There isn’t much to say about that oil spill in the gulf that hasn’t already been said. In defense of British Petroleum, it can’t be easy to close holes in a pipeline that’s a mile long. And they’re not just trying to close leaks and cap wells, they’re trying to do it in the dark. You go underwater a few thousand feet and you can’t see your hand in front of your face.
Still, when a company is licensed to run an offshore drilling rig, they must have some emergency protocol in place. British Petroleum must have been prepared. Sadly, whatever their plan was, it isn’t working — and the Gulf of Mexico as we know it could be destroyed.
Sunday’s Washington Post quoted fishermen who said they were hauling up shrimp that “smelled like diesel fuel.” One fisherman predicted that the fishing industry was over for the rest of his lifetime. He told the reporter to “take a picture” of him and “put it in a museum.”
Heck, you can’t read the paper or open your laptop without seeing this gargantuan disaster. We don’t need additional discussion. It’s agreed, this spill is a bad thing.
What should be discussed is the future of offshore drilling. It’s diabolically ironic the way this happened just as Washington had resumed debate on the topic. The casual observer might call this coincidental. To an environmental worrywart it seems wretchedly pathetic, regardless of the timing. But there’s another faction of ob-servers that usually chimes in during times of Herculean disaster and they might call this an act of God.
Strangely, the hellfire and brimstone types are remarkably quiet this time; especially considering there was a cataclysmic explosion and a deadly oil spill of historic proportions.
Seems odd that AIDS, Hurricane Katrina and the bombings on 9-11 inspired some religious devotees to say that they were signs of God’s displeasure, but environmental devastation rivaled only in Noah’s time doesn’t warrant even a peep that the Almighty dislikes our gluttonous, oil-consuming ways — not to mention offshore drilling.
Sure, he sounds cold-blooded, but when God takes to smiting, he expects collateral damage. If he can flood the entire earth and all the creatures on it, destroying the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico is nothing. When you look at this from a divine retribution standpoint, God seems pretty displeased with giant international corporations building oil rigs that have destructive potentials rivaling his own.
It could be that contaminating his creation for greedy or gluttonous purposes might be against his plan. And it’s not just oil. When we bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain perhaps the guy who took out Sodom and Gomorrah finds that displeasing in His eye. You would think with all our technology we’d find a way to live our lifestyle without destroying His planet.
We could just launch all that nuclear waste out into space where God has nuclear reactions — like our sun — all the time. But we can’t. And the reason we can’t is a potential glitch called “launch failure.” The full explanation is available at world-nuclear.org. It’s a website for folks who work with nuclear power so some of it’s pretty complicated. But the part about outer space waste dumping is quite straight-forward. The website explains that since the mid-1980s, after decades of planning for such disposals, “this option has not been implemented and further studies have not been performed.”
You remember the mid 1980s: the space shuttle Challenger exploded, reminding scientists — among other things — that there was no safe way to get nuclear material out where it can’t hurt us. So, if you’re one of those folks who thinks God put snakes in the garden or sent locusts to devour Egyptian crops, then the Challenger disaster sounds more like him pointing out our arrogance than it sounds like simple coincidence.
Personally, I don’t think the Deepwater Horizon oil spill or the Challenger are messages from God — my faithfulness doesn’t include that kind of guy in the sky thinking. But for the folks who insist that some all-powerful interfering God exists, it appears to be time to join the environmentalists and condemn offshore drilling.
Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth is the author of “Left Out In America: The State of Homelessness in the United States.” She may be reached at PatLaMarche@hotmail.com.