Gulf Oil Spill: live web feed belongs on your computer desk tops ... by gimleteye

On NBC Nightly News, the mayor of Venice, Louisiana was practically in tears. In the camera he was framed by the marsh that sustained his community; a community that cannot survive the BP Gulf Oil spill. The mayor said he loved the marsh; he loved the fish and the creatures and the birds. He might have been a member of Sierra Club. He should be, if he isn't.

I don't mean to single out Sierra Club. There are other groups like Clean Water Action and Environment Florida that have taken a position opposed to offshore oil drilling for a long, long time. Membership in these groups might not have stopped the gulf oil catastrophe, but if enough people had understood that their trust is better put in membership of an environmental organization than in their gas tank or home fuel bill, we might not have the politics we have today or the media, necessarily, that reacts to each new environmental outrage as though it was a first and had never either happened or been anticipated.

I've put up on my screen, a few windows containing the live web feed of the Gulf Oil Spill. I left it on over night, so in the morning the first thing I would see on my screen is the spill. I hope that elected officials will also put it on their computer desk tops. Click on the link now, so that it pops up on your screen as you read the rest of this post. (Also, click 'read more')
What does the live feed express?

24 hours a day, without stop, oil and methane gas are pouring from a hole 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Even if the next BP operation halts the oil spill early next week, what has spilled is already the biggest environmental catastrophe in US history. If "top kill" doesn't work, we will be looking at this web feed for months to come.

There is no mystery why BP withheld broadcasting the live feed. It is very hard to watch. But thanks to Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) BP was compelled to publish the video it has set up, inviting reflection that does not serve its corporate interests. For example, that this massive leak is a political event underlying, for nearly the first time in modern history, the power of corporations over people. One would think that the recent economic crisis-- the worst since the Great Depression-- would have energized attention along this line. In fact, serial bail outs of financial institutions and insurance giants guaranteed that there would be no "marking to market" the real destruction to the national economy. Life goes on. The same is not true of the Gulf Oil spill, now entering its second month. Life will not go on where the clouds of oil come to shore. Life cannot go on, coated in oil or, even, in waters contaminated by small parts of the spill. So the politics of corporate power are illuminated by the Gulf Oil spill in ways that BP would rather have shielded behind a screen, five thousand feet down in the Gulf of Mexico.

At the very exterior edge of public opinion, there are commentators who believe that the BP gulf oil disaster was deliberately and willfully triggered, the same way they believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been conceived by powerful interests who are determined to impose on American taxpayers and citizens a new form of democracy defined by "have's" and the "have-nots".

The main point is that the net result is the same whether or not the conspiracy theories are true. I don't believe in conspiracy theories however engaging they may be. A government by and for the people would not misjudge risk so badly that freedom would also include technologies that had not been appropriately weighed and costed for long-term effects instead of just short-term benefits. A government by and for the people would not concentrate power in the hands of industrial, financial, and energy giants-- too big to fail-- and would instead insure that people and the common good comes first. A government by and for the people would not abdicate regulatory authority to insiders and lobbyists, the way it happens routinely in Congress and our legislatures.

I don't know that membership in Sierra Club would fix things. Most environmental groups couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag, so fearful of losing what limited financial support they have-- in some cases corporations that ally themselves for one reason or another with their causes and missions; sometimes, to create a sense of "balance" whose disturbance would be more damaging than the loss of natural resources themselves. In this viewfinder, the live video feed represents a vast imbalance. Yes I've heard the sideline chorus that it is far worse in Russia where tons of nuclear material freely circulate in the oceans where they were dumped by officials entirely unaccountable to any law or supervision. It is worse in China, the fastest growing economy in the world, where instant mega cities are filled with unregulated pollution.

But this is the United States of America. Why can't we do better? Why have we sacrificed the Gulf of Mexico? And why does it take a catastrophe and a live web feed to redirect our attention as though the pollution in only there when we look at it, or when a loved one gets Parkinsons or cancer, and that we are not affected until the toxic tide washes to our shores? A commentator on NPR yesterday said that 40 percent of the US economy relies on oil and will continue to do so for generations to come. Why haven't we raced to limit our exposure by distributing power production to consumers and imposing conservation measures on utility production to reduce these dependencies? Because changing direction doesn't serve corporate interests, ROI, or concentrated shareholders. "It would harm the economy." Look at the live video feed and try to estimate the harm it represents.