Oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster has been spewing all over the Gulf of Mexico for 52 days now.
We are all waiting for British Petroleum to finish the drilling of a relief well, a kill bore, so the underwater blowout can be stopped. The relief well should be ready in August. It started on May 2.
Why was this relief well not already in place and ready to go, at the time the main well was drilled? It could have stopped the disaster, right at the beginning.
Other nations require this, that the relief well be drilled at the same time as the main one.
Congress has been in session for twenty seven days since the beginning of the disaster. Why has Congress not taken the simple obvious easy reasonable response, of passing a law requiring relief wells?
Whatever. If Congress hasn't, let's do it ourselves then.
Two stages to the project:
- Collaboratively write a bill, where Congress makes a grant of rulemaking authority to the appropriate regulatory agency, requiring the relief well.
- Pressure Congress to introduce and pass the bill.
Step One: Write a Bill
The bill will probably be very short. A paragraph or so.
Congress tells the regulatory agency to require the relief wells, and that's about it.
Step Two: Pressure Congress
The critical part is trying to get some legislators to sponsor and introduce it.
Daily Kos is pretty big. Not nearly big enough to just be passing pieces of legislation, though.
Harness social networks, harness social media. Try to twitter and facebook the hell out of it.
The main power, here, is the simpleness of the response. Everyone wants to do something about the disaster. The response, require a relief well, is easy to understand, is pretty much obvious.
Use dKos as the seed, to get a great big viral effort going, to introduce and pass this?
What I Would Do
I'm interested in law and regulation. As a computer programmer, I have processed boatloads of the stuff through manipulation programs, put it in and out of databases. Gigabytes of code and reg doesn't begin to express it.
I always have to read some of it. I've got a fair sense of the style.
I'd be interested in helping to write the one paragraph bill.
I can't twitter the hell out of anything, though. Haven't got one. I avoid my facebook at all costs.
Cat Herding
A very specific part of what I'd like to see, in this diary, is the beginning of the development of a real and serious plan, the second step, to pressure Congress to introduce and pass the requirement.
Please jump up, volunteer, be assertive, discuss, organize, squabble, and help get this thing rolling.
