Drill, baby, drill?

The Coast Guard is burning off an oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, hoping to prevent it from reaching fragile wetlands along the gulf coast.

The BP oil platform explosion, collapse and leak is shaping up to be one of the largest and most costly oil spills in U.S. history. Drill, baby, drill!

That blithe, happy battle cry rings pretty hollow in the wake of this disaster. We’re told how safe offshore drilling has become (and it is much safer than it used to be) — look at how the rigs weathered Katrina!

Now this.

This disaster should be a hard slap in the face of the drill, baby, drill crowd; a cold shower; a dozen cups of strong coffee. Maybe it’ll help them sober up. For even if they don’t care for its own sake about the environmental damage such spills create, you’d think they’d care about the economic damage. After all, that’s what drill, baby, drill is all about — keeping that economic engine revving.

A spill like this threatens the fishing industry, commercial and sport, along the entire gulf coast. As one fisherman noted, if they can’t fish, everybody’s business is screwed, including the grocery store up the road. Tourism suffers, the economic consequences go on and on.

Safer isn’t safe enough and being patted on our heads and told to just relax, everything will be okay just won’t cut it. Moving rigs closer to shore and opening drilling sensitive areas is risky. A spill and leak like the one in the gulf would be devastating if it was closer to shore.

This poses a big problem, for we are, indeed, dependent on oil and that’s not going to change any time soon. Civilization as we know it runs on oil — and not just in our cars. I’m typing on a petroleum-based keyboard right now. My world, your world, our world, can’t get along without the stuff, not for one day.

There is reason to doubt that we will be able to innovate beyond oil. Certainly alternative energy can pick up some of the load, but that’s primarily in power generation, replacing coal, not oil. (Not saying that’s a bad thing by any means, but it doesn’t cure the addiction).

There is a school of thought that argues that the explosively creative, productive civilization of the 20th/21st Century — the Age of Oil — is a one-time event in human history, that we can’t sustain it. The collapse of that civilization won’t be pretty.
So, what’s to be done?

We could drill, baby, drill, party like tomorrow will never come and damn the consequences. A major spill now and then is just the cost of doing business.
We could go all-out on alternative energy and fuel sources, and alternate modes of transportation but that would require major policy initiatives — including tax incentives on one end and heavy gasoline taxes on the other end — that are politically unacceptable.

And we have to accept that the returns on that investment may not be as great as we hope.

Essentially, the only way to wean ourselves off of our oil addiction is to radically alter our way of life. That’s downright blasphemous to a large segment of our social and political culture and really hard to do for the vast majority of us. Most of us don’t have the time, money or capability to mothball the car(s) or severely cut back on our vehicle use — especially over here in the wide high desert. How many of us can avoid buying products shipped halfway around the world in a just-in-time global economy?

I make no special pleading of superiority to anyone else here. I’m as hooked on oil as anyone else. My way of life is completely wrapped up in the civilization wrought by oil. I don’t see a way out.

We can be marginally more efficient, but that has little impact in a world where China and India with their vast populations are trying to catch up to our standard of living.
I think there’s a strong likelihood that the predictions of James Howard Kunstler in The Long Emergency will come to pass — a radical, dislocation brought on by the collapse of an oil-based civilization. We will change our way of living, but by force rather than by choice, and it won’t be easy, safe or pretty.

Gloom and doom, eh? So why not drill, baby, drill and postpone the crisis as long as possible? Because I want to preserve as much of what we have left of a beautiful and bountiful world we have left for as long as we can — and yes, I’m willing to pay for that.

I’m not opposed to all drilling all the time everywhere, but I am opposed to drilling anywhere, everywhere, all the time. Conservation may be only marginally effective, but it’s a better way to try to slow the slide into a dark post-oil future than allowing our world to be fouled to the chant of drill, baby, drill.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

We still aren’t treating our wounded warriors right

The outpouring of community welcome and support shown to returning National Guard troops earlier this month was heartwarming to say the least.

Many of us along that spontaneously-created parade route found a tear in the eye and a lump in the throat. It was a wonderful thing.

But not all stories of returning veterans are so wonderful. A friend of mine sent me a link to a New York Times story that reveals that the Warrior Transition Units set up in the wake of the Walter Reed Veterans Administration scandal are proving to be a horrific “warehouse” for soldiers with deep psychological and physical trauma.

My friend, who is in a position to know, tells me that the story is “true to the bone” — and only the tip of the iceberg.

Read the story here.

No matter what your position on the wars our country has been embroiled in for nearly a decade, we can all agree that our handling of returning veterans has not measured up to what should be the highest of standards.

We should all do anything we can to help fix this. Write your legislative representatives, contribute to your local veterans’ outreach groups. This kind of thing is unacceptable.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Too fat to fight?

Apparently, the U.S. military is signing on with Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.
I heard just a snippet of a news story on NPR this morning about an effort spearheaed by some retired military men to push for legislation that would force better health standards for school cafeteria meals.

The military establishment, it seems, is concerned that 74 percent of 17-24 year olds are considered unfit for military service. 27 percent are medically ineligible and most of that is due to obesity.

I’m not sure that “whipping America’s kids into fighting shape” will sell, but I think we need to recruit every ally we can in the campaign to fight youth obesity.

That’s a pathetic statistic and a threatening one. No matter what your political/ideological position on health care reform, you have to recognize that a nation of fat 18 year olds is going to be a nation of major health care burdens as they get older.

And that’s to say nothing about the limitations on a fulfilling life that obesity brings.

Man, we really need to change our way of living.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Fighting over land and water

I got to use one of my favorite quotes in a story a couple of weeks back: “Whiskey’s for drinking; water’s for fighting over.”

It’s usually attributed to Mark Twain, but that may be apocryphal. Doesn’t matter. It’s a great line and as true now as when it was coined in the 19th Century.

The dustup out in the McKenzie Canyon Canal has been fascinating to report on. It pits two relentless personalities against each other: irrigation district director Marc Thalacker and property owner Jan Daggett. They’ve been sparring on and off for years over this project. Now Daggett has sued the district and the irrigation district has forced its pipeline across her property in the face of protests that included blocking the ditch with equipment.

Fortunately, the Showdown at McKenzie Canal played out as farce rather than tragedy. It’s easy to see how people got shot over water fights in the Old West. People get mad, people get their back up and pretty soon it’s war.

Most people I talk to are on the side of the irrigation district in this one — mainly because of the benefits of returning water to Whychus Creek. On the other hand, many of those same people think that the irrigation district has been high-handed and they didn’t like seeing the sheriff’s office portray the protesters as alcohol-fueled. Many people think that was an uncalled-for shot at delegitimizing the protesters, whether they’re right or wrong on the issue.

A friend of mine, an irrigator himself, but not in this district, says he finds people trying to retain their open ditches as a pleasant water feature “incredibly selfish.”
But those water features are important to people. When the ditches dried up in town years ago as Ted Eady returned his water rights into Whychus Creek, there was a great outcry of dismay. As one forester told me, people were more connected to those ditches than they were to the creek.

I grew up in the L.A. area and often went backpacking in the Sierra Nevada out of the Owens Valley. The locals there were still mad about L.A. stealing their water in the early 20th Century — and they weren’t shy about telling you so.

Daggett’s suit against the district will play out in court this summer. Meanwhile the ditch is piped and the water flows. Probably someday soon, there will be steelhead in Whychus Creek, which will be a cause for celebration.

But don’t count on everybody gathering together to sing hymns to flowing water. There’ll still be reason to fight over it.

And if folks can’t find a reason to fight over water, they’ll fight over land, the other great Western tradition. Right now there’s a pretty good brawl going on over the Cyrus family’s desire to convert Aspen Lakes into a destination resort.

Many neighbors are not pleased. Some think it’s a fine idea. Opponents see their way of life threatened and the Cyruses, as always, are relentless in pushing for what they perceive as their rights and prerogatives. It’s a recipe for a long-term, expensive and acrimonious donnybrook.

I think these things invoke such passion because they are so fundamental. It’s not just a pocketbook issue — it’s not “greed” per se, either for money or to retain a perceived right. Land and water become sacred to people and they are often willing to spend their treasure and even spill their blood to defend them. I think that eons of social and cultural values have wired us to take a stand on land and water. For most of human history, they have been life itself.

Jim Cornelius, Editor