It was terribly sad and extremely personal, so naturally, I will reprint it here, in full (it's brief)
and totally without his permission.
(Hey I didn't ask him to send it to me, did I?)
MC was obviously despondent, so being the super terrific friend I am, I rushed to his aid and responded immediately. I clicked the "Highest Priority" button in my email tools, and then, with barely a moment's additional hesitation (and fearing he was about to use his belt for something other then holding up his pants), I fired off the following urgent response:
Well to be honest, I didn't click the "Reply" button "immediately." It sort of got sent the next day, but immediately in the sense that it was sent right after I spent around 24 (maybe 36) hours writing and rewriting the damn thing. Okay, now that everything is finally straight, here we go:
"Dear Life-Long Friend MC:
In response to your obviously pained, panic-stricken and worrisome note of sometime yesterday, or the the day before, or whenever (I'm sure I read it this week)
chill out for Chrissake, and stop going all Chicken Little on me!
Doom n' Gloom, Doom 'n Gloom, Doom 'n Gloom, ENOUGH already!
We’re not "doomed" simply because there are over 4,000 producing (whoops – make that 3,999) oil platforms off our shore, between the 3,500 you mentioned sitting on (or now under) the Gulf and another 500 or so perched off our pristine Atlantic and Pacific beaches.
First off, that big number 3,500 3,499 is meaningless since it obviously takes just one accident on one rig to kill every living thing in the Gulf.
Therefore, any threat from the remaining 3,499 rigs still afloat out there has been neutralized now that everything around them is already dead or dying.
You can't kill a 400 square mile permanent dead zone twice, and there's no such thing as "vampire fish," my friend (thought I'd say it before you claim otherwise).
So Drill on Baby, Drill on
Unllke you, MC, I remain the eternal optimist. When peering out over the beautiful black and blue Southern horizon, I see an ocean half full of oil - not half empty. In point of fact, this whole unfortunate happenstance could turn out for the better, and here's why...
First, all we have to do is keep skimming off the surface sheen down there – that is, the stuff people can easily see and smell. Next, we import trainloads of salt, and then more salt, eventually turning the entire Gulf Coast beach area into a contiguous Dead Sea-style health spa. Maybe we even use the oil to our advantage by selling trips in diving bells dropped from oil platforms so people can admire the "Magnificent underwater oil plumes indigenous only to the Gulf."
And why not develop a public craving for crude oil facials and baths (minus the toxic fumes) like we did for feminine hygiene products? Envision for a moment a 100 year, self-perpetuating wave of free Shinola where the naysayers only see endless droplets of shit.
Hell – why not get Disney involved? They’re gonna need make-up tourist dollars down there more than anybody, especially if nearby coastal towns like Tampa are evacuated (which is currently in the planning stage).
Feeling a little better, MC?
Good, because I wanted to get your spirits up before hitting you with the potential downside.
In the long run, you have it right. We’re definitely friggin' doomed. It's a goddamn clusterfuck of the first magnitude. Two or three more catastrophes the size of Deepwater Horizon should about do it and then its bye bye MC and WBRAMH - and about 9 billion of our closest friends. If BP's next zany Rube Goldberg routine turns out to be another flop, this unstoppable gusher could end up destroying not only the Gulf, but coating the entire Atlantic Gulf Stream from the Everglades all the way up to the Grand Banks and beyond. In that event, It may only take one more catastrophic eruption to end the whole show.
No doubt, hidden among the thousands of wells that dot our World’s oceans and seas, another Deepwater is primed and ready to blow. We already know that bigger, badder, and by all reports, far less safe rigs are within a quick spew of the current disaster. But don’t hold your breath while the government, independent experts, BP and the other oil companies try to solve the scores of inherent design and human issues that currently guarantee more disasters. Oh sure, some irresponsible head will roll at BP over the Deepwater “whoops,” but the company boasts 65,300 employees, and something tells me that at least one of those remaining 65,299 employees is probably a bit of a sleazy fuck up - and that's just how the current mess started. Then there are the hundreds of MMS inspectors trolling for high-paying, lifetime-guaranteed jobs with oil companies. For a buck and a blow job, those MMS guys will sign off on a rig built out of Legos and under attack by Godzilla. And don’t forget BP’s flotilla of stellar subcontractors, like Halliburton, who recently moved their corporate headquarters from the U.S. to Dubai to avoid paying any U.S. taxes. I suppose they weren't making a great enough profit charging the Pentagon $50 dollar a plate for soldiers' lunches. Aside from electrocuting our own GIs with faulty wiring and supplying them with disease-ridden water bottles. Halliburton also makes the O-rings that fit in a critically important part of the well's stack. Apparently, neither Morton Thiokol nor Halliburton ever got the hang of manufacturing O-Rings capable of performing their task at near freezing temperatures. Still, the failure of Hallibuton's Deepwater O-rings was just one of numerous screw-ups between man and machine that led to the Rig's demise. But don’t look for those crappy O-rings to be replaced on the other rigs any time soon.
Take a peak at Exxon’s web site and you’ll find a page dedicated to a powerful, moving and in-depth reflection on the Valdez disaster. Well not really all that powerful and definitely not moving and hardly in-depth. Still, Exxon is proud and eager to tell us that safety is now job one over there... or thereabouts. And over the 21 years since the disaster, what changes have they made, you ask? For starters, Exxon figured it might be better to pick less than incredibly dangerous routes for their supertankers. They also instruct their crews to occasionally peak and see whether or not they're missing 11 million gallons of oil. Happily, Exxon now does drug testing on some of their employees (no doubt the ones who worked at MMS) and offers alcohol abuse counseling to any employee who puts his tanker on autopilot and proceeds to ram it into a reef. I know I feel safer. How about you?
Factoid Break (or Pee Break): Did you know that just one off-shore rig can dump up to 90,000 tons of drilling fluid and metal cuttings into the sea over its lifetime? With active plans to construct a few hundred more of these poisonous slop pails off our coastlines, we may not even need unmitigated eruptions of crude to kill our seas – and us.
Whenever there’s a commercial plane crash, the airlines immediately pull their TV and radio advertising. Not so with the oil industry - not even in the wake of this mega-disaster. As oil gushes from the sea bed like a volcanic eruption destroying everything in its path, oil companies (the ones that aren’t BP), are advertising as much as ever. And politicians in both parties are already chirping in harmony about “safe” drilling (as the Republicans filibuster a bill that would make BP financially accountable for the Deepwater disaster). Even that Nobel Prize-winning Steven Chu guy at Energy went out on the limb on Maddow this week saying he was hopeful that we can think up shit to avoid another catastrophe.
My bold
Chu:
“Let me just say that it is very important as we go forward to look at what things we can do to guarantee that it would be highly unlikely that, that something like this will ever happen again”
Then Chu added:
"I personally believe the U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh...people out there in our nation don't have maps, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as "
I may have the last part of his quote mixed up with somebody else, but the logic is just as sound.
What do you suppose “highly unlikely” means in Chu talk?
Does he mean, say, there's a 1 in 4,000 chance of permanently sliming the planet?
And would those odds be mathematically factored over one year or any 24 hour period?
And If I’m playing the role of Caesar’s Palace here, as the house bet, do I really want to risk losing 9 Billion for every 4 thousand I take in?
The fact is, something will always go wrong - sometimes very wrong, no matter how precise our science appears. Small variations in initial data can lead to widely different an unpredictable results. Some day, scientists and mathematicians will call this "The Chu Effect"
Unfortunately, we have a finite number of oceans and seas to practice in while we try in vain to get it right.
Yes MC, I'm afraid mankind is well on its way toward becoming the fossil fuel for some future species.
In the meantime - loosen up, and try to look at the World the way Corporations and their elected servants in Congress see it.
As something to rape and pillage before some other bastards steal it first.
For now, I'd just worry about my own ass in the here and now. The kids can fend for themselves, right?
And hey - remember that beach house you always dreamed about but could never afford to buy?
I bet you feel like Mr. Lucky today, huh?
So relax, Mr. Panicky, Relax.
Everything’s juuust fine.
Your concerned friend,
wbramh
PS - Do you own an extra belt that you can spare?"