Wednesday, June 16, 2010

"The Oil Spill - The President's Speech"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day
“The Oil Spill – The President’s Speech”
June 16, 2010

On the day the President spoke to the Nation from the Oval Office, the estimate as to how much oil is leaking into the Gulf was raised to a range of 45,000 – 60,000 barrels per day, about 15,000 of which is being captured through the containment cap on top of the well. (Lost in the horror of the spill is that this is one big well – 60,000 barrels per day, a mile beneath the surface of the water and another three miles into the bedrock, suggests a well capable of producing 22 million barrels a year!)

The 18 minute speech was designed to show a President in charge. Interestingly, Mr. Obama said that the government had been in charge from the beginning – a curious admission, as the recovery appears to have been badly bungled. (My own opinion is that the government was not in charge at the beginning, BP was, but that was not something the President wanted to admit to the American people.) He never mentioned that no call had been made to experts on spills in Norway, nor a suspension of the Jones Act to aid in the clean up. He mentioned that Admiral Thad Allen was in charge and that immediately following the spill he assembled a covey of scientists including a Nobel winner to advise on the clean up, a process the New York Times has termed as having been “botched.” Using terms such as “fight”, “siege”, “war” and “battle plan”, he sounded like a First Lieutenant leading troops over the barricades.

While not demonizing BP (a good thing, in my opinion), he left no question that they would be responsible for the clean-up and that, when he meets today with the Chairman and CEO, he would demand the establishment of a fund, but mentioned no dollar amount last night. BP certainly deserves to be penalized for the spill – this incident has already cost them $1.5 billion – but House and Senate politicians should restrain their anger, recognizing that a viable BP will better serve the people of the Gulf than one tossed into bankruptcy. It should also be mentioned that we all, in our desire for big houses, big cars and big vacations, bear a responsibility.

The President defended the six months moratorium he had imposed on the industry from deep water drilling, without acknowledging the cost to consumers or, more importantly, to those along the Gulf who make their living from such activity. A commission he has established, not unlike the ones set up after Three-Mile Island and the Challenger explosion, will study the accident and provide advice for Minerals Management Services, an organization with oversight over all oil drilling (and who failed miserably), which will now be under the directorship of Michael Bromwich, a former Federal Prosecutor.

But it was in the last third of the speech, with Mr. Obama’s leaning forward with the enthusiasm he reserves for favorite subjects, that he made his most impassioned plea – in this case for clean energy, to rid ourselves from the clutches of dependency on foreign oil and to pass the legislation proposed by Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman. He wants to invest billions in renewable resources such as wind power and solar energy, this time mentioning China, as a country creating thousands of jobs in clean energy, but without mentioning his former favorite country, in that regard, Spain. (He did not mention that China is also building one new coal plant a week and that they plan to do so for the next ten years!) There was no mention of clean coal technologies, despite the fact that the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal and that half our electricity generation comes from that source. He concluded, invoking the image of his White House assistant, Rahm Emanuel, that we must “seize the moment.”

In fairness, the President did say there would be costs associated with abandoning fossil fuels in favor of nuclear, wind, natural gas, solar and water, but there was no attempt to quantify those costs – perhaps an impossible task, but especially painful to consider as we exit recession in a feeble recovery. On a per person basis, we consume more than ten times as much energy as do the Chinese, but I know of no one who would want to exchange our standard of living for theirs. The fact of the matter is, regardless of a cap-and-trade bill, over the next couple of decades, our per capita consumption will decline due to preservation and efficiencies, while that of the Chinese will increase. That will happen no matter what the government does. It is a trend that began toward the end of the 1970s and continues today.

There is nothing wrong with the President’s idealistic vision for a country dependent upon renewable energy sources, but it is one that must be tempered with realism and should make use not only of the talent, but of the natural resources we possess – especially natural gas and coal. (We do have a lot of wind, especially in the halls of Congress, so the steps leading to the Mall might be ideal for a number of wind turbines!) Over the past thirty years efficiencies have improved in terms of better home insulation, auto mileage, appliances and factory systems, and in myriad other ways. That process toward preservation and efficiencies has been evolutionary. Government might hasten the process, but it is underway because it better serves the people.

Certainly the goal of becoming less dependent on those whom Senator Lieberman calls “not our friends” is admirable, but the weaning process has to be a gradual one. We have carbons easily accessible (on shore and in the ANWR region of Alaska), which we should tap in the meantime. The suspension of drilling in the Gulf will only serve to raise prices for consumers here, increase our dependency on foreign oil, which will benefit dictators in places like Venezuela and Iran.

This President has a desire to do “big’ things. He wants to be known as one who revamped our Nation, seemingly forgetting that for all our faults there is no country that has achieved so much for ourselves and for people all over the world. That success is largely due to the initiative of individuals, most of whom play according to the rules; it does not derive from a more powerful central government.

Seventy-six years ago my grandfather hosted his fortieth reunion from Harvard. It was in the midst of the Depression – June 1934 – and he quoted a poem he had written, with one stanza that seems especially relevant today:

I’d like to live a hundred years
So I can know for sure
If Roosevelt makes the poor all rich
Or makes the rich all poor?

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