What Do You Think The Government Should Be Doing About The BP Oil Disaster?
It is ironic, isn’t it? Many of the same people who decry governmental interference in the affairs of businesses are complaining that President Obama is not doing enough to fix the BP oil spill. Among them are some of the most activist voices against environmental legislation which would seek to prevent such disasters from happening. The political reasoning behind their complaint should be simple enough; once this crisis is over, they will return to their non-interventionist, non-environmentalist ways. Nonetheless, I agree with them — to a point. At this stage, the federal government should be more pro-active, sending in their experts and doing whatever they can to deal with the situation — on land and at sea. I am sure there is more they can do than they are doing, and the situation as it stands makes it necessary.
Some people are trying to compare Obama’s response to President G.W. Bush’s response to Katrina. I don’t think such comparison works. Bush had the opportunity to prepare for Katrina and that makes a world of difference. Plus, since the beginning of the crisis, Obama’s administration has been trying to help BP fix the problem, while it took several days before Bush’s administration did anything about Katrina. This does not mean Obama has done enough, nor that he is free from criticism — it only shows that we must make sure the criticism is of a valid kind.
What kind of blame do you think President Obama should have on the ongoing crisis? What do you think his administration could be doing but isn’t? What exactly should the role of government be in the clean up?
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Some of us conservatives aren’t libertarians. Some of us are third way Catholics who believe government SHOULD create a just world.
I’m one of those. I’d take a just theocracy over the libertarian dream in a heartbeat. So there are my credentials right out on the table for you.
So when I heard Paul McCartney is being invited to the next White House party (oh yes, the parties keep right on coming!) I am filled with disgust.
The man who occupies the White House is a disgrace. He is NOT a man of justice. He is a man seeking self aggrandizement.
Jeff
Fine, so what exactly do you think should be done about the BP oil crisis?
I was under the impression commenters have some latitude to explore the concept space. Sorry.
Well, having identified myself as a social justice Catholic, I would say government has a strong role, and that corporate interests should be reigned tightly in.
My point is that not all conservatives are anti-government nuts.
Jeff
I am again raising questions as to what should be done, etc. No one said “all conservatives” are “anti-government.” Indeed, true, classical conservatives are very pro-government, it is classical liberalism which is anti-government. There is a “latitude” to explore concepts, but usually there is also an expectation, especially initially, people will at least try to engage the post itself and not just divert it to their own interests. The question is — what exactly should the government be doing that it isn’t. I think it is a legitimate criticism to say Obama is not doing enough, especially now. But what exactly should he be doing, what role should he and his administration have now? Should he send in the navy to take care of it? I wouldn’t be against that myself.
I realize even that wasn’t specific.
How about this, I think government’s proper role would be to expedite the cleanup. I don’t know who to believe in the message war, but Gov. Jindal is saying government agencies are holding up his state’s clean up efforts. I would suggest government’s role is to protect the citizens of Louisiana before protecting an endangered species. I’m pretty sure that’s good Catholic Social thought.
Again, I don’t know if Jindal is being truthful, I don’t know frankly whom to believe in all this.
I hereby abandon this thread to make room for PhD’s in engineering and oil industry. They can tell you the most efficient way to stop an oil rig from leaking.
I swore I saw a suggestion in your topic that this was partly about libertarian versus social justice. Those lying eyes of mine.
Comparisons to the aftermath of Katrina are not valid. What needed to be done in the aftermath of Katrina was patent: 1) people needed to be rescued; 2) people needed to be fed and housed; 3) law and order needed to be restored and maintained. All of these problems were merely logisitical problems. That they were not addressed swiftly and effectively by government–at all levels–was a national disgrace.
By contrast, nobody KNOWS how to fix this oil leak. The government can mobilize teams to help clean up those parts of the environment which can be cleaned up. I don’t think that there is any effective method of cleaning up an oil-saturated wetlands. A beach can be cleaned. Some loose oil can be skimmed from the surface of the Gulf. But so long as there are tens of thousands of barrels per day continuing to be spewed forth, clean-up efforts will necessarily have minimal effect. If Obama were to “fire” BP, what more effective unit would he replace BP with? This is a no-win situation and an unmitigated disaster.
Jeff,
Welcome to this discussion! Like you, I am no expert in engineering. But I am hopeful you will be an on-going voice here. There has been a notable absence of your perspective in Catholic discussion here and elsewhere in recent years. We’ve seen Republican talking points dunked in Holy Water and a grossly intellectually shallow misunderstanding of the Catholic principle of subsidiarity as meaning states rights and libertarianism. We have also seen a more intellectually rigorous but rather hawkish TheoCon philosophy.
Michael Gerson, a Protestant, has been a stimulating writer along the lines of where I think you are coming from and there recently was a very good essay in the Times of London matching Catholic Social Thinking with a reform element of the British Conservative party (building maybe on the Radical Tory tradition). But we could use an American Catholic presenting these views.
My physics prof last semester had formerly worked for a driller and an oil company. His work was on land, but he explained how you regularly drill and how something like this could happen, and it has pretty much matched media reports. As he said, if he had answers, he wouldn’t be in the classroom at that moment. This isn’t a case where the solution is obvious and someone just has to get out of the way so we can implement it.
The President ought to …
1. Declare a national environmental emergency …
2. Temporarily nationalize the American assets, operations, and personnel of British Petroleum and Transocean…
3. Immediately appoint a widely respected national figure to lead the effort to stop the leak and remediate the slick. Colin Powell’s name has been floated. David Petraeus might be another. Fred Smith, chair of Fedex, might be another. This person should be invested with plenary power over BP and Transocean Assets. He/she should have military command authority in the Gulf of Mexico, and he/she should be answerable directly to the President.
Just my $.02.
I don’t think such comparison works. Bush had the opportunity to prepare for Katrina and that makes a world of difference. Plus, since the beginning of the crisis, Obama’s administration has been trying to help BP fix the problem, while it took several days before Bush’s administration did anything about Katrina.
I disagree with both distinctions. A massive oil spill like this was just as foreseeable as the Katrina disaster, and the federal government ought to have been more prepared. I also think Obama delayed a bit in getting involved (it took a while before Obama bothered to come visit the scene and relied a lot on BP’s assessment of the situation before it became obvious that BP was underestimating the size). Also worth noting is that Bush during Katrina had to face some local hurdles, namely Gov. Blanco who refused to allow a lot of federal intervention. Not excusing Bush, but he’s had an obstacle that Obama (who has clear federal jurisdiction with this) does not.
As far as what Obama can do, most of his (and the entire federal government’s) errors I think are in the past: a lax administration when it came to checking the rigs, a bad federal rule limiting liability, a failure to enact stronger safety regulations, not being prepared, etc. However what he could do is start outlining proposals to make sure the shrimping and other affected industries are not wiped out and he could also direct the Amry Corp of Engineers to start seriously looking into repairing the LA wetlands, which will be further damaged by this, as the wetlands are crucial to protecting many of the LA cities from storms, especially New Orleans.
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0527/breaking-top-kill-stops-oil-leak-flow-gulf-mexico/
If this is true, things might be looking up.
Henry:
Questions like “What kind of blame” send my ulterior-motive-blowout-preventer needle into the red zone.
I have no objection to your asking the question, but the way media and media manipulators have spewed and continue to spew this one makes me wonder if anybody cares about the people and environment who have been devastated by this disaster. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if BP, government and media could focus on the problem at hand and deal with it rather than maneuvering for future advantage? Maybe if we came to expect this of our ourselves and our institutions, we’d have a more functional society.
The leaking has been stopped; now the most important issue is to limit damage done by the spreading oil slick. After that comes support for local public health, economic and environmental damage, then comes assessment of the damage and a large, clearly itemized bill on BP’s doorstep,…
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven…
Frank
I actually agree — I think a lot of people are just playing politics. It is for this reason I wanted to hear what others had to say, beyond what we see in the media. More than that, I find it interesting that the crisis has caused people to react contrary to their norm; I wonder if something can be gained from that…
IMO, the criticism of Bush following Katrina was overblown. In a complex, continental nation of 300 million people we simply can’t federalize every problem or emergency, and the President isn’t some kind of national daddy. The Bush criticism fit a narrative his political opponents hoped to retail for their own purposes. They were successful.
Criticism of Obama to this point has been similarly overblown, and for precisely the same reasons. However, should “top kill” fail to staunch the flow of oil, I do think it’s imperative that the President now act swiftly and decisively to take personal command of what is shaping up to be an historic catastrophe.
Well I will join the chorus that I think the criticism of the response to Katrian was a tad overblow and was mostly poltical. That was a perfect disaster and I don’t think people still realize the geographical scope of it.
As to BP of course we still have to discover what went wrong. That is still not clear. It appears to be a system failure on many levels which is ironic since BP executives were on the rig when the explosion occurred fro a event celebrating the Rig safety record. Which does show they were not just flaunting regualtion left and right perhaps.
The problem of the response is a joint one and can’t be blamed on any one party.
For instance. Part of the plan the Feds had was to have the equipment to burn off the oil on the surface. This was put in place since the Clinton Adminstration. The problem was someone forgot to bu the equipment becaue there were none of this great divices on the COAST! Epic fail. We had to get one from South America
I do think the Obama administration was a tad slow to get the scope of the problem. I sort of accept this a just a fact of life as to the Feds and these things. You got to go through the Corp and the Coast Guard and gosh it takes forever it seems. See the red tape on creating the barrier Islands.
Beyond that I think this has shown us we have to have more equipment positioned on the Coast in the future. Again though the fact that was not in place can be blamed in a million directions
However like Katrina I think this shows that in the future we need some type of joint command center to deal with this that goes into action.
Beyond that I am not sure what the Feds can do that BP can’t Besides the possible idea of using a small nuclear device on the ocean floor to stop the leak I am not sure the Feds have the expertise at all to “take over” as to the leak itself. Hopefully the top kill is working.
I disagree with Micheal slightly on the liability question but of course I don’t know what he has in mind. In the rush to punish someone there are ideas of UNLIMITED liability which is folly. If you have that then the process becomes too expensive for Insurers perhaps to take the risk and thus no drilling which results in
A Energy crisis
A devasted Louisiana economy
And in a ironic twist the Louisiana Coastline shall be destroyed because the funds in the future to restore the Coast is to come from revenues the State of Louisiana will get from drilling in this region.
I’m not exactly sure what “taking personal command” might consist of. Taking over operations from BP and pitting Navy engineers in charge, perhaps?
Here are some suggestions from Sunday, May 23, in the words of James Carville, a Democratic strategist, on what the President could have done:
“The President of the United States could’ve come down here, he could’ve been involved with the families of these 11 people(who died on the rig after the explosion). He could be commandeering tankers and making BP bring tankers in and clean this up. They could be deploying people to the coast right now. He could be with the Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard…doing something about these regulations. These people are crying, they’re begging for something down here, and it just looks like he’s not involved in this….The administration needs to launch a criminal investigation — the Attorney General needs to investigate criminal negligence on the part of BP and what went on at MMS (the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that regulates offshore drilling). There’s a thousand things that he could do. He just needs to get down here and start doing something.”
phosphorious,
By “taking personal command” of the situation, I do not mean he should micromanage from the Oval Office. I do mean that he should formally suspend all business as usual until this problem is solved, as he likely would, for instance, in the aftermath of a major terrorist strike. So, he should cancel all personal political activities, especially fundraising. He should cancel any personal foreign or non-oil spill related domestic travel. He might want to establish a presidential command post close to the site of the operation … in Baton Rouge, maybe, or Houston, and spend a week there getting personally briefed by people on the ground. A lot of this is symbolic, I know, and he’ll get criticism for getting too personally involved, but the symbolism is important, and the threat is worth the criticism.
(1) Freeze the assets of BP.
(2) Completely revamp the MMS, and give it further statutory powers if needed.
(3) Prepare charges for fraud and negligence (civil or criminal).
(4) Lift the cap on oil company damages.
(5) Implement a temporary and steep surcharge on oil company profits, and earmark the revenue for those whose livelihood is suffering from this spill.
(6) Abandon all plans for any futher off-shore drilling, any time, any place.
(7) Most importantly, put in place a proper energy policy with carrots to subsidize low-carbon energy and sticks to price carbon effectively, ideally by taxing carbon.
During a crisis, a big part of the President’s job is simply to be visibly engaged and decisively taking charge (or supporting/replacing his person in charge).
The President gets criticized for taking political advantage of the situation, but that doesn’t matter during the crisis. He’s going to get criticism either way. President Bush did a good job of this after 9/11 and a bad job after Katrina. President Obama seems like he’s somewhere in between on this oil spill, maybe a bit below midpoint.
But this crisis is still unfolding. It’s not too late for him to step up and take charge.
If he waits until after the crisis and only pipes up during the post-crisis fingerpinting, he will lose the opportunity to decisively take charge that only the President has. After the crisis, he will be in a much better position to make long-term changes if has decisively taken charge during the crisis than if he waits.
I agree with Bruce except that Bush’s speech after 9-11 told us to go shopping…
“1) Freeze the assets of BP.”
A terrible idea. BP so far has been handing our the paycheck. This is a long term problem and their contributions are going to be needed. Bankrupting the compnay is not a good idea and will be counterproductive. Further I am not sure that is even legal
“2) Completely revamp the MMS, and give it further statutory powers if needed.”
That needs to be looked at
“(3) Prepare charges for fraud and negligence (civil or criminal).”
We don’t even have a clear understanding of what went wrong yet
“(4) Lift the cap on oil company damages”
It should be increased but not unlimited.
“6) Abandon all plans for any futher off-shore drilling, any time, any place.”
That is insanity!!! Already what Obama just announced is too drastic and I expect he will have crawfish on that. Expect your heating bills to already go through the roof. Further Louisiana is about to be in a postion to actually recieve the needed funds for Coastland restoration and those revenues come from these deepwater leases. If we don’t get that there will be no Coast in 20 years.
THe Federal Govt is not going to pony up the estimated 100 billion dollars to do that. WHere is the money going to come from.
I hope people listen to the folks in the States affected on this
One other thought. I know when people see BP they see Oil executive4s and stockholders. Down here in Louisiana it is a tad more complicated. We see mostly the folks that work for BP that work hard and long.
Just recall when we are talking about oil companies we are talking about a huge number of everyday americans that work hard
Why not abolish limited liability altogether and make these reckless profit machine owners liable?
If we toss out the blame Bushers, the blame Obamaers, the punishmenters, the studiers, we are really left with a dirge of expertise on this thread. That is the main problem here and all over the blogosphere. It seems the only ones with expertise are the ones who never thought they would have to use it and so didn’t have a plan. Reminds me of my mother and her observations about closing the door to the barn once the horse were out. What we need desperately is some expertise that is diedicated not to blame but to results. Let’s get the well plugged, do what we can to clean up a devasted ecology, and try to make sure that it never happens again. I would take a good underwater petroleum drilling engineer to any politician, theologian, Army General, or religious leader. Right now, we need to stop the oil, clan up the mess, and save all the lives we can: nimal and humnan, future and present. Kepp the philosophy, give me knowledge. What ever happened to the people who cleaned up the Exxon Valdese and that spill? Did we not learn anything from that?
Quite honestly, I think blaming administrations for inadequacies in their response to crises ALWAYS has more to do with propaganda than reality. I’m not saying this to exculpate Bush with regard to Katrina or Obama with regard to the BP spill (although the location and timing of these disasters BEGS for analogies), but simply as a matter of principle.
I don’t think Katrina would have played out all that much differently had Kerry been elected and I don’t think this would play out all that much differently had McCain been elected. It simply would have been different people propagandizing the event for political gain.
I do think, however, that Bobby Jindal has been excellent in this crisis. It’s really too bad he doesn’t have a lick of charisma becuase he really seems to be a very skilled administrator.
But then on the other hand, maybe he’s just one of those “ordinary” Rhodes Scholars slash 28-year-old Presidents of state University Systems.
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ -Ronald Reagan
I’d vote for:
“I don’t know you and you’re on your own.”