I’ve been disappointed by President Obama on many occasions, especially for what I see as excessive adherence to the mirage of “bipartisanship” and subservience to corporate interests. Yet despite that, and despite widespread criticism from the left of Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil spill, I am not fully convinced by some of the most serious criticisms – though I do agree with
some of the important criticisms of his administration’s handling of this crisis.
I’ll start with some of the criticisms that I tend to agree with, and then I’ll discuss the most important criticism of all, which is that the Obama administration is leaving BP in charge of plugging the oil gush rather than taking a more direct active role in the effort.
The use of toxic dispersants to clean up the spillInitially the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claimed that it had no authority to tell BP what dispersants it could use in its efforts to clean up the oil spill. Then on May 20th they
reversed course, telling BP that it had three days to stop using a dispersant that EPA data suggested was
unnecessarily toxic. The
EPA has also noted that “the long term effects on aquatic life are unknown”.
In fact, many or most scientists believe that dispersants shouldn’t be used at all, since the dispersants may be just as or more toxic to marine life as the oil itself. It seems to many that BP’s use of dispersants is more for public relations purposes – they prevent visible slicks of oil from washing up on shore – than for limiting the damage to marine life. Regarding a
statement by Samantha Joye, professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia:
The hazardous effects of the plume are two-fold. Joye said the oil itself can prove toxic to fish swimming in the sea, while vast amounts of oxygen are also being sucked from the water by microbes that eat oil. Dispersants used to fight the oil are also food for the microbes, speeding up the oxygen depletion.
According to Richard Charter, a foremost expert on marine biology and oil spills:
There is a chemical toxicity to the dispersant compound that in many ways is worse than oil. It’s a trade-off of trying to minimize the damage coming to shore, but in so doing you may be more seriously damaging the ecosystem offshore.
And equally disconcerting is the fact that “The exact makeup of the dispersants is kept secret under competitive trade laws”.
And to top it all off, it now appears that BP may not comply with EPA’s order to stop using their toxic dispersant. From an article titled, “
BP says “NO” to EPA on switching dispersants: Who’s in Charge?”
We’re about to find out how this "BP is responsible for the spill and cleanup, but we’re responsible for oversight" concept works, because BP is apparently defying the Environmental Protection Agency’s order to find and use a different, less toxic and more effective dispersant.
All of this raises some very important and disturbing questions: Why did the EPA first claim that it had no authority to tell BP what dispersants it may use? Do they think that BP owns the Gulf? Do they think that they have no authority to regulate the pollution of our environment by private corporations, even in the face of a major crisis? What is the rationale for giving BP three days to stop (How long can it take to
stop doing it)? What possible right does BP have to keep the makeup of chemicals that they spew into our oceans secret? It seems to me that all of this suggests an inappropriate subservience of our government to a private corporation.
Interference by BP against other organizations attempting to get informationBP has estimated that approximately 5,000 barrels of oil per day are gushing into the Gulf – and our government accepts those estimates. But independent scientists have estimated much higher rates, on the order of
5 to 16 times the BP/U.S. government estimates. Yet
BP will not allow independent scientific measurement:
“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”
It’s not relevant to the response effort? Perhaps it is and perhaps it isn’t. I would certainly think that it could be relevant to future efforts to hold BP financially accountable for the disaster, however. And why should we take BP’s word that independent measurement might detract from the response effort? That doesn’t seem plausible. In any event, why should it be BP’s decision?
A similar issue is the question of who should be doing lab testing. BP has sent water samples to be tested at a Texas lab that does a lot of other work for BP. It has been
pointed out that this represents a conflict of interest – that the Texas lab may be inclined to withhold findings that could be detrimental to BP’s financial health because of the ongoing business relationship between them.
In a matter as serious of this, what excuse is there to allow a potential conflict of interest to interfere with accurate testing?
Who’s in charge of plugging the oil gush – BP or our government? The Obama administration has been widely criticized for not doing enough to control the damage, and particularly they have been criticized for allowing BP to be in charge of the attempts to plug the oil gush. Rob Kall, who runs OpEd News, and whose opinions I generally respect quite a bit,
said “It is clear that administrators throughout the government have responded either incompetently or with bad faith, protecting or collaborating with BP.”
James Carville said: “They're naive! BP is trying to save money… The government seems to be going along with it!...”
Several others,
including Chris Matthews, have said that our government should nationalize BP.
I don’t know whether nationalization of BP is legally possible. But it doesn’t seem to me that nationalization of BP is necessary. What
is necessary is
to nationalize the effort to contain this crisis. This crisis could catastrophically adversely affect the health of the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, and a multitude of humans who depend on them for generations to come.
As has repeatedly been pointed out, there is no reason to trust that the private corporation that caused this catastrophe is more interested in resolving the crisis than they are in their own financial liability and profits. They have repeatedly been
caught in lies. Moreover, there is a huge potential conflict of interest here: It may be that they are proceeding way too slowly with efforts to stop the oil gush because they are primarily worried about the possibility of permanently shutting down a source of oil that could reap tremendous profits for them. Indeed, it would be ridiculous of our government to trust them on this.
Yet there is one potentially legitimate reason for our government to give BP wide latitude in responding to the crisis: The response to this crisis involves highly technical issues. If BP is more capable of handling this situation than our government, or any other organization that our government might put in charge, that would be a good reason to let them handle it – with close monitoring by our government, of course. Indeed, that is the claim of White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs. In response to reporters’ questions,
Gibbs said:
There's nothing that we think can and should be done that isn't being done. Nothing…
There are no powers of intervention that the federal government has available but has opted not to use.
That was also the response of Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen:
He (Allen) and Coast Guard Adm. Mary Landry, the federal onsite coordinator, direct virtually everything BP does in response to the spill – and with a few exceptions have received full cooperation, Allen said….
Allen, the incident commander, said the main problem for federal responders is the unique nature of the spill – 5,000 feet below the surface with no human access… "Access to this well-site is through technology that is owned in the private sector," Allen said, referring to remotely operated vehicles and sensors owned by BP. Even so, the company has largely done what officials have asked, Allen said.
I could find nothing to refute these claims – though little to support them either.
ConclusionThere has been widespread disagreement on DU and from the U.S. left in general as to whether the Obama administration is doing everything it should to address one of the most severe environmental catastrophes our country has ever faced. Those who defend the Obama administration can and do point to many efforts that it has made. Among other things, they point out that it has sought advice
from a team of independent scientists on how to stop the oil gush, it has made plans
to appoint a special panel to study the issue, and it has tried to push Congress
to greatly increase BP’s liability for the damage they’ve caused.
The most important criticism of the Obama administration’s efforts to control the crisis is that it has virtually delegated control of the situation to the private corporation that caused the crisis. This criticism should be taken very seriously, especially because BP has substantial potential conflicts of interest regarding the effort to stop the oil gush, which could cause it to sabotage its own efforts. There is very good reason for our government to be highly suspicious of them.
Yet, of all the criticisms to this effect that I have read, none has proposed an alternative solution to allowing BP substantial leeway in dealing with the crisis. That begs the question: Is the Obama administration justified in relying so heavily on BP’s supposed expertise in this matter? Critics have suggested that it should be relying much more on input from other oil companies, rather than from BP alone. Obama’s defenders have suggested that we don’t really know to what extent the Obama administration has relied on expertise outside of BP. It seems to me impossible to come to a definitive conclusion on this issue at this time.
I have expressed serious disappointment with the way President Obama handled the
Wall St. bailout,
health care reform, and the
withholding of information from the American public on Bush administration torture of terrorist suspects. I’ve criticized his
continuation of the Afghanistan War. I’ve expressed bitter disappointment over his failure to hold the Bush administration accountable
for its war crimes. I’m very disappointed about his administration’s efforts to privatize primary education in our country, as repeatedly
pointed out by madfloridian. I am chilled by the recent revelations of William Greider, whom I greatly suspect, of Obama’s behind-the-scenes
efforts to privatize Social Security. And it is relevant that prior to the Gulf oil spill, Obama announced his decision
to approve offshore oil drilling that he had
specifically denounced during his campaign for President. To me, all of these things suggest excessive reluctance to challenge powerful corporate interests. For all these reasons and more, I believe that Americans should be wary of the Obama administration’s relationship with Big Oil.
However I see no definitive evidence that the Obama administration’s heavy reliance on BP to stop the oil gush isn’t necessary to a large degree because of the lack of viable alternatives for handling a highly unique crisis for which there is little or no precedence. This is without question a very complex and difficult issue.
I am very concerned about the Obama administration’s heavy dependence upon BP for the resolution of this crisis. Our government should not put its trust in private corporations to do what is right for our country and its people – especially a corporation that has already proven its bad faith. But it also appears to me that for the time being our government will have to rely heavily on the private sector to address this crisis – at least until it develops sufficient expertise of its own.
That should be the intermediate- and long-term plan. We have long had a Public Health Service that features the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to address our nation’s public health needs. There is no reason why we shouldn’t have a comparable agency to address our environmental health needs. Until we do we'll continue to run the risk of being held hostage to private corporations that wish to use our planet for their own private waste disposal.
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