Schwarzenegger: Oil be back
So, let's talk about Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Hey, did you hear that on Monday Schwarzenegger withdrew his support for the Tranquillon Ridge offshore drilling project? Well, he did! Apparently as recently as Friday he supported the previously mentioned T-Ridge project to drill for oil off California's coast. That is until Monday, when he saw the images from the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
All of you have seen, when you turn on the television, the devastation in the gulf, and I'm sure that they also were assured that it was safe to drill. I see on TV the birds drenched in oil, the fishermen out of work, the massive oil spill and oil slick destroying our precious ecosystem. That will not happen here in California, and this is why I am withdrawing my support for the T-Ridge project.
So, to summarize, Schwarzenegger was entirely keen on the idea of drilling off the coast of California...until Monday...when he saw the images from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Which is the point at which we have to ask what the fuck is wrong with this misanthropic Austrian shit.
I'll admit that it has been a while since Exxon Valdez and back in 1989 Schwarzenegger was probably very busy filming Total Recall and Kindergarten Cop. But you would think that he might have noticed that some results of Exxon Valdez were birds drenched in oil, fishermen losing jobs, and the environment being destroyed. Yet, apparently, between March 24, 1989 and April 2nd, 2010, he forgot about Exxon Valdez and thought oil drilling to be the most peachy keen environmental policy to maintain. Then on April 3rd he turns on the tv to declare, "Oh shit! Oil and birds don't mix!" So reversing his policy on the Tranquillon Ridge project.
That's what pisses me off about this story. Schwarzenegger is an idiot, but despite his participation in Jingle All the Way he had to fucking know that there were risks involved in drilling for oil; he was alive for Exxon Valdez and had to know of the impacts drilling has on the environment. But he was entirely comfortable ignoring that until the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last friday provided an immediate example of the problems involved in obtaining and transporting oil. Schwarzenegger did the wrong thing (supported the T-Ridge Project) until public opinion, influenced by this most recent spill, made his support politically detrimental. Schwarzenegger acted not as a human being but rather as a windsock, drifting in the breeze of the political winds.
Drilling for oil is always dangerous, always a negative impact on the environment. But so long as enough time has passed since the last oil spill we're all completely comfortable resting upon our laurels of ignorance until reality shoves oil-soaked sea fowl and petroleum-drenched fish into our immediate consciousness.
You'd think that we could, maybe, pay attention and try to learn something from history instead of having to fuck up another generation of marine life simply because we forgot that it's incredibly fucking stupid to transport crude oil in something that can sink, across something that is treacherous.
So, great, Schwarzenegger stops this one particular attempt to drill for oil of California's coast because, at the moment, it is politically problematic for him to do so. Great. But we know that BP won't be held responsible. No one will learn anything. And in a few years they'll be drilling off the coast of California for oil because, well, they just can't help themselves. We'll forget, another spill will happen, and this moronic cycle will continue until we finally make the planet entirely uninhabitable.
But at least we aren't hurting anyone in the meantime, right?
9 comments:
Jay, man.. while I agree with the sentiment, there's a relatively reasonable argument of distinction between Valdez and the Deep Oil fiasco.
Valdez was a shipping issue, not a drilling, and was caused by drunken negligence of the captain, not a structural failure of BP and/or Halliburton.
Dangers? Yeah, they're there. But equating Exxon Valdez to drilling itself, would be kinda like equating grocery shopping, or better, farming, to highway semi-accidents.
You're making an emotional response and eliding away any connotative distinction, oversimplifying the described scenes based on the outcome.
The spill is pretty clearly criminally egregious and lax, but it's not a failure of learning from precedent, any more than my avoiding driving until I was 21, just because Mom spun out chasing the band trip busses was.
Even Wile E Coyote would have succeeded if had been able to differentiate between plans that had increased or decreased likelihood of success via repeated attempts.
I think the point is more that he changed his mind after seeing the recent ecological devastation in the Gulf, but we've always known that this sort of ecological devastation was possible.
When I make an appeal to Valdez, it's an appeal to the oil spill itself rather than the manner in which the oil was spilt. We have seen all of these images before, so these most recent images and incidents are not indicative of new information; we've known of the possibility of oil spills all along.
Yeah, but we also know that someone can build a car bomb, yet we produce cars.
Being presented with a physical example of the worst happening is different from academically understanding it, and until it is presented, you're dealing with probablities of it happening.
The issue is the shoddy construction of the well, not the drilling itself, honestly. And I say that while absolutely HATING the idea of deep well drilling, when there downright SENSIBLE options with negligable drawbacks when they fuck up, like Wind Farms.
Being pissed.. or hell, even annoyed and clucking your tongue at King Conan for changing his mind when presented w/ first hand experience of the outlier consequences? Seems a tad overblown.
"Being pissed.. or hell, even annoyed and clucking your tongue at King Conan for changing his mind when presented w/ first hand experience of the outlier consequences? Seems a tad overblown."
But why is it sensible for the first hand experience of the most recent oil spill somehow provide information not available in historical examples of similar oil spills?
This is not the first oil spill ever. So, why does this oil spill somehow provide information others did not?
Why should I use the wreckage of a car plowing through an office to consider how a house or building withstands an earthquake?
The problem is you're looking at the absolute aftermath, but not the likelyhood OF that aftermath happening, and you're using an example that has a very different root cause.
Put another way? Vomiting sucks, and gets cleaned up the same way. But you don't consider that time you were bedridden w/ a death flu when you decide if you've had enough to drink that night. The data isn't quite relevant, despite the same worst-case scenario outcome.
Did you hear about BP's plan to fix the leak? They're going to put a fuck-off, big soup bowl upside down over it.
Is that the syphon plan? or the drill, stent, fill w/ robosub plan?
Again,
"I see on TV the birds drenched in oil, the fishermen out of work, the massive oil spill and oil slick destroying our precious ecosystem. That will not happen here in California, and this is why I am withdrawing my support for the T-Ridge project."
The events cited were all events which had previously occurred in other oil spills.
So, there is nothing unique to this oil spill which makes it somehow significantly applicable to the T-Ridge Project.
The only difference is temporal.
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