“Then said I, O Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate…” Isaiah 6.11
Alas, the jubilee languishes into lament.
Time and tide carry good fortune and sorrow equally to our shores; yet again they have lain suffering upon my home. It is difficult not to feel persecuted by some larger force in these times, as the caprices of fate let the hammer fall upon everything that the residents of South Louisiana have spent so much effort and emotion to rebuild. The petroleum odor on the wind that wells up out of the Gulf of Mexico is like the scent of death, and brings with it equal despair.
I am tempted to look deep within these dour days to find some meaning, some explanation, some succor. Why here? Why again? A wrathful god bent on purging the land of sin would be reason enough, however unfair the sentence or undeserving the victim. Of course, reason has nothing to do with it. Instead, it is the bumbling, blindly groping hand of man, arrogant with technology and affected wisdom, rife with greed. How do you rail against ignorance and reckless self-serving? How do you punish that, knowing full well that there will be no redemption, only hollow penitence?
This is not a screed against the oil industry or corporatism or government. Instead, it is a lament for the hubris inherent in all of those things, inherent in all of us, and the damage that it wreaks upon this world. Because the great tragedy is that this is not some natural calamity, but an accident that was turned into a disaster by greed and no accountability. Were it not for profits, the well could have been buried weeks upon weeks ago. But the oil must flow. Even uncontrolled, that flow is worth more than the price of shutting it off completely. And why should BP care what happens to the Gulf Coast? It has no vested interest in saving the marsh, or the fisheries, or the livelihood of the people that live there. BP is in the oil business, and oil is where its interests lie. Fling whatever you will about their research in sustainable energy or their investment in rebuilding ecological habitats; it all comes to nothing, and this spill is proof.
Now, I grant that the initial explosion and the failure of their single safety valve to operate are arguably beyond fault. Complex systems will have catastrophic, unforeseeable breakdowns from time to time, and this very well may have been one of those times. But the mitigation of that accident has been a concerted effort to minimize the cost to BP, and nevermind the collateral damage. All of their solutions have been aimed, not at staunching the oil flow, but rather directing it their coffers. So we have their hats with hoses on the top and big straws to suck out what could be recovered, but never a plan to just stop the thing. If blowing the well with explosives is a practical solution to the problem, then BP, by attempting complicated engineering feats with large margins of error, must believe that it has the time and leeway to attempt what they will to minimize damage to their profits. But then a decimated coastline is not the problem to be solved as they see it; losing the oil is. Greed with little or no accountability. It’s like a mantra for the reckless and ugly side of capitalism.
Meanwhile, the people that live down in the marshes are already packing up their camps and selling off their skiffs. They’ve been watching those oil spill forecasts with resigned despair for over a month now. It’s like watching the forecast track of hurricane, only one that moves a few miles a day and constantly, randomly, changes shape. They have been sitting there waiting for their lives to die, knowing that the end is coming, just not knowing when, or how bad it will be. They’re already weary from years of rebuilding after a succession of storms nearly destroyed them, and the prospect of having to go through the emotional weight of that again is nearly too much to bear. I know it is for me.
I have a vision. I am standing upon the edge of the marshland, the grass dead beneath my feet and the calm waters gently lapping oil onto the bank. It is quiet and the air is stifling, and the sky is a rusty haze as the sun hangs sullen on the western rim. The shore is littered with the forms of oil soaked carcasses, the fish and birds and frogs and dolphins. They’re not all dead. A brown pelican thrashes spasmodically in a circle, trying with one wing to lift itself from the horror, and then collapses, resigned, and dies. In the distance, a great fleet of shrimp boats and oystermen motor away, their rigging flung with black crepe and flags that hang limp in the dead breeze. I chance to look down at my feet and find that I have sunk to my knees in black slime, but, remembering the pelican, I do not try to fight it, only turn my head west to the setting sun. As it touches the horizon, the waters catch fire and I watch as a wall of smoke and noise and flame fills the sky and races forward, greedy, unslakable, unstoppable. And the world is bathed in fire, and all lain down in darkness.
