Terry Vargas is living with the oil. Nearly three weeks ago, the third-generation shrimper pulled into port in Grand Isle, in southeast Louisiana, with a catch worth $1,400. But that was before authorities closed the rich Delta waters to fishing, thanks to the massive oil spill that has swamped the shoreline. Like many furloughed Louisiana fishermen, Vargas took a check from BP ”” part of the energy giant’s promise to Gulf Coast residents to “make things right” in the wake of the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history. It was for $5,000, an amount Vargas says he can make in two nights during a good shrimping season. Still, $5,000 is better than nothing, but Vargas knows it won’t cover his expenses now or in the uncertain weeks ahead. So he has taken on carpentry jobs ”” the only paying work he can find ”” and today is building a small shed among the houses on Grand Isle, many of which stand on stilts, stork-like, to endure the inevitable floods.
Vargas thinks about the hurricane season that began on June 1 ”” forecasters predict a major one ”” and remembers when Katrina hit and left a pile of sand in his living room. Hurricanes pass; people evacuate, and then they rebuild. But the spill is a disaster of a different kind. He worries about a storm hitting the oily waters, raining crude on his hometown. “If that oil comes ashore,” Vargas says, “it’s all over.”
[blockquote]And all of us bear responsibility too for depending on and demanding cheap oil underwritten by risky drilling while showing again and again at the ballot box that we wouldn’t support a government that really regulated the industry.[/blockquote]
This ties in with the Friedman thread as well. For the key issue is the novelty of the engineering involved: the depth to the ocean floor, followed by the depth of the drill, both of which have huge impact upon pressures and temperatures. And therefore relate back to ‘our’ desire to continue to rely upon this stuff, even when we are now entering seriously unknown territory to extract it.