It seems insensitive to talk about silver linings in the middle of the life-killing BP oil disaster in the Gulf. But in fact, there are a couple we should recognize and act upon now. Bill Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, makes the case.
There’s hope, for example, that the spill is proving the folly of trying to extract every last drop of a finite resource by invading ever more difficult and sensitive places. The past safety record of offshore drilling, cited by President Obama when he announced he was opening up more ocean to oil companies, means nothing when those companies are moving into uncharted waters, technically speaking.
As BP has tried each new trick to stop the hemorrhage on the ocean floor, it has made clear these techniques have never been attempted at that depth – a public admission that one of the world’s largest oil companies, using the industry’s most advanced extraction technologies, doesn’t have the experience or tools to drill safely in these new places.
As Bill McKibben points out, the oil spill is not so much President Obama’s Katrina as his 9-11, a tragedy with the potential to rally us around something we must do – in this case, the rapid transition to all those domestic energy resources that don’t have to be blasted, drilled, dug up and burned because they are there for the taking – sun, wind, tides, geothermal and biomass.
A second and less-obvious silver lining was mentioned briefly by Ken Salazar when he addressed students in Denver on May 29. As the Associated Press reported it:
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he is hopeful the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will be cleaned up and that the coast will be restored to a condition better than it was before the disaster.
The topic came up again on June 9 during one of Admiral Thad Allen’s press briefings on the Gulf disaster. A reporter asked Allen whether leaving the coast in better condition than before is “actually doable”. Allen replied:
I think anybody would say, when you have a big problem like this, and you’ve got to go in with a massive look at rehabilitation and mitigation following a significant event like this, that creates an opportunity to deal with systematic issues that may have been a problem before. This is certainly the case with some of the coastal erosion associated with Hurricane Katrina. So I think — I think — I think all the Cabinet secretaries feel this way. I know, because I’ve discussed it with them. If you’re going to go in and do a massive mitigation or restoration environmentally down there, it might be worthwhile to step back and say, “What would a newly restored Gulf look like in its most pristine form? And can we somehow add to that or start with maybe a higher purpose and see if we can’t add to this moving forward?” I think it’s a legitimate goal to establish.
Why is this silver lining so important? It introduces the “higher purpose” of moving beyond environmental protection to environmental restoration — the process of repairing the damage we have inflicted on critical ecosystems and recapturing the many important services they provide.
On Meet the Press recently, energy and climate czar Carol Browner said the Gulf spill is “probably the biggest environmental disaster the country has ever faced.” In a speech this week, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson called the spill “the largest environmental disaster in American history.”
Both were eager to show how seriously the Administration is taking this disaster – and both were wrong. America is in the middle of several environmental disasters whose impacts affect not only the Gulf Coast, but all our coasts and everything in between.
One of the crises, of course, is global climate change – the insidious self-afflicted tragedy whose adverse impacts already are underway, some to be felt for the next 1,000 years according to government researchers.
Another is freshwater supplies. After surveying water officials around the country in 2003, the General Accounting Office reported that 36 states were expecting shortages of fresh water by 2013, even without drought. Some experts say those shortages are already underway with adverse consequences for energy production, agriculture and peace between neighbors. As the Economist recently noted in a special section on water, we can find substitutes for oil but there is no substitute for water.
The casualty list goes on: ocean acidification, nitrogen loading, the destruction of wetlands, forests falling to fires and bugs, the decline in soil fertility due to mono-agriculture, the loss of biodiversity, all with very real consequences for our economy, safety and health.
Others in the world seem to get this. In March, for example, the environmental ministers of the European Union warned that we are “going beyond the limits of nature” and pledged to redouble efforts to halt biodiversity loss worldwide. The ministers’ pledge followed a study that concluded a failure to stop the extinction of plant and animal species would cost the global economy several trillion dollars each year by mid-century as society is forced to pay for services environmental systems used to provide for free, from water purification to pollination.
If Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf spill demonstrate we’re pretty poor at disaster response, then these other ongoing crises show we suck at disaster prevention. We not only fail to invest in the infrastructure, designs and practices that might save us from natural disasters; we also are destroying the natural systems that provide that protection for free.
President Obama’s goal for a “clean energy economy” should have more traction in the wake of the Gulf spill, but our mission needs to be broader. We need a resilient and restorative economy in which we recapture a broad array of priceless ecosystem services by repairing the damage we have done to our natural systems and resources.
The first priority in the Gulf is to stop the hemorrhage and clean up the mess. But the next priority should be to make the Gulf Coast a model of environmental restoration – part of an historic ongoing effort to restore the many natural systems being degraded in less telegenic ways, with much wider and longer-lasting consequences for us all.
President Obama has the opportunity – if not the obligation – to be our first environmental president of the 21st century.
Bill Becker is a regular CP contributor and Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP).
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President Obama has the opportunity – if not the obligation – to be our first environmental president of the 21st century.
Good luck with that. So far, Obama hasn’t done anything to indicate he cares one whit about the environment.
He’s still stuck on the “clean coal” train(wreck).
I’ve been doing some environmental restoration on the yard recently, and there’s still some bottle caps and glass shards to be found from the 50s-70s when they had a trash can beside the now long gone sauna. Anybody fancy a eau-de-cologne bottle shard on their foot/hand while gardening?
Open Your Eyes! It’s Not Just About How “WE” Seem To Prefer To Look At Things
(This comment is not about Bill’s great post, which I enjoyed. Instead, it’s about the Gulf problem and our “me” focus.)
Observation 1 — A growing number of Americans are heaping frustrated with BP. The media are “all over BP”. BP has made, and is making, a huge mess in our Gulf, along our shores, in our fishing and food-producing and vacationing-place Gulf. The gusher might be flowing as much as 20,000 to 40,000 bpd: who knows? It’s a gooey mess. At this point, many people would be happy to see BP go the way of the dinosaurs. We want our Gulf back, and we want the lives lost back. That huge British company sure made a mess of things, and their execs are stumbling over what to say, often showing us their real stripes, so to speak.
Observation 2 — Americans and America emit tremendous amounts of CO2 from our use of coal and oil every year. Historically, for many years, we have been the world’s largest emitter of GHGs. Now it’s China and the U.S. in the top two spots. Our per capita emissions are super high and (I think) much higher than those of other people around the world. Our emissions are no accident: We know we are emitting CO2 and other GHGs, and much more of them than all countries except China, who has only recently surpassed us, and much more than anyone on a per capita basis. Scientists inform us, resoundingly, that GHGs are causing climate change and that the results of climate change will be felt worldwide in profound ways. We are responsible for a growing mess, and we know it. Yet we continue. And, it’s a mess that will have repercussions around the world.
Now, do you see the problem here? Even though it’s warranted, and good, and healthy, to be angry about the mess BP has caused in “our” Gulf, our fishing place, our food-producing region, our vacation paradise, and so forth, we’re being quite hypocritical, in a very real way, if we aren’t also deeply upset with ourselves that we are emitting so many climate-altering GHGs. BP has altered our Gulf, while we are the major contributors to altering the Earth’s climate! There’s plenty of fault to go around, but what is the larger problem, by far?
And here is another point: A person might say, “well, it all depends on how you look at it”. “What BP did is much worse because of X reason and Y reason and Z reason and anyhow, they’re from overseas!”
Well, I have news for anyone who thinks that way. We are a small portion of the world’s population. It doesn’t just matter what, or how, we think. It also matters (a great deal!) how the other 95% of the world’s population thinks, about us and about related matters. Even if many Americans prefer to think that “BP is the main bad guy” and that our American use of coal and oil is fine and dandy, even as the scientists warn about climate change, there are many others around the world who do not, and will not, see things that way. And, they DO have a good and valid point about the problem of OUR continuing insistence on sticking to our immense use of coal and oil and etc., at a per capita level that is far above those of most other peoples.
We need to wake up. We are living in a time of Orwellian thinking and massive hypocrisy, and we’re going to bite ourselves in the behinds if we don’t begin to think more clearly.
ExxonMobil products alone generate well over a Trillion pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. Is it time, yet, to start insisting that ExxonMobil pay damages to all of the world’s peoples who will suffer from problems resulting from climate change? Or, does the fact that they are headquartered in Texas, and incorporated in New Jersey, somehow allow them to make messes wherever they like, in perpetuity? The American public should want to get off of the oil habit, and we should insist on policies and technologies and companies and (our own) behaviors that help us do so. Companies who block or delay that change should be required to start setting aside money — and lots of it — to pay for the damages they are causing.
Sigh,
Jeff
As you point out, the Gulf Gush is not the worst environmental disaster in history. The administration must get that in their head and hammer it home every chance they get. The daily human death total the world over from adverse environmental impacts most likely exceeds the total deaths from both the recent coal and this oil disaster. The same can be said for the wildlife.
I would of preferred other teachable moments but it would we must capitalize on the hand dealt.
Not to do so?
All that misery in vain….
Thank-you Bill and group,
very well said, enough said for the commoner and nobility
to understand that yes it is now that our lives must be lived.
Recognition of the past, our actions of the now, and our dreams
of the future do make a difference.
Now if I can just behave till my time is over.
I think if you want action on climate change you need to focus on climate change. That is going to be hard enough! I do not look forward to seeing the House and Senate debate domestic water use policy. What a nightmare that will be! The other mammoth environmental issues are seldom mentioned in the popular media and most folks will not know what you are talking about.
No mention of the real reason we are suffering a wide range of environmental disasters, the relentless and overwhelming population explosion. But no one really knows what to do. Most just hope it will somehow work itself out. Some people are now applauding the success China has had in addressing this issue; now that the horror stories have died down. But it was a success…a case of the ends justifying…? Anyway, no other country has yet attempted to duplicate that model.
When confronted with the fact that we will have about 9 billion people wanting food, water, and energy by 2050 many will comment: population has historically been self correcting. They of course mean plague or some other disease that will drop the total by 50%. A 50% reduction in world population would go a long way in easing all the other environmental issues.
Do we take action to reduce greenhouse gases and attempt to stabilize mean temperature at a livable level by 2050 or do we wait for the population to self correct?
Many have models to reduce greenhouse gases but no model to deal with population. I have seen many comments to the effect that population cannot be managed; there is no point in trying. That very same argument is made by the anti-science crowd with regard to climate change: Humans cannot possibly control the climate so there is no point in trying.
OK! Forget population. Nothing to see here.
If global warming could be seen as an immediate problem that needs to be addressed now to avoid much larger problems later, like the Gulf disaster, we would be mobilizing to combat it now! Like the Gulf disaster.
If global warming could take out the summer tourist season of two or three states – maybe.
If global warming could immediately destroy the local economy of two or three states – maybe.
If global warming could destroy the hometown of a prominent TV personality – maybe.
Sorry global warming, you are not really big enough yet.
The Real environmental disaster is the climate. The oil spill is minor in comparison. But the oil spill may help us get a climate bill passed.
PS: Don’t worry about too many people. Mother Nature knows how to cure that. They will die of starvation, disease, pestilence, war, climate disaster, meteor impact, and so on.
Edward, “The Real environmental disaster is the climate. The oil spill is minor in comparison. But the oil spill may help us get a climate bill passed.”
It’s not just oil what is gushing – there is also methane in the mix.
Edward, “Don’t worry about too many people. Mother Nature knows how to cure that. They will die of starvation, disease, pestilence, war, climate disaster, meteor impact, and so on.”
Because of inaction the world has a food crisis looming. But we need the world for large scale negative carbon affords.
Michael Tucker, “But no one really knows what to do. Most just hope it will somehow work itself out.”
So what is next? Assume we manage to return to below 350 ppm. What is next for humans? It is large scale space colonization.
“This is the argument that technological civilizations may usually or invariably destroy themselves before or shortly after developing radio or space flight technology. Possible means of annihilation include nuclear war, biological warfare or accidental contamination, nanotechnological catastrophe, ill-advised physics experiments, a badly programmed super-intelligence, or a Malthusian catastrophe after the deterioration of a planet’s ecosphere. This general theme is explored both in fiction and in mainstream scientific theorizing. Indeed, there are probabilistic arguments which suggest that human extinction may occur sooner rather than later. In 1966 Sagan and Shklovskii suggested that technological civilizations will either tend to destroy themselves within a century of developing interstellar communicative capability or master their self-destructive tendencies and survive for billion-year timescales.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox