Do something, baby, do something: That's the cry from Obama
supporters and opponents alike as the oil keeps gushing into the Gulf of
Mexico.
The political firestorm kept growing yesterday, with supporter James
Carville ranting that the administraion has been "lackadaisical" and
"naive" in its response to the disaster. He urged it to rapidly "move to
Plan B."
But that suggests there was ever a Plan A.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is so frustrated with the lack of
response to his plan to stop the slick with sand barriers that yesterday
he called on the White House and BP to either "stop the oil spill or get
out of the way."
"Plug the damn hole," President Obama reportedly barked at staffers
in frustration after the explosion. That's right up there with "Heckuva
job, Brownie" in terms of clueless statements uttered by presidents in
the midst of nationally televised disasters.
Meanwhile, White House regret over Obama's politically expedient
embrace of the "Drill, baby, drill" trope is growing faster than the
vast oil slick.
Back on March 31, Obama announced -- to the horror of many of his
supporters -- that he was expanding offshore drilling along the
coastlines of the south and mid-Atlantic and in the Gulf of Mexico.
Worse, he painted a (too) rosy scenario of offshore drilling being
eminently safe.
True, it is rare that a full-blown environmental catastrophe results
from an offshore oil well. But it can happen -- and a Democratic
president who's embracing drilling ought to know the risks, and be
prepared for the worst. But rather than planning for a spill, Obama
parroted McCain-Palin talking points about how safe offshore drilling
is.
Turns out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration back in
1994 drafted plans for responding to a major Gulf oil spill, a response
called "In-Situ Burn."
Ron Gourget, a former federal oil-spill-response coordinator and one
author of the draft, told the Times of London: "The whole reason the
plan was created was so that we could pull the trigger right away." The
idea was to use barriers called "fire booms" to collect and contain the
spill at sea -- then burn it off. He believes this could have captured
95 percent of the oil from this spill.
But at the time of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the federal
government didn't have a single fire boom on hand. Nor is there any
evidence that the government required BP to have any clear plan to deal
with a massive spill. How is this OK?
The administration's chief response so far was to send out Interior
Secretary Ken Salazar to do his best impersonation of a totalitarian
thug, proclaiming that the government would "have its boot on the throat
of BP."
(Fun fact: While in the Senate, Salazar backed an increase in oil and
gas leases in the Gulf Coast region by promoting and voting for the Gulf
of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006.)
Since the "blame BP" strategy isn't working, Obama will today
announce tougher safety requirements and more rigorous inspections for
offshore drilling operations. Sounds nice -- except the problem isn't a
lack of safety requirements, it's that the experts at the US Minerals
Management Service ignored the existing requirements.
In fact, it was under Salazar's reign that the MMS approved BP's
drilling without getting the permits required by law for drilling that
might harm endangered species. The agency routinely overruled warnings
regarding the safety and environmental impact of drilling proposals in
the Gulf.
None of this was a secret.
It also shouldn't be a secret that no matter how many inspections and
safety requirements you have, you can't ever completely prevent
disasters like this one. If you're going to permit offshore drilling, be
prepared to respond to a spill.
If he promised us anything, Obama promised us competence. Instead,
we've gotten the Keystone Cops.
kirstenpowers@aol.com