49. On the British Petroleum's Ecological Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico

We just learned that the British Petroleum’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that began on April 20 may continue “through August.” Simultaneously, Carol Browner, President Obama’s climate change and energy policy advisor, claimed without any sense of irony that: “We re prepared for the worse.  We have been prepared from the beginning.” 

Nothing is further from the truth.  Mr. Obama addressed the BP disaster 38 days after it began. And only in calculated public relations response to give the appearance that the government cares and acts to protect public interest in the face of the worse oil spill in the U.S. history.

Facts of the case known so far reveal the following truth: the U.S. government serves corporate interests, in this case the interests of BP (the second largest European oil and gas company). 

For decades, the U.S. government has granted the oil and natural gas industry’s every wish. In particular, it has allowed it “to police itself” (a very curious concept).  For years, the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the arm of the Interior Department that oversees drilling in the gulf, has minimized the environmental risks of drilling. In the BP case, it failed to require a backup shutdown system that is standard in much of the rest of the world, even though its own staff declared such a system necessary. It exempted many offshore drillers from the requirement that they file plans to deal with major oil spills. And it specifically allowed BP to drill Deepwater Horizon without a detailed environmental analysis.

Given this cozy relationship, rampant corruption in the MMS should not come as a surprise. According to reports by Department of Interior’s inspector general, abuses at the agency went beyond undue influence: there was “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” — cocaine, sexual relationships with industry representatives, and more. Protecting the environment was presumably the last thing on these government employees’ minds. During the month following the April 20 rig blow up, MMS gave 23 new permits for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.  This proved to be too much.  MMS Director Elizabeth Birnbaum and several key employees of the MMS resigned or were fired (without a public explanation).

It is estimated that 12,000 to 25,000 barrels of oil spills into the Gulf each day.  At this rate, total spill has already surpassed what was spilled into the ocean by Exxon Valdez tanker in 1989.  Yet, so far the government has stood aside leaving to BP the task of stopping the leakage and clean up.  For its part, BP has kept the public and even the government in the dark about the critical decisions and actions it has taken both before and after the spill.  The public does not know exactly how and why the rig exploded and what role BP management decisions played in the series of events leading to it.  In its efforts to stop the leakage, BP has been less than forthcoming with the public and the government. For example, many scientists and environmentalists, and the government asked BP not to use chemical dispersants Corexit EC9500A and Corexit EC9527A as they are deemed highly toxic to marine life. Yet BP claimed these chemicals to be safe and continued to use them. So, it is entirely disingenuous of the President or his advisor Ms. Browner to claim that the government is and has been prepared to deal with this disaster in the interest of protecting public interest and nature's ecological balance.  In the final analysis,  it is the oil and natural gas industry that derives the U.S. government policies and not the other way around.  


And the industry knows this well.  In a letter published in the New York Times on May 29, Erik Milito of American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas industry organization, reminds the readers that

“Access to affordable energy affects every sector of our economy, every state and every American family.  Furthermore, oil and natural gas are key ingredients in manufacturing of thousands of products…that Americans use daily. 

“Halting domestic development won’t reduce our need for oil and natural gas; it will only outsource it. And it will place thousands of jobs, both offshore and on-shore, at risk…

“Our industry is not waiting for any commission to initiate improvements in safety and environmental performance. We’ve already brought together the sharpest minds in the business to advise the Interior Department on how drilling can be made safer and more effective…” 

The industry knows from historical experience that after the dust is cleared everything goes back to business as usual as it did in the case of Exxon Valdes.  It is instructive to recall that Exxon, despite of spending two billion dollars did not retrieve more than 14% of the oil spilled in the 1989 leakage.  There is no reason to hope that BP will do any better (don't be fooled by promises of "new technology." Was it not such promises are used to drill in ever more dangerous places?).

Of course, the dominance of the oil and natural gas industry in public policy is not limited to this industry. In the past two years, we have witnessed the use of taxpayers money for the multi-trillion dollar bailout of the financial industry and the bailout of GM and Chrysler.  In each case, we have been told that the American pubic cannot afford letting these corporations fail!  In the health care reform debate, we witnessed how the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries and other corporate and financial interets were able to block any reform that would consider health care as human rights, not a arena to make a profit. Just before the BP rig blow out, Obama administration broke a 30 year policy of not opening up new off-shore sites for drilling and budgeted billions for financing for new nuclear power plants.

It is a simple fact that capitalism is the rule of capital and a socioeconomic system in which making profits comes before human's or nature's needs.  It is also a simple fact that, in the final analysis, in any capitalist system the government is nothing more than the executive committee of capitalist ruling class.  These are essential truths that should frame crafting policies to protect the public and the ecological and environmental systems we depend on for our lives.  However, this very basic fact is totally lost to the U.S. environmental establishment that has a cozy relationship with "its" corporate and government “partners.”  


So far,  U.S. and international socialist movements have also defaulted in their responsibility to provide broad response to defend nature and society against their capitalist enemies (Make no mistake, this not an "American" disaster but an ecological disaster of vast proportions. Already eastern U.S. seaboard and Caribbean nations such as Cuba and Bahamas are threatened).  This is because environmental concerns are not seen as part of “working class interests,” or if they are, they are seen as such because they threaten the livelihood of working people.  Nature and other species are treated as if they are "resources" without any rights of their own.  But we humans are merely a small part of the magnificent web of life on Earth. Without a living planet there can be no human society.  And a living planet can only be defended against capitalist and industrial society if we can envision an ecosocailist future in which we live not in constant struggle to dominate nature but to learn to live in harmony with it.