Project Katrina

Peter Willcox is the Captain of the Greenpeace ship M.V. Arctic Sunrise. Heck he was the Captain of Rainbow Warrior—in command when operatives of the French intelligence service attacked and sunk the ship in 1985, killing one crew member. So when I heard, via Balloon Juice, he as in the area accessing the damage and writing about it, well I was kind of curious. He has a lot to say on BP’s use of Corexit and what his team found. Really needs to be read in full.

Corexit is mostly what BP has used on the spill.  There are a few things to know about Corexit.  One is that is was banned in U.K. over ten years ago because it is so toxic, as in poisonous to humans and sea life. According to the label on the product, it will irritate the eyes, it is not to be inhaled, and it can cause harm to red blood cells, your kidney and liver.  The OSHA data sheet states: component substances have a potential to bioconcentrate, that human health hazard is acute.  Nice stuff.

Also, according to EPA data, Corexit ranked far above other dispersants for toxicity, and far below other dispersants in effectiveness in handling Louisiana crude.

Corexit was also used on the Exxon Valdez spill.  Now read carefully: Almost all the clean up workers who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill are dead.  According to CNN, who made efforts to warn the people of the Gulf about Corexit, the average lifespan of an Exxon Valdez spill worker is 51 years.  That’s almost 30 years less than that of the average American.   There were 11,000 people involved with the Exxon Valdez spill.

Towards the end of his post he concludese, “I have seen many ugly situations during my life. Many of them, like the U.S. Government’s purposely experimenting on Marshall Islanders to study the effects of radiation, I have partly shrugged off because they happened so long ago (50 years in that case). But the BP spill and its effects on the people of the Gulf are happening now. Today. And tomorrow, and for the next 20 years. There are people there who need help right now.”

Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed today in the New York Times is spot on today.

The national campaign to get President Obama to emote, throw crockery at oil executives and jump up and down in fury has failed. But here’s a long-term solution: Let’s anoint a king and queen.

[....]

How should we choose a king and queen? Frankly, we already have royalty: Hollywood celebrities. And they are well trained to emote and explode on demand. Just imagine the Nielsen ratings for an Academy Awards-type evening in which Americans would choose a royal family for the first time—live!

[....]

What? You say that this would be un-American? It’s not who we are as a country?

Well, rage isn’t President Obama either. It’s not who he is any more than a monarchy is America.

So maybe we should just accept that we’re stuck with a presidential system—and with a ruminative and slightly boring president who tries to solve problems rather than fulminate about them.

Unbelievable. The Minerals Management Service (MMS) just issued a Gulf of Mexico shallow water drilling permits to Bandon Oil and Gas. Obama’s announcement that a hold would be put on any new drilling permits was just related to deepwater rigs, not those that operate in shallow water. This is just unbelievable.

Let’s set aside the junk shot and top hat distractions and look at the record of drilling in shallow waters. The two last big underwater oil spills, Ixtoc I and Montara, both in shallow waters, were eventually brought back under controlled by relief wells. Montara, the most recent, took ten weeks to control, and there were five misses before the final relief well hit.

There’s no reason to think that we’re going to have anything but a bunch of oily beaches, dead sea life, and fucked up attempts to stop the leak for the next few weeks. Recent revelations about BP’s hundreds of safety violations have completely undermined confidence in the MMS. I don’t know what the heck the Obama Administration is thinking here, but issuing more permits in this environment is political suicide.

Her op-ed today in the Washington Post nails it:

Jindal raised eyebrows by departing from the old Republican text in this way. But actually, what’s surprising is that after the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, the worst mining disaster in 30 years, and what is now the worst environmental disaster in the nation’s history, more conservatives aren’t revising the gospel about the blessings of deregulation and the horrors of government. Despite what should be obvious failings, deregulation, smaller government and privatization remain central to the dominant Republican message.

I mean at what point do the Republicans, or at least a vast, vast majority of the public get that sensible regulation makes sense.