Louisiana oil spill: Obama’s Katrina?

One of the inescapable citations on the epitaph of the presidency of George W. Bush will be his failure to fly down to Louisiana to show hands-on concern in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. 

Therefore, clearly mindful of this, President Obama is doing everything he can to avoid a similar citation for his handling of the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana, including flying down today for the all-important photo-op of being seen inspecting the economic and environmental impact first hand.

Yet his PR team must contend with a few uncanny, if not fateful, parallels. For, just like Bush after Katrina, Obama is finally visiting the scene of this disaster 12 days after it occurred, citing, just as Bush did, concerns about interfering with emergency relief efforts as his reason for not visiting sooner; just like Bush, Obama is visiting on a Sunday; just as it was back then, relief efforts are being hampered by fighting between federal and local officials – who in this case are executives of BP, the British petroleum company responsible for this catastrophe unfolding offshore;  and just like Bush, Obama’s entire presidency will be dogged by references to his leadership in this time of crisis, which is already having spillover effect on his legislative agenda.

The critical difference, of course, is that this spill will not kill two thousand people and displace many thousands more the way Katrina did. 

This is not to say, however, that the damage will not be significant or that political fallout for mishandling this spill would not be just as great for Obama. 

Because there are hardcore environmentalist who care more about the thousands of birds and sea creatures that will surely perish than they do about human beings. And Obama’s political enemies will undoubtedly do everything they can to tar and feather him with blame – an unwitting symbolism for the way pelicans and other birds are bound to be smothered with oil.

But it should redound to Obama’s political benefit that he immediately mobilized federal resources, including the National Guard, and assured the American people that BP will be paying for all cleanup and compensation costs. 

These moves – coupled with the fact that BP initially insisted that the spill was minimal and wholly contained well offshore – makes demonstrably absurd any suggestion that Obama mishandled this crisis. He would be well-advised, however, to order federal contractors (and prevail upon BP) to hire the fishermen, whose livelihoods will be adversely impacted, to work on the cleanup effort, which could take years.

Meanwhile, all attempts to contain this spill have been unsuccessful.  Reports are that 1.6 million gallons of toxic waste have already spewed from the sunken rig that exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers. Now this spill is looming as the worst (man-made) environmental disaster in U.S. history, surpassing the damage caused when the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons off the coast of Alaska in 1989.

Frankly, Obama must be cursing the irony of this spill occurring just weeks after he curried support from Republicans for his climate and clean energy bill by announcing plans to begin drilling for oil off the mid-Atlantic, Alaskan and Louisiana coasts – notwithstanding the glaring contradiction inherent in this slick compromise.

After all, having done so, he blew this opportunity to champion long-standing Democratic opposition to off-shore drilling by condemning – as demonstrably reckless – the Republicans’ Palin-inspired mantra of “drill baby, drill.” Not to mention that this spill has now emboldened Democrats to demand that he renege on his drilling compromise, which would cause his climate and clean energy bill to go up in flames.

Then there’s the devastating and costly irony of BP suggesting in a 2009 exploration and environmental study, according to the Associated Press, that:

An accident leading to a giant crude oil spill – and serious damage to beaches, fish and mammals – was unlikely, or virtually impossible.

Ooops….

Finally, after Rita, Katrina, and now this, the long-suffering people of Louisiana must feel cursed by the gods.  Come to think of it, this might be because their local Creole population shares a legacy with the long-suffering people of Haiti. And I remember well Reverend Pat Robinson sermonizing – in the wake of Haiti’s recent earthquake – about the eternal curse that befell the Haitians after they bargained with the devil to help them win independence from France.  But I suppose I shouldn’t be giving this religious crackpot any ideas….

UPDATE

A Sobering Perspective

May 4:  Here’s how an editorial in today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal put this “historic” oil spill into perversely reassuring perspective:

The infrequency of big spills is extraordinary considering the size of the offshore oil industry that provides Americans with affordable energy. According to the Interior Department’s most recent data, in 2002 the Outer Continental Shelf had 4,000 oil and gas facilities, 80,000 works in offshore and support activities, and 33,000 miles of pipeline.  Between 1985 and 2001, these offshore facilities produced seven billion barrels of oil. The spill rate was a minuscule 0.001%.

According to the National Academy of Sciences … only 1% of discharges in North America are related to petroleum extraction. Some 62% of oil in U.S. waters is due to natural seepage from the ocean floor, putting 47 million gallons of crude oil into North American water every year.

Who knew…?

For a more sobering perspective, however, it might be helpful to know that, according to Amnesty International, the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill has defiled Nigeria’s Niger Delta every year for the past 50 years.  And almost no effort has ever been made to clean up any of it.

Of course, since Westerners are only marginally concerned about the famine, drought, pestilence, and wars that imperil the lives of millions of Africans every year, it is hardly surprising that we show so little regard for the environmental impact of oil spills on this Dark Continent. Never mind that half of the oil companies like Shell manage to produce is shipped to the United States-with Nigeria’s share of the profits going into the Swiss bank accounts of the Kleptomaniacs that have governed this beleaguered country since independence (in 1960).

* This commentary was originally published on Sunday, May 2 at 12:19 am