Rambling Oil Leak Post

Several hundred miles west of ANWR, these caribou seem pretty at peace with the oil rig in the distance.

Hey, has anyone heard about this big oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico? It's apparently pretty bad. And according to Matt Lauer, we're watching our appetite for oil spew out of that well. Boy, do I feel bad about driving my 13-year-old, 35 mile-per-gallon Honda Civic everywhere I go. I guess we should all get up several hours early to ride our bicycles to work. With four to six less hours a day to spend time with our families, shop, or come up with new business ideas, that's sure to increase productivity and stimulate the economy. Maybe we should shut down all power plants that aren't run on windmills and set ourselves back 150 years.

At the end of the day, whether you live in fear of global warming and hate corporations or drive SUVs and relish the 2nd Amendment, fossil fuels are a necessary part of our economy and livelihood for the foreseeable future. Even if you are okay camping out in your yard and not bathing for the next 10 or 20 years, most of the rest of us are not. Deal with it. When alternative energy sources become economically viable, the rest of us will gladly make use of them. Until then, I promise (you have my word on this), the Earth will not melt and no species that anyone will miss will die off.

Don't get me wrong. I feel bad for the pelicans and the fish and the dolphins and the shrimp (not the sharks because they look mean and I saw a movie once where they ate a lot of perfectly nice people to a haunting John Williams soundtrack). All joking aside, even this unapologetic conservative hates to see animals suffer. Just ask my half-blind cat.

That said, there are plenty of fish (and shrimp and dolphins and pelicans and even sharks) in the sea. What concerns me more are the human impacts. Surely all the environmentalists remember the species to which they belong. We're the ones with the thumbs.

How many shrimp boat captains (and other seafood-related industries) are out of work for the next decade or two? Obviously, this angle is nothing new, but in a time in which our struggling economy is at the forefront of all our minds, this angle cannot be understated. This is an entire region of our country left without one of its primary economic engines. Imagine the northeast without steel. Imagine Michigan without cars (oops). Imagine the Midwest without corn. Imagine L.A. without crappy movies.

As I understand it, many of the restaurants on the Atlantic coast get their shrimp from the Gulf (and their crabs and lobster from the northeast). I can't confirm this, but however much truth there is to that notion, we will all certainly feel it as we go out to eat on the coasts of Georgia, South Carolina, etc. For that matter, it makes me wonder why I expect (and often believe) the seafood is any better at the beach if most of it is being shipped in from other regions. Theoretically, if restaurants in Charleston, Hilton Head, and Savannah are all getting their shrimp from the Gulf and their crab and lobster from the northeast, I should be able to get equally as impressive seafood at comparable prices in Atlanta, if not Athens. But I digress...

To tell you the truth, I'm not really sure what the ultimate point of this post is. I just felt like I should post something on the biggest story of the last two or three months. I will say that I am not an ardent BP apologist. They clearly messed up. Even so, any efforts to blame this on George W. Bush or Republicans is absurd. Following are the three primary reasons I find such a case to be stupid, ignorant, and juvenile:

1. Environmentalists have prevented drilling for oil in safer, more manageable environments (such as shallower water and the most remote reaches of the Alaskan wilderness). Contrary to what Our Fearless Leader would have us believe, we are not running out of oil. We have more oil in our grasp than OPEC. Over-regulation and fear-mongering have prevented us from exploring our vast resources. A leak in shallower water would be far easier to control.

2. Obama's response has been painfully slow. Never mind that he waited almost three weeks to begin to address the issue (compared to the three days it took Bush to respond to Katrina...a situation that required local and state requests for federal assistance...as opposed to an incident in waters controlled only by our federal government and therefore a situation to which the President was solely responsible for responding). Even if you blame BP for misinformation, how is that any worse than the faulty intelligence Bush relied on to invade Iraq? And even if you are misled by BP, why would you turn down international help (particularly from the Dutch and all their skimmers) only three days in? Without getting into too much detail, the answer is that he refused to suspend the Jones Act (a law protecting American unionized maritime labor) to allow foreign ships and workers from helping with the cleanup (something Bush did immediately in his Katrina efforts). Only now, 70-something days in (weeks after oil has reached our shores and marshes and destroyed industry on the Gulf Coast for years to come), is he accepting foreign assistance. Atta boy.

3. And finally, if any "deregulation" of the oil industry during Bush's two terms could be REMOTELY credited with this incident, the Obama administration has had a year and a half to re-regulate the industry. Instead, they have been more interested in stimulus bill after stimulus bill and health care legislation that the American people have roundly rejected. If anything done in the Bush years could be assigned blame for this incident, the failure to act in the year and a half since on the part of the Obama administration is at least equally to blame. Period.

On a related note, I would argue that an oil leak, while ugly and sad in the short term, is not entirely evil just because humans were involved in its creation. Oil and fossil fuels are as natural as water, dirt, grass, and air. If an earthquake had caused this leak, would we still blame a corporation or George W. Bush? Probably, but only because we have become so susceptible to the idea that anything that isn't picturesque on this planet is our fault and we aren't as worthy as the plants and animals around us to be here.

Why do we treat ourselves as aliens on our own planet? If you follow the secular humanist line of thinking (which I don't) that we are just another animal, we have as much right to survive and thrive as anything else around us. That's not to say that we should intentionally abuse and torture animals (I believe God loves them too), but if we can better ourselves and our posterity through the use of NATURAL resources (and arguably resources that our superior intellect uncovers and creates), why not? Why aren't environmentalists crusading against the fire ants that keep displacing the dirt in my beautiful lawn, probably increasing the likelihood of erosion? That anthill was no more natural than my lawn, house, or driveway. I have as much right to build a house or an office complex as those little pains in my butt do of building an anthill in my yard. They are no more special than me...or you.

To take it a step further, why shouldn't I disturb ANWR (Alaskan wilderness with untold oil reserves) to reach a NATURAL resource? Do the doors and windows on my house prevent the ants and spiders and roaches from making use of my air conditioning or unprotected food? Do they stop for a second and think "You know, this isn't really NATURAL for us to be in here. Maybe we should go find food and shelter the old-fashioned way"? Yes, we're smarter than them and shouldn't burn all our trees to the ground just because we can, BUT because we're smarter than them, we should be able to reason that our actions will impact them just as their actions impact us. It's not the end of the world if we impact our environment. We're a part of it too.

We'll survive this oil spill. It will hurt our economy, some animals, and most importantly, a lot of people. But at the end of the day, we're the craftiest of God's creatures. We'll survive and we'll find a way to make sure our planet does too. I only hope our liberty survives as well.