Before my morning swim, I checked Facebook, and saw a story posted about an AP reporter, 40 miles off the Coast, who jumped into the thickest slick of oil he could find, no hazmat suit, whatever that amounts to, in order to experience and thus write a story someone would read.
No living animals- just a few dead fish and a jellyfish. Softball size spheres of crude floating ten feet under- and it was sticky. So sticky it would have been impossible for him to clean himself- it took the crew 30 minutes with brushes and Dawn.
Swimming, I thought of this- even diving down ten feet just for reference.
Finishing, I hit the showers, where, as usual, there were a few older white guys talking, drying off their jocks a little longer than necessary, etc...
"So, Ed, when should I buy BP? Last week, you told me when it goes below 30."
"It's below 30," said Ed. "And I'd wait a little longer."
"HA! So your good advice last week is no longer your good advice this week?"
"Yeah, and next week you'll get my "better" good advice than this week!"
They both chuckled, and continued the fastidious toweling off of their greying jocks, as I dressed and left.
What struck me about this whole situation was layered.
The backlash against BP, to them, and probably a majority of old school investors, was just temporary, and there would be a good time to capitalize on all this "negativity." Environmentalism was a moment, a temporary focus on a disaster which would pass, until business as usual returned.
The price then, of a dead ocean, could be reaped when the garunteed myopia of the world had moved onto some new crisis, perhaps a war in Korea, or Iran, or a new threat of processed uranium.
What would it take to change this? Other than tossing the legions of Ed's into the Gulf, to suck on softball sized spheres of oil?
A price index for sustainability. A monetary value on moral situations. Yes, something legal, which would make this "fluctuation" in stock prices a permanent change.
Last week, at a wedding, I spoke to a top Democratic policy maker, whom I won't name. He didn't say no when I asked if the Gulf spill was akin to an Environmentalists' 911.
"Sure, but other than giving political priority to a few pieces of pending legislation, like permitting off shore drilling, what's the gain?" he asked. "I help navigate these political moves, for quick gains, but will they really change things?"
What's not in place, it seemed, was what Cheney had in his backpocket when 911 rolled around- a core of fanatics who had planned out an invasion in the wake of just such a "sneak attack- akin to 911."
Environmentalism, to make true gains, needs to get off of coal. Needs to harness and develop wind and solar. We all know this. Soy- not the answer. Expensive subsidies for non-sustainable agriculture interests.
What then? What, ultimately would make Ed shift his "good advice" to investing in other areas that aren't business as usual?
In the same wedding conversation, the idea floated that finding the children growing up in Appalachia, whose fathers died from coal dust, or the Navajo children whose father died of uranium poisoning, or poverty due to coal mining, or the children of the gulf fisherman, whose future is now uncertain, and training them to create the industries of the future in their backyards- synthetic fuels from genetically altered bacteria in West Virginia, hydrogen engines(!!!) in Louisiana, or solar panels in the land of eternal sunshine, New Mexico.
Twenty years of that, and Ed might be scratching his balls, at the swimming pool, but giving different good advice- "We should invest in the Navajo nation, Bob. And there's this genius company in West Virginia, making ethanol from chips of wood- cheaper than drilling, Bob!"
Take this Environmental 911, and plant the seeds for a next generation, so that in 20 years, we, as a nation, can produce our own energy, avoid costly, useless wars, and not see dead oceans as business as usual.
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