a hard place.

We all bought into this way of life. Now we must pay the piper.