Accepting Our Part in the Gulf Oil Spill Disaster

I see the mats of oil floating in on every tide and I am back at Scan Bay scooping, scraping and handing bags of oil down the conga line of oil spill technicians. I am back on the fishing boat that was my home for three months trying to fall asleep while the muscle in my shoulders, back and arms scream with pain. I am back on the beach alongside my twelve companions scraping oil off of rocks trying to convince myself that what we are doing has made even the slightest bit of difference.  

The curtain has fallen down and the wizard is exposed. Drilling for oil isn’t clean, isn’t safe, isn’t protected by the most modern technology available to mankind, and here’s why (and my fellow Norwegians should appreciate this)? We been doin’ it this way for years. It works. Why change?

Even if oil developers wanted to change, there just isn’t much to change. The process for extracting oil is fairly simple. Find oil. Drill for oil. Try not to mess up the hole you dug to get it, and get a tap on it as fast as possible. Just because we have to drill down in earth a mile below the surface of the ocean doesn’t really change anything. You add a few pieces of technology, but how do you test it? You just don’t know what it can do until you do it. its like the NASA program and Apollo 13. Here you go boys. Take this duct tape, the plastic sheet off of an instruction manual, some tubing and get ‘er done. We love the romance of it, but that philosophy sucks when 5,000 barrels of oil a day are spewing up from the briny deep.

Cleaning up oil that has already spilled doesn’t really work. Its mostly guess work. You remove as much oil product as you can, hoping to preserve as much vegetation as possible, and pray that what remains of both can live harmoniously. The only real cure is prevention, and the reality of oil field operations is that you can only do so much to keep the genie in the bottle, and the more you push the envelope, the more likely the possibility that the genie is gonna bust loose. Oil is a genie. We know it can bite us, but we can’t turn our backs on the potential bounty to be had in those three wishes.

I am sad, so sad, and getting sadder every day that I see an animal struggling against overwhelming toxicity as they try to raise their young, groom themselves, and live on God’s green earth.  They have no thought to leave the nesting ground upon which they were born.  They dive for food in waters that have sustained them for centuries.  They die a slow, torturous death as the toxins shut down their livers, clog their pores, and they freeze to death.

Oil is ugly. There isn’t one point along its path from release underground to final distillation and packaging that isn’t risky. I am not just referring to the gasoline, the most volatile of the distillates. I am talking about EVERYTHING from the Bunker C that Asia burns in its factory engines that cruds up the atmosphere to the fertilizer and bug killer that keeps the food on the table then works its way into the waterways and ecosystems.

I am saddened because so many people don’t seem to understand our part, that of the consumer, in all of this, and how deeply dependent upon oil we have become. In the seventies, when the gas shortage hit us hard, we found it difficult to discuss manufacturing gas efficient vehicles, or turning down the thermostat. Our thirst for oil has far surpassed the gas in our tanks or the heating oil used to fuel our homes. It’s the cell phones that need constant upgrading, the iphones, ipods, and laptops. Its the synthetic fiber in our clothes, the fertilizer for our crops, the insulation on our electrical wires, the extruded plastic for the forks and spoons slipped inside our to go bags. its even the plastic visqueen that everyone wants to utilize to stop the flow of oil onto the beaches and into the marshes..

We crave this stuff. We consume it. We need to understand what our role in all of this mess has been, and figure out how to differentiate between what products made from oil we treasure and must conserve, and what is flotsam and must be eliminated from our ravenous appetite for crude, raw, sweet, heavy or otherwise. If we cannot face this truth. If we cannot weep for what we have helped to set in motion, then we cannot begin the process of accepting our part and finding ways to deal with our craving for oil in a realistic manner. Nigerians have been washing their clothes in water contaminated with oil toxins for years. Whole families of Malaysians were “removed” from their palm plantations to make room for a refinery long before Trans Ocean laid out the blue prints for the Deep Water Horizon rig. A family in Anacortes, Washington buried a loved after a refinery blew up just a short time before the methane soaked mud rushed a mile up the riser and exploded on the rig floor incinerating eleven men.

I do not wish to be harsh. I am staggering under the strain of coping with my own responsibility, but I am convinced that we must be brutally honest with ourselves if we are to find a solution. We can castigate BP, and drive them into bankruptcy, or we “hold them closer” in the Italian way. We can write letters to the company shareholders and tell them that we want them to maintain those shares, and be willing to support the company through the rough times. We ask them to be willing themselves to pay for this mess. They loved the profits. The damages… Not so much.

For ourselves, we can learn as much as we can about oil: how it is processed, into what is it processed, and how much of that do we really need? We need to find ways to discuss it with friends and family, classmate, workmates and anyone else who may be trying to understand what has happened. We need to do this with respect and understand that this is a very overwhelming problem, and that it will take patience and diligence to overcome. And when we find a way to cut back, we need to support one another on the follow through.

Finally, our country developed around the automobile and the industrial age. We formed our dependence on oil not in one generation, but over many several generations. Our culture has formed around easy access to crude oil. Therefore it stands to reason, that a shift away from the habitual and unthinking use of crude in all that we do will require a cultural shift in our thinking and in our way of life in America. I believe it can be done. It might even feel to some as if it were the end of the world. It won’t be, but the change such a shift might produce could very well herald the beginning of a wonderful age of reason.

Renew the Spirit of Raucus Caucus 2008: Vote 2010 Kickoff!

It was a cold night in February.  Citizens young and old of every color, rich and poor crowded into the parking lot of Begich Middle School.    People driving from work listened to KUDO's Aaron Selbig on the radio as he attempted to guide folks through the traffic to the site of the Democratic Caucus in Anchorage 2008.

Many dedicated Democrats used to modest participation in such affairs, were pleasantly surprised to discover this would be one of the best attended political events in Anchorage history.  No one could have predicted the turn out that filled practically every hall, alcove, nick and cranny of the newly opened middle school named for the father of Senator Mark Begich.

I can remember being pressed against the wall down the hallway in this picture.  People crowded against the table behind which I stood filling out form after form as new voters swarmed to register as Democrats.  My throat tightened with emotion and pride to see so many people inspired to participate in their government. These wonderful people came to the middle school to vote for their Democratic presidential candidate.   Many them had never voted before in their lives.  Some them were switching party affiliations in order to try and change the direction their country had taken politically. All that mattered was to get them registered and encourage them to jump into the fray with both feet.  Jump they did, and the energy and determination of these new voters renewed the hope and strength of many life long voters.

If you took a left hand turn before reaching the hallway in this picture, you would have found yourself in the gym surrounded by hundreds upon hundreds of people waiting patiently and not so patiently in lines waiting to caucus for their Democratic Presidential candidate.   The atmosphere was loud, hot and confused.  People milled about impatiently with many bewildered as to what to do at a caucus.  No one had planned for the massive crowd that showed up.  No one had fully anticipated the power of Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama and all the other candidates offering change to inspire heretofore unregistered voters in Alaska to come out and have their votes counted.  Elderly citizens shifted painfully on their feet for hours as they waited, but wait they did, and they were determined to be heard.

I remember standing in the center of the gym surrounded by folks with a burning desire to caucus for their candidate, but first they needed to register to vote.  There were so many of them, and the lines were confusing. The air in the gym was thick and hot from the sheer volume of people.  I had lost all hope of finding my own District 19 in the crowd. I registered anybody and everybody.  From behind me, somewhere in the bleachers, a voice roared out over the crowd.  I recognized the voice of Shannon Moore as she invited, nay insisted, that people come to her to register to vote.  All I could see of her was her hard hat.  Pens flew, and the ranks of new voters swelled.  Later, above the din and confusion, swelled another voice from the glory days of KUDO,  CC, armed with a bull horn, began directing traffic from the balcony above the gym floor.  The voices of those two women never faltered that evening, and from what I learned later, neither did the voice of Mr. Selbig.  I am forever grateful to them for their help and support during that amazing evening.

That amazing evening more than fortified  my belief in our system of government, a government of, by and for the people.  It blew that belief out of the water, and for the next several months sustained me through long hours as volunteer to register and educate voters in my beloved District 19.  I do not believe in term limits, because I have never stopped believing in the power of the people to effect change through the power of the vote.  If a politician remains in office for too long, the blame rests on our shoulders.  If we didn't get the votes to bring in a new, better candidate, then we didn't try hard enough, and the hard work, grass root campaigning and volunteer work that led up to the 2008 Presidential election reinforced that belief.

Midterms are just around the corner.  President Obama and the progressives currently serving in U.S. Congress have done a lot of heavy lifting.  President Obama has been methodically and without much fanfare putting the pieces of our government back together rebuilding such departments as the FDA, Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor to name only a few, while progressive Congressman have worked feverishly to create legislation to restore some semblance of regulatory sanity to our nations laws.

Now it is time for We the People to pick up our share of the load once again.  We need to get voters out to the polls, and the push to do so begins this weekend as Organizing for America launches its Adopt a Voter campaign.  Sarah Mouracade of OFA explains the strategy in this statement:

We decided to do this campaign, which is unique to Alaska, because it helps volunteers reach out to first-time voters from 2008 and share President Obama’s accomplishments with them. We believe talking to first-time voters is very important because many progressive candidates in Alaska who fight for issues that correspond with President Obama’s agenda will benefit by having these first-time voters go back to the polls in 2010. In fact, they are likely to be the critical votes in both local and federal elections this November. People who adopt first-time voters will be assigned 10 – 15 people who live in their community and asked to help get them back to the polls in 2010. Simply put, the message the volunteers are delivering to these first-time voters is, “It’s time to make your voice heard once more.”

A painful lesson was learned with the election of Mr. Sullivan into the office of Mayor.  He won because we failed to get out and get the vote.  We left the polls open to the conservative.  We forgot to reach out to those voters whose power was felt on that cold night in February when hearts in Anchorage burned bright.  The formula for a healthy democracy is very simple.  Get citizens to participate in the process of elections and of governance.  We who claim to support the progressive idea of freedom and justice for everyone should feel compelled to get out and register as many people as possible to vote, then get those newly appointed guardians of freedom to the polls.  The people who showed up at the caucus are  still eager and hopeful to have a chance to determine their own future.  Some have no transportation.  Some do not know how.  Some are just overwhelmed and need some encouragement.  Those of us who can need to step out of our comfort zones, and reach out to other citizens whenever and where ever possible.  Reach out and adopt a fellow citizen and pass on your love of democracy. 

Learn how to Adopt a Voter this weekend.  To attend and one of 16 house meeting in Alaska this Saturday, June 5 or Sunday, June 6,  visit http://bit.ly/9htaLY to find a list of events.

If you want to get your feet wet immediately and begin Adopting voters visit http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/akadoptavoter.

Renew the spirit of Raucus Caucus 2008 by getting involved in Vote 2010 today.

Tonight I actually felt sick about filling my gas tank.  What can I do to end this addiction to fuel?  I am overwhelmed by my oneness in a nation of millions all slogging down a cultural highway designed by our great grand parents, heralded by our grand parents, perfected by our parents and now laid at the feet of the grand children.  How can a nation built around the American weekend, a concept created by Henry Ford to encourage his plant workers to buy cars in which to travel, make the sort of drastic changes necessary to reduce the use of fossil fuel?  Most of our major cities were designed around the concept of nuclear families commuting from suburbia to the city.

I traveled around Europe.  Those cities grew up long before the advent of the combustion engine.  They actually struggled to accommodate vehicle traffic.  Rearranging there transportation network will be much simpler for them.  The American city looks and functions literally like a human artery, and like that artery feeds the vast network known as the American Dream.  Will Detroit, the once King of the Auto empire, show us the way as the Mayor flattens out suburbia to save the heart of the city?  Could his courage lay the foundation of change for a nation raised on the milk and mythology of the open road?

All the joy of life I profess to cherish interconnects with the creatures struggling through oil laden marshes in Louisiana, Alabama and Florida.  I smell the tarry ooze because I spent three months up to my armpits in the stuff cleaning it off the beaches in Skan Bay, Alaska.  I know how depressing it is to scrape, shovel and heave bag after bag of the stuff into super sacks while you wonder to what destination will the filth be sent, and will that place suffer just as badly?

Can not we humans appreciate the struggle of a mother to raise her children, a father to feed his young?  Can we not grasp in the most basic of creature terms, the essence of the struggle of the animals trying to live in spite of the odds against their doing so?  If we could but grasp this in our bellies, deep in our collective wombs as a fellow species seeking survival, perhaps we might be able to take the baby steps to put us on the path that might save our planet.  Decrying that this is an act of fate is ludicrous.  We humans caused this catastrophe.  We must take responsibility for what we do.  Tonight I will.  I don't know how to change it, but at least I can face my part in the blame squarely, and be willing to at least be willing to change.

There can be no fouler stench than that produced by rancid, congealed oi wrapped around decayed vegetation, and it cuts me in two to imagine some animal struggling through it on its way to feed, to tend its nest, to live.  This is my page and I'll cry if I want to, and right now, I want to.   It is just a bit more than I can bare, and I don't buy for one minute that this is some media hype by Greenpeace or a plot by the Obama administration.  I know what 485,000 gallons of bunker c looks like, and if it can mess up as much of Skan Bay as it did, I have no problem what so ever visualizing the enormity of six million gallons.  This is real, and you'd have worked in it to fully appreciate the power of the devastation to the wildlife and eventually to the humans living in Gulf of Mexico.

It must be possible to cherish and save what we have on earth today.  God created man in His image, therefore it stands to reason we must be capable of carrying out our stewardship of this planet with His grace and dignity, magnanimity and love.   How can we stand idly by to see the fall of animals God tasked man to name each one?  "Thy kingdom come.  They  will be done.  On EARTH as it is in heaven..."