Wednesday, April 20, 2011

A Year Later

A year ago on this very day, deep under the ocean a calamity unfolded. Before it was over millions of barrels of black, murky, thick oil had spewed into the Gulf Coast of the United States. An estimated 180 million (the number is still in dispute) gallons of it all had polluted the ocean as the world watched aghast. This was by far the worst industrial disaster engineered by mankind, under water. The unquenchable thirst for oil (which today is trading $180 a barrel) had led humans once again to desecrate the planet, hoping it will heal itself, and continue to be on their side.

A year later as the media casts a dim glare on the catastrophe, there is a sense that it never happened. There is a belief that what seemed so dire then was not after all that bad. Theories that the ocean performed a miracle and disintegrated all the oil with its magical bacteria, the ocean currents swept the oil away and unlike the Exxon Valdez spill twenty years ago, this was spread over a large area and there fore the impact was less, are gaining more acceptance. Only a few birds and fish died, and those that were seen on TV covered in oil were rescued and rehabilitated and not much oil really washed ashore so everyone can get back to fishing and drilling seems to be the direction that is being proposed. The apathy to this catastrophe is so blaring that some scientists and experts have even gone so far as to say that a "true calamity" was actually averted because nature was on our side. Having seen the heart wrenching images as they struggled to cap the well for almost three months, is reason enough to doubt the rosy picture that is emerging out of a carefully managed and disseminated story. Two decades later there is still evidence of oil on the shores of the Prince William sound in Alaska, and the oil that spilled there was a fraction of what gushed into the Gulf.

The impunity with which we pollute the only planet we have, reached a new milestone with this incident. The Bhopal gas tragedy, the Chernobyl disaster and the numerous oil spills in the Niger Delta and elsewhere, have shown us that this impunity we take as a "right" and carry on insensitively and unabashedly until the next disaster strikes. As nothing can come second to man's greed for natural resources.

BP and Haliburton the two companies on whose watch this catastrophe in the Gulf unfolded both posted a profit on Wall Street this year. Despite doling out billions of dollars in the clean up operation and other damages owed to the Gulf coast communities, they were able to make money thanks to rising oil prices. As always, the remuneration to the people most affected by no fault of theirs, has been slow coming, even though 20 billion dollars have been set aside at the insistence of the Obama administration. While all this has been unfolding things have gone back the way they were. Deep water drilling permits are again being issued to oil companies, with the promise of more stringent oversight by the government. Recently the Australian company BHP Billiton was awarded a permit to drill in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, not far from where the spill occurred. Rising oil prices due to the political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa led the Republicans to push congress to resume drilling in the Gulf coast. “We are encouraging offshore exploration and production,” President Barack Obama said during a press conference at the White House “We’re just doing it responsibly.”

As the calamity at the Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan struggles to find an end, already things in the Nuclear industry seem to be returning to their "business as usual" state. A number of nuclear plants in the United States have had their permits extended by another twenty years, even though their safety records have been checkered. The oldest operating Nuclear power plant in Oyster Creek, New Jersey had its permits extended to 2029, even though it had leaked radioactive waste into the aquifer. The Oyster Creek plant is a boiling water reactor, much like the one in Fukushima, Japan. In February 2011 the Kawaunee Nuclear power plant in Wisconsin had its license extended till 2033. This plant had reported a leak in 2006. Other nuclear plants across the globe have resumed construction, and those who were put on hold are waiting for the dust to settle. India plans to build the worlds largest nuclear power plant on its western coast near a rural town called Jaitpur. Violent protests from the local villagers broke out this week. One protester was shot by the police. India's growing thirst for power to fuel its urban expansion will not relent.

The nexus between industry and government cannot be more evident as in the case of the oil and nuclear industry. On the one hand the Obama administration talks about conservation and moving away from an oil addicted society to a more "green" one and on the other allows oil companies to start drilling in places that is proven to be environmentally risky. The Nuclear industry with the promise of clean energy pushes its way through, expanding and thriving despite all of its apocalyptic failings. The hypocrisy could not be more blatant as the companies flex their muscle and manage to get what they want and the drilling never stops as the thirst for oil and power knows no end.

What we seem to learn from our mistakes, is that we never learn. Humanity's inability to sacrifice the conveniences it has gotten used to at the cost of great harm to the planet, is reprehensible. Politically it is something no government would want to risk, even if it means putting the very public that elected them at grave risk. The idea that by better and more stringent oversight and sophisticated technology we can create a "fail safe" world questions the short sighted audacity of the human spirit. Nature shows us time and again that if we cannot live in harmony with it, it will not allow us to live, but humanity does not seem to get the hint. So as we return to drilling and splitting atoms, the question to ask is at what cost is that acceptable? If the mission, knowing what we know today, is to create a better and safer world for future generations, it feels like that vision has become impaired. It is what it is.
 
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