Deepwater Horizon and conservative values: polluters pay ... by gimleteye

The proof that politicians who claim to be conservatives -- mostly Republican-- aren't really who they say they are is that they support laws and policies that don't require full cost accounting for pollution. This is true of Big Sugar's pollution of the Everglades as it is of Big Oil's destruction in the Gulf of Mexico or Big Chem's pollution of the Mississippi River basin. When it comes to pollution, ours is a nation of avoidance.

The reason so many environmentalists "just say no" to offshore oil drilling is because there is no cost accounting that incorporates what happens when catastrophe hits. See, what we mean? But it is not just oil production where the evasion of cost accounting is standard procedure: the same is true of coal generating power facilities that pour carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or nuclear power facilities, like Turkey Point, that fail to protect groundwater despite legal agreements or safe storage of spent fuel rods. When disaster strikes, the true costs of these "takings" are never fully paid by the polluter. Instead they are judged to be acceptable costs and pushed onto consumers in our modern, industrialized society.

These costs are weighed according to rotten assessments of risk that permit them. What have we learned from these "conservatives" -- like Wall Street for example-- in recent years? The wealth of the nation has been stripped as cleanly as a car in a chop shop. While Democrats bear their share of blame, the biggest portion goes to conservatives who ran the economy into the ground. Take the SEC under former Congressman Chris Cox, or the USFWS, or the EPA. Whether synthetic derivatives or wetlands in Florida, these federal agencies weren't in business to enforce "polluter pays": they were meant to keep their mitts off regulation and enforcement. They sat surfing porn on the internet while the real pornography was layed out across the American landscape watching risk analyses of CDO's and biological opinions dressed up like painted whores. (I'm not making this stuff up!)

There was a good reason Floridians opposed offshore oil for decades. It is not just the cormorants and herons and other birds that need to be cleansed, we need to be bathed to wash off the ridiculous logic, the bloviators and the media circus tag teams and think tanks funded by so-called conservatives. No more "drill, baby, drill". Insist on energy reform that brings the big electric utilities into line. Remember, when it is time to vote next November, how during this legislative session Florida Republicans failed to approve qualified appointees to the Public Service Commission. It was pay back against Charlie Crist who led the way, rejecting the FPL base rate increase in January that would have paid for twenty billion in new nuclear reactors without adequate safeguards to the public interest in South Dade.

These "conservatives" are not conservative at all. And don't let President Obama off the hook, either, on his continued support for unacceptably dangerous offshore oil exploration. Of all people, he should know better.