On the heels of Rush Limbaugh suggesting actual sabotage by environmentalists, Sarah Palin is joining the cause in blaming environmentalists for the oil spill by British Petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico.
Palin blamed “misguided radicalism” of environmentalists (as opposed presumably to “guided radicalism” of conservatives) for the disaster. She suggested that, if only these poor struggling oil companies were allowed to drill in wildlife reserves and close to our shores, they would not have to seek oil in the deep ocean.
She added “[t]his is a message to extreme ‘environmentalists’ who hypocritically protest domestic energy production offshore and onshore. There is nothing ‘clean and green’ about your efforts. With your non-sensical efforts to lock up safer drilling areas, all you’re doing is outsourcing energy development, which makes us more controlled by foreign countries, less safe, and less prosperous on a dirtier planet . . . Your hypocrisy is showing. You’re not preventing environmental hazards; you’re outsourcing them and making drilling more dangerous.”
In the meantime, members of Congress and oil lobbyists are demanding that the moratorium on drilling be lifted immediately.
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Slart and Buddha,
I consider a piece of fiction and the movies based off of it as different creatures. Just like I didn’t expect “Clue” to be anything like the board game.
Buddha,
If Costner’s company is able to substantially help the situation here, I think that even you will have to forgive him for Waterworld (although I would agree there’s no excuse, this has the potential to be orders of magnitude more penance than necessary…).
I will stipulate there is no excuse for “Waterworld”.
I do have limits.
Byron,
One additional note about the self-regulation of the free market. It can only work if you assume that the consumer has perfect knowledge – otherwise it is essentially a regulatory arbitrage opportunity at the expense of the consumer. When you take multiple levels of worldwide sourcing and intermediaries buying and selling products, the consumer can never be expected to have perfect knowledge (and in many cases have no choice even if they did have perfect knowledge). While your ideas make sense in the abstract, I don’t feel that they are workable in practice (just about any form of government is great in a utopia…).
In defense of “The Postman”, it was not written as a cogent single piece novel by author David Brin (whose Uplift War saga is one of the finest bit of SF out there) but rather it was four short stories he stitched together. Of all of Brin’s work, it is the one I’d have chosen last to make into a film. And as much as I love Danny Boyle’s excellent film “Sunshine”, I think it ruined the chances for Brin’s equally excellent “Sundiver” for being made into a film.
I now return you to the regularly schedule mayhem.
BTW Byron, you still haven’t addressed the asskicking Tony C. is giving you on the Economic Meltdown thread vis a vis where your individual rights to profit end.
Not to be a provocateur.
I’d never do anything like that, now would I? 😉
What happen to workers of the world unite?
Within days of the oil spill, several European nations and thirteen countries in total apparently offered the Obama administration ships to assist in the clean-up of the Gulf. When asked about this, a State Department press spokesman refused to identify any offers of assistance.
According to one newspaper, European firms could complete the task in four months, rather than an estimated nine months if done only by the U.S. Working with the U.S., the cleanup could be accomplished in three months. The Belgian firm DEME contends it can clean up the oil with accuracy at a depth of 2,000 meters. Another European firm with capabilities is the Belgian firm Jan De Nul Group. There are also Dutch companies with similar special equipment capable of accelerating cleaning-up the Gulf. The Belgians and the Dutch are also long time NATO allies and as such partners in international security cooperation.
According to the article, no U.S. companies have the ships which can accomplish this task is because those ships would cost twice as much to build in the U.S. as they do outside the country. This is one adverse impact of the Jones Act, which Congress passed in 1920s. This piece of protectionism has only hampered an anemic American maritime industry. It also has prevented a quicker response to the oil spill. European firms do have the expertise to clean up the spill.
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/08/to-save-the-gulf-send-the-jones-act-to-davy-jones%E2%80%99-locker/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
More Tapper, 17 countries are willing to help.
TAPPER: You say that everything that could be done is being done, but there are those in the region and those industry experts who say that’s not true. Governor Jindal obviously had this proposal for a barrier. They say that if that had been approved when they first asked for it, they would have 10 miles up already. There are fishermen down there who want to work, who want to help, haven’t been trained, haven’t been told to go do so. There are industry experts who say that they’re surprised that tankers haven’t been sent out there to vacuum, as was done in ’93 outside Saudi Arabia. And then, of course, there’s the fact that there are 17 countries that have offered to help and it’s only been accepted from two countries, Norway and Mexico. How can you say that everything that can be done is being done with all these experts and all these officials saying that’s not true?
Byron,
What’s this my side of the isle line? I vote individuals not parties.
Not all governments work well all the time, but that doesn’t mean no governments ever work well. A government is the only thing out there that can intelligently regulate anything. Regulating is the defining characteristic of governing. The intelligence of the regulation is where the problems lie.
The free market’s all well and good, but it’s a blind process with no goals or priorities. Sometimes it shuts down bad restaurants, sometimes the restaurant makes most of it’s money from tourists who don’t know better. Relying on the free market to regulate for anything is like saying “I’m counting on evolution to regulate things so that human males stay larger than the females.” Sure there are good reasons that survival and other mechanisms should select for that to happen, but that doesn’t meant it will.
On the other hand Governments DO have goals, and depending on whose in charge can implement policies to achieve those goals.
I happen to think that keeping people from dying from eating contaminated food is a very important goal, and that regulating aspects of food preparation is a much more efficient and reliable method of reaching that goal than trusting a blind and motiveless process.
Byron,
I accept in principle – let’s work out the details in private (and in a week or so when I have finished my move from NC to MI).
Slarti:
If the Ixtoc 1 spill is any guide it wont be.
How about a wager of $1,000 bucks? If in 2 years it isn’t well on it’s way to being a memory I will be happy to write you a check or to your favorite charity.
Deal?
How do we determine the criteria? How about sand critter density? Sand critter colonies have to be equal to or greater than 80% of pre-spill levels.
Byron said:
Byron,
I would be willing to bet any amount that you would care to name on the ‘over’ for the statement “basically no effects after 6 years”. I believe that in the coming years we will come to understand that this is an ecological disaster of unprecedented proportions and that the effects will be with us for decades.
Slarti:
I sure would be willing to give it a try and see what happens, and I also think that if BP had to take the risk of drilling in 5,000′ of water when they could have done it in 400′ of water they would have chosen 400′.
Government was willing to accept BP’s risk, if I could gamble and have my losses covered I would bet like there was no tomorrow.
Byron,
Regulation could certainly be better, but business is completely unable to regulate itself (if nothing else, BP has proven that…). Do you think that our environment and food supply would be cleaner and safer if the EPA and FDA went away?
Gyges:
The Mexican oil spill of 1979 was pretty much gone after 2 years and there were basically no effects after 6 years.
So there are probably going to be minimal long term effects if the Mexican spill is an indicator/model. But certainly the type of oil, currents, organisms will play a role and not everything is equal. One can hope it follows the same path.
This is bad business all around, from the 11 dead individuals to the people who will lose a few years of revenue. A human tragedy in any one’s book.
Gyges,
Especially if they had read the book first…
Byron,
It seems at the very least that BP has acted in bad faith both before the spill (saying there was no possibility of a spill, their plan to protect walruses in the gulf (very successful, I guess – no walruses have died as a result of this spill…), no investment in technology for dealing with spills, etc) and after the spill (lowball estimates, trying to buy off fishermen for $5,000, doing everything possible to hide the extent, inexcusably slow and weak action on cleaning up/protecting the coasts and the gulf, etc.). I don’t know what their legal liability here is, but their moral liability could not be more clear.
Buddha,
As Rachel pointed out on her show last night, Costner’s machines were clearly powerful as they had managed to quell her natural impulse to snark at celebrities…
Gyges:
Why does everyone on your side of the aisle think government can properly regulate? There are so many instances where they have failed miserably. Do you really believe your local restaurant is kept problem free by the health department?
The real reason more people don’t get sick from restaurants is that the market shuts down the bad ones. The health department takes bribes to look the other way. Do you think it isn’t that way at most levels of government regulation?
Do you choose a restaurant because the health inspector gives it the OK or do you trust your eyes and your taste buds?
You [pl] think business people are corrupt and out to make big profits. How do you think they make big profits? They do it by serving their customers/clients to the best of their ability. The ones that don’t are not in business very long.
Some big corporations have an unnatural symbiotic/parasitic relationship with government. I agree they are corrupt but most do not.
Byron,
Because your second posting hadn’t been made when I was typing up my response:
How do you make someone who saw “The Postman” ever whole?
Byron,
Post-apocalyptic Kevin Costner movies are the perfect example of why the corporations can’t be allowed to fail in certain areas. Do you really want the food contamination equivalent to “The Postman” in the meat in every grocery store in a city?