As pointed out this morning by Jed Lewison, there is no way to know how much damage will be caused by BP's ongoing big spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The worst fears of an "oilpocalypse" may yet be avoided, according to The New York Times. But the folks over at ProPublica took a look at one of the groups quoted in that Times story and found it wanting:
At least half of the 19 members of the group’s board of directors have direct ties to the offshore drilling industry. One of them is currently an executive at Transocean, the company that owns the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded last month, causing millions of gallons of oil to spill into the Gulf of Mexico.
Seven other board members are currently employed at oil companies, or at companies that provide products and services "primarily" to the offshore oil and gas industry. Those companies include Shell, Conoco Phillips, LLOG Exploration Company, Devon Energy, Anadarko Petroleum Company and Oceaneering International.
No surprise that the greenwashers are getting their voices heard. That's their job, and if the Gray Lady gives them some ink, a high-five all around. A Times reporter offered a half-baked justification.
While shipping traffic remains at normal levels, and apparently only one oil platform and two gas platforms have been evacuated, already the fishing and shellfishing industries are shutting down, their boats anchored and processing operations silent. Grim faces all around.
Chances are that, even if the worst does not occur, the $75 million limit on damage liability will mean that lots of people and businesses, some of them still suffering the economic after-effects of Hurricane Katrina, will get screwed.
One of the chief victims of the spill will be the wetlands of the Mississippi Delta. Those 300,000 acres of coastal wetlands don't just include 10 national wildlife refuges where hundreds of species live, but also offer protection against hurricanes to the 2 million residents of the area. They provide a living for hundreds of thousands of people. The latest trajectory map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows the oil slick creeping ever closer to those wetlands.
In the past 75 years, some 2300 square miles of the wetlands have been lost to erosion because of mismanagement and neglect. As the Environmental Defense Fund has stated it, Louisiana now loses a football field worth of wetlands every hour. Two months ago today, the Obama administration released an 18-month, $40 million proposal for a federal-state joint project to restore the damaged wetlands. That's in addition to $439 million for barrier island and ecosystem restoration included in the 2009 budget. But the big spill has the potential to greatly exacerbate the destruction, and if it does, that half billion dollars will not be nearly enough. The EDF has proposed an emergency supplemental appropriation of $4 billion to restore the wetlands, speed up five wetlands projects already approved by Congress and provide economic support for the fishermen and others whose livelihoods have been put at risk by the spill.
But what exactly is at risk? As noted by Business Insider, it's not small potatoes.
• Gulf tourism: 620,000 jobs and $9 billion in wages.
• Recreational fishing trips: 25 million in 2006, with 40% of the total U.S. marine recreational fishing catch from the Gulf.
• The Gulf's commercial seafood industry: $21 billion.
• Gulf commercial fishing: 14 percent of U.S. commercial fishery landings.
• Gulf shellfish: 56 percent of U.S. oyster landings, 35 percent of
its blue claw crabs, 83 percent of U.S. shrimp landings.
• 4,000 oil and gas platforms in the Gulf, with 100,000 workers.
• 27% of U.S. crude oil production.
• Six of the nation's top 10 ports are on the Gulf Coast: South Louisiana; Houston, Beaumont, and Corpus Christi, Texas; Mobile, Alabama; and New Orleans. All together, they handled 740 million tons of cargo in 2009.
A slowdown in Gulf commerce caused by the spill just as the economy may be on the verge of taking off would have implications far beyond the Mississippi Delta and the other coastal states.
The ultimate effects of BP's big spill are still anybody's guess. But whatever the outcome, the blowout has shown once again that the economy and the environment are not two separate entities in which the former can be allowed to trump the latter. They are inextricably intertwined, and policymakers need to recognize that fact every time they make a decision.