The Parallels with the RMS Titanic Continue

by Little Miss Attila on May 30, 2010

BP had been screwing the pooch on Deepwater Horizon for months, and the Minerals Management Service/Interior Department had every reason to know it.

Hey, you know what?—let’s set up an informal competition among ship captains, and see who can cross the Atlantic the most quickly, given state-of-the-art vessels. Then let’s be sloppy about handling telegrams that might warn us we are racing into a field of icebergs.

Or, let’s put an overseas corporation in charge of drilling adjacent to one of this country’s national treasures, and then fail to perform proper oversight on it.

Folks, what the hell is so much less delicate about the Gulf of Mexico than ANWR, where we could drill much more safely than in the Gulf? Nothing—that’s what. The ecosystems in the Gulf are far more vulnerable than those in ANWR—as are the local economies that depend on them. And the practices that would be required to produce oil in Alaska—or in shallower water off of California, for that matter—are much safer than those we used to place the Gulf at risk.

Meanwhile, the environmentalists drive the petroleum companies into deeper and deeper water, and into countries that have looser standards for oversight even than Obama’s MMS.

This. Is. Crazy.

{ 2 trackbacks }

You know what crazy is? « The Daley Gator
May 30, 2010 at 11:20 am
And she knows delicate. « The TrogloPundit
May 30, 2010 at 6:18 pm

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

Cynthia Yockey, A Conservative Lesbian May 30, 2010 at 11:01 am

Remember that people who belong to the environment movement because they care about the environment are the dupes and patsies of anti-capitalist Leftists who are using environmentalism to bring down capitalism. Just make the distinction, that’s all. I have the intuition the latter are celebrating this catastrophe. It’s as hard for them to keep straight faces as it is for funeral directors to look solemn and mournful at a $100,000 funeral.

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Doug Hagin May 30, 2010 at 11:27 am

GREAT points you raise! Environmental Hypocrisy at its worst! BTW, made you my blog of the DAy and added you to my blogroll.

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AMac May 30, 2010 at 11:20 pm

*Obama’s* MMS? That’s not accurate, with respect to how bureaucracies work. Fifteen months after McCain’s Inauguration, do you think the MMS would have performed any better? If so–why?

This is “Bush’s MMS”, maybe even Clinton’s. More than that–some people expect that regulatory agencies will be agile, deft, efficient, effective, proactive–if only…

It would be interesting to see an organization with subpoena power do a systems failure analysis of MMS. And then see how widespread the contributing factors are throughout the Federal and State governments, and Self-Regulatory Organizations. And, which regulators *are* paragons of virtue, i.e. really are effective in their roles? There are some.

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John May 31, 2010 at 4:15 am

And if the Chinese start drilling in the Gulf, will the Chocolate-Eclair-Backbone-in-Chief do more than talk about it?

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