Can't Do Much, And That's A Problem

John Cole states the obvious, because it really does appear we need to state the obvious. And restate it again. Criticism of the Obama Administration doesn't really help, and criticism of BP doesn't really help. Suspending ALL permits for deep sea drilling might help in the long run, but not now, not for this case.

Considering that it took Pemex ten months to get Ixtoc I under control, BP is moving pretty fast. They are thinking control by August. But this leak is much bigger than Ixtoc I and we will not be able to tolerate the damage from five months of this.

But we might have to.

I've wondered exactly what went wrong with the containment dome(s). Did they try to extract oil too quickly, triggering the phase change into methane clathrate hydrate? It seems odd that the domes would fill up so quickly with clathrate slush. Would a different approach help?

But I'm in California, and I can't help. It's a nice, rather cool spring here. Even as the world falls apart elsewhere, the rest of the world rolls on, unfeeling and uncaring:

I know that no matter what I say, some of you are going to claim I am shilling for Obama while others of you will read the same piece and claim I am unfairly attacking Obama, but I have a serious question- what exactly is the Obama administration supposed to do about the oil spill?

I’ve thought about it, and there are some things that really have pissed me off:

1.) BP keeps missing deadlines they themselves set to cap the spill

2.) BP keeps trying to hide the size of the spill anyway they can, whether it be using dispersants to keep the oil under the water so no one can see it, refusing to allow independent sources access, or just flat out lying.

3.) The government is, as we speak, issuing more permits to drill, even though it is perfectly clear we aren’t prepared for this kind of catastrophe.

Of course, the obvious damage to the gulf and the wildlife has me livid, but these are specific things that have pissed me off about the government and BP’s response. I also almost through something at the wall yesterday when I read Jake Tapper report that the Coast Guard called BP their “friends.”

Having said that, I just don’t know what the administration is supposed to do. What can be done? That, I think, is the real lesson from this- that we can’t really do anything about this sort of disaster, and i think the administration has done a really shitty job of getting that message out.

I hear screams to “take over” the operations from BP. And do what? Is there some secret naval division that handles deep-sea drilling that we have not deployed? Does the government have some elite unit with better equipment than BP? I’m as pissed at them as anyone and want the government to make them pay for every penny of the clean-up, but I have to believe that all the people with experience fighting these things and all the equipment to deal with this sort of thing is already there with BP. And that if we “took over” from BP, it would still be the same people.

In short, I just don’t know what kind of federal response there really could be to this kind of disaster. In Katrina, the reason fro anger was clear- there were people who needed food, shelter, water, and medical treatment, things we have a lot of all over the country, and we just dropped the ball getting it to them. But with this- what are we supposed to do?