The Tarball Chronicles. David Gessner
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keep acting in ways that lead to shocking events, isn’t it time to stop being shocked?
Not that it isn’t shocking. A twenty thousand gallon spill like the one in Alaska is a disaster. But over two hundred million gallons have spilled from the well below me since early April.
We circle the rig again. I stare down to try to see the deeper story. It was down there that eleven people were sacrificed in the name of profit. Is that an exaggeration? Tony Hayward and Carl-Henric Svanberg might be scapegoats—and fine scapegoats they are, complete with their James Bond villain accents—but what about the board of directors? And what about the system that created the board? The group and the philosophy that demanded that this company, despite earning billions of dollars, had to earn even more to sate them; that to do so, to provide more billions, a 25 percent cut in operations had to be enacted, even as those operations were expanding downward into new territory, 13,000 feet below the ocean floor? How were those cuts enacted? Simply and systematically: by cutting corners and skipping regulations and eliminating safety measures. Piles of money, enough to support a small town for decades, were being divided between a board made up of a dozen or so people. And yet no one could be bothered to pay a few hundred thousand on tests, nor could they abide alarms that might slow them down.9
Take this down to a personal level and it seems almost inconceivable. This is not the first time I’ve traveled this country and I am always surprised by how decent people are. But where are all those exceptional individuals in a moment like this one? Is it only in large groups that people are allowed to bury their morals? No healthy individual would ever do to their family or friends what this corporation has done to the people of the Gulf. Individuals would face immediate ostracism. Maybe it’s as simple a problem as the size of the organization, or even the words organization and system. When profit is made the greatest priority and one’s job—one’s self-interest—hinges on that profit, simple commonsensical goodness flies out the window.
I am wrestling with these ideas and can’t stem the tide of confusion. It’s too much to handle all at once. In our oversimplified political discourse we talk a lot about the importance of business and growth, but we also talk a lot about freedom and individual rights. But a corporation like BP is about as individualistic as a batch of flesh-eating bacteria—there is no debate over what the collective will is: grow and profit, no matter the cost. What does freedom mean when we blindly trust that an entity like BP will not destroy the world we rely on for our health, happiness, and well-being?
We don’t stop there, though. Before I came down here I watched the congressional hearings where Tony Hayward testified. A woman jumped up from the back row and waved her hands, which she had painted black, and yelled: “He should be charged with a crime!” She was quickly dragged away. Maybe most people will roll their eyes and call her a wacko, but she is right. Rather than being charged with a crime, this man’s famously inept and dangerous company is being charged with running the cleanup. It is hard to imagine a culture in which this could possibly happen: not only do we trust them, but, when they err, we trust them yet more.
As we spin over this giant pool of water a graphic and slightly inelegant metaphor comes to mind. It’s as if BP were a houseguest who takes a shit in your bathtub and then, loudly and boorishly, orders your children to clean it up. Worse still, he slips each of your kids a fiver and has them sign a piece of paper promising that they won’t tell anyone what really happened. The truly wild thing down here is that everyone has gone along with this plan, carrying it out as if it makes sense, nodding and going about their unsavory business.
After we fly over the rig we head toward Grand Isle, a national park at the end of one of the green fingers of land that reaches out into the Mississippi Delta. It has long been regarded as one of the most beautiful spots in Louisiana, but even from way up here I can see the brown, burnt fringe of dead grasses from the oil. This is where the caramel goo first rolled in.
But it is also still a miraculous landscape, full of fish and birds and gators (like the one we saw after lifting off from refueling). Ryan said that 14 percent of the continental coastal wetlands fan off of Route 23, but the area we are flying over now makes up closer to 40 percent. It is green and vast, wavering like a mirage below us, and for centuries it has received the gift of nutrients offered up by the great surging river. I have to laugh to think that just a week ago I would have told you that this was a second-rate coast. There is nothing second-rate about it, other than the way we have treated it.
The United States consumes 40 percent of the world’s oil. About 70 percent of that is for transportation, mostly for our cars. I am not here to wag fingers: I, too, drive a car and live in a car society. We are a hungry people. I, too, am hungry. We are hungry not just for oil but for the ease it brings, and, as creatures of habit, we have become habituated to this easy, oily way of life.10
Oil has often been called an addiction. Just as surely as a junkie’s life leads to degradation and crime, I can see spilled on the beaches below me the results of our addiction. Here is our degradation and here are our crimes, spread over these beaches and in these waters. We debate scientific theories in our culture. You may choose not to believe that the world will warm, and while your beliefs have little to do with what the world does, you have a right to them. But what I am seeing below me is not theory. Here, in this place, there is no disbelieving or believing. Here it is right in front of you and in your face.
What good does it do to self-flagellate? Oil in and of itself, far from being “bad,” is almost miraculous in its composition and effectiveness. Oil is the “solar energy” that environmentalists like me have long cried for. Solar energy from eons ago, energy sucked in and stored by plants, now long dead, that has been squeezed by earth and time, energy that we ignite to power our cars and cities and lives. And not only is oil “natural” and miraculous, it was also, for a while, a terrifically good idea. It powered things cheaply and well. One of the reasons we are having a hard time turning to alternatives is corporate resistance, but another is that it’s hard to find something nearly as effective. Who would have guessed that old fossilized trees and plants could do so much so well?
To think about oil clearly we need to clear our minds of guilt and blame. Who would have known, even fifty years ago, where all this would lead? Who would have known that it would lead to wars where our young people would die? Who would have believed that we would be capable of warming our own planet and of melting our ice caps? And who would have imagined to what extent the addiction would grow, to the point where all the oil that has spilled below, the millions and millions of gallons, would only be enough to power our country for six hours?11 If these ideas seem too numbing, then consider a more everyday disaster. Who would have known that this substance, celebrated when it came spouting out of wells over a century ago, would have led to what is possibly the most nightmarish, if quotidian, of human miseries? I am talking, of course, about commuting.
For all this, the time for oil is passing. Not for any moral or philosophical reasons, but for practical ones. There simply isn’t enough to keep going. And the little that is left is hidden in places like the Macondo site down below me, places where drilling involves great risk. Do we want to rip the world apart to get those last drops? That is part of what we are talking about when we talk about sacrifice. We will gain oil. What will we lose?
The oil companies know how they would answer that question. And yet this industry, as monolithic and scary as it may seem at the moment, will topple to its knees soon enough. You can hear the industry’s death rattle if you listen closely. The corporations will not go easily, just like the railroad barons. But there is no denying the fact that no matter how deep they dig or how much of the earth they soil, there is only so much left. So what do we do next? And when will we start doing it?
As we head back toward Venice and Buras the pilot points at a giant oil skimmer that he claims is capable of sinking itself.