Cross-posted from Nieman Watchdog.
When a well started spewing oil off Santa Barbara in 1969, it spurred the first Earth Day, which in turn launched the environmental movement and a fundamental questioning of the balance between humans and the rest of nature. It turned out, in other words, to be a real Moment.
It makes one wonder if there really shouldn't be a little more depth to the endless coverage of the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf. (Which, just to be semantic for a moment, isn't really a "spill," or a "leak," unless you'd also call a knife wound a "bloodspill," or a gunshot to the carotid a "bloodleak." BP has punched a hole in the bottom of the sea.)
Yes, the obvious story is important: There's oil spewing out, BP has demonstrated infuriating nonchalance, shrimpers are watching the sheen wash up on the coastal marshes, etc. This all needs to be covered, and is being covered with the incredible agonizing boredom that only 24-hour cable channels can bring to any issue.
And there's a "political angle," which as usual has been about atmospherics. Is Obama angry enough? Is he connecting with "real people"? This sort of thing is conventional good fun for political reporters (especially when Obama plays along, announcing he's consulting with various academics in order to see "whose ass needs kicking."). But isn't there something more? Isn't this potentially a Moment too?
Let's think about the stories that are suggested by this trouble.
One has something to do with peak oil. BP has gone to all this trouble for a well that taps into what they now think may be 100 million barrels of oil. And that's... five days supply for the U.S? Does that give you any sense of the precariousness of the arrangements under-girding our economy right at the moment?
Another -- even more important -- has to do with global warming. Let's assume that the oil from the Deepwater Horizon made it safely onshore and was refined and then burned in the gas tank of your car. What then? Well, the CO2 in the atmosphere would be doing at least as much damage as the oil spreading across the Gulf. Consider the following things that have happened since the Deepwater exploded:
* Asia and Southeast Asia have each recorded their hottest temperatures ever -- 129 degrees in Pakistan, and 117 in Burma. India is having the worst heatwave since the British started keeping records -- people are dying by the hundreds.
* We've seen the biggest rainstorms ever recorded in lots of places, from Nashville to Guatemala -- the clear result of an atmosphere made 5% wetter because warm air holds more water vapor than cold.
* Satellite data has shown that Arctic ice is now melting even faster than in the record year of 2007.
* NASA has released new statistics showing that the past 12 months were the warmest on record and that 2010 is almost certain to set the title for the warmest calendar year yet.
All of these, it seems to me, could be considered parts of the Deepwater Horizon story because they demonstrate that fossil fuel is everywhere dirty. They change the political question from "is Obama angry enough" to "can Obama lead a credible fight for real energy and climate legislation?" More to the point, they connect with the mood of existential despair and anger that the oil spill has set off across the country. People are sad and bitter only in part because they see those pelicans oiled; mostly, they sense correctly that our leaders have yet to deal with what is clearly the biggest problem we face: the transition off of fossil fuels.
The questions that the Gulf spill raises, in other words, go well beyond: How big an idiot is Tony Hayward? What will happen to the tourist economy of the Gulf? How cool is James Cameron's minisub? The questions are more like: How out of balance with the natural world are we? And what would it require to get back in balance?
You'd need to interview not just oil execs and colorful shrimpers, but nature writers, solar pioneers and psychologists.
There's nothing pat about what's going on in the Gulf. It's the most vivid sign we've yet had that we are running into the kind of limits that people started talking about way back at that first Earth Day. But its meaning risks disappearing beneath the endless stories about Top Hat and Junk Shot. BP's great victory will come if it need merely confess to technical overreach and pay a few billion in fines -- if that happens, it can get back to making serious money, and the planet can get back to burning.
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As to the cost of this disaster, an emergency presidential declaration, or whatever, to freeze all B.P.'s assets in the US and a lien on everything overseas. Then, sell the assets off until the price has been paid or the assets are gone. Too big to fail? Pshaw!
The reason the organization is named 350.org is because many of our most influential scientists, such as James Hansen, have concluded that we can have no more than 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere to keep global warming to a minimum. We are now getting close to 400 ppm, so the task in front of us is really daunting--but still doable--as long as we make an IMMEDIATE and real commitment to changing our energy sources.
Please write your Senators and Representative and urge them to vote for significant climate legislation that will bring us back to 350 ppm. And no crap about how we just can't do enough, and we're just one little country, and what about China or India. First, the United States contributed the lion's share of the mess in which we currently find ourselves, so it would not exactly be inappropriate if we would finally start setting the path to lead the world out. Second, those countries also are aware of global warming and will suffer just as much as the rest of us, and they do know that. We need to be a leader. Finally.
You can write your legislators at http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/officials/ Just enter your zip code.
That is just one example of what we need to do. What we need is our economy completely off oil and coal. Period. Because we have almost run out of time.
There are a lot of articles and books about how we can come to a tipping point which is irreversible. Jim Hansen's book, "Storms of my Grandchildren," is excellent. It describes climate science in a manner in which a layperson can understand and it outlines graphically what will happen if we don't immediately commit to an Apollo-like program to change energy sources. Or try the June 2010 "Audobon" magazine and read the article about how much current warming has already melted Arctic permafrost. Even that little article should scare the crap out of everyone, because the CO2 and methane gas trapped under the permafrost is more than twice the total amount we already have in our atmosphere--which is already too high anyway.
So like I said, get on your politicians' butts! Write them daily--this is worth it--and complain like hell. Please don't vote for politicians not rabidly committed to immediately addressing climate change.
If you don't think there's an entity capable of solving the problem where do you turn?
Second, this has to be seen as but one symptom of the failure of Reaganism. It is part and parcel with the bank failures, the Massey mine disaster, and all the other disasters that flowed from deregualtion.
If each of us believes that, imagine the possibilities. The US auto companies never recovered from the US consumers' refusal to purchase their inferior products in the 1970s and 80s. Think of what we could do to the fossil fuel companies. There are alternatives out there, and they are harder to find, but they're there.
Yes, we can. Yes, we must.
Nuclear Energy + Electric Cars = Bright Future
No thanks. Solar, wind, and geothermal will do just fine.
Meanwhile, we need to invest significantly in R&D for the other alternatives. Solar probably holds the most promise in the near future, but we need a breakthrough in conversion efficiency. And who knows, fusion just might still become a commercial reality.