Commentary By Ron Beasley
Below I reviewed Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies. Briefly Tainter's explanation is that systems/societies become increasingly complex and as the complexity increases they require more resources but become less able to respond to challenges.
Peter Daou explains that the response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster is a challenge that our sociopolitical system can't respond to.
Leadership is virtually non-existent. Blaming BP for being greedy and
destructive is the least we should do, not the only thing we do.[......]
Lawmakers can say that the law mandates BP take responsibility for
clean-up and costs; federal officials can list all the things they're
doing to fix the problem; President Obama can launch as many
fact-finding commissions as he sees fit. But we shouldn't be impressed
that they are doing what we elected them to do - it's their job to deal
with emergencies promptly and effectively. Far more is called for in
this uniquely cataclysmic circumstance: a level of outrage, alarm,
intensity and focus worthy of the size and scope of the spill.We need, and must demand, boldness and resoluteness worthy of a
planetary emergency - true leadership, rallying the nation and the world
to action. Offense, not defense. We're not getting anything close to
that from Democratic leaders. And from Republicans, far less.The administration seems miffed and mystified that it is being
criticized. After all, it can reel off dozens of swift actions taken in
the aftermath of the spill. The White House's defenders want the
spotlight aimed exclusively at BP. But this is a situation where body
language and words are just as important as actions. Scheduling an
'angry' presidential news conference weeks after oil started gushing
into the Gulf waters is exactly the wrong thing to do. Authentic anger
isn't something you turn on for the cameras and leak to the press the
previous day. Indignation and defensiveness are precisely the wrong message...White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs faced a barrage of questions at his daily briefing about why the federal government is not intervening to take over responsibility for the cleanup from BP. "Again, we are overseeing the response, OK?" Gibbs said just hours before the news about the commission broke. "I don't know what you think - we're - we're working each and every day. That's why Secretary (Steven) Chu - the Department of Energy - it sounds technical. The Department of Energy doesn't have purview over oil, oil drilling. That's not in their governmental sphere."
Is this what collapse looks like? I concluded the review with this:
What we see today is a sociopolitical system that requires more and more
resources to maintain but is unable to respond to challenges in a
meaningful or productive way.
That pretty well describes the response to the disaster in the Gulf.
Amazing isn't it. I've Collapse on my electronic shelf but only read bits & pieces as I search for a framework to explain to myself the seemingly complete dysfunction of our Western societies just now. I was appalled by the aftermath of Katrina but this oil spill seems worse and no amount of spin or official indignation will likely change my growing impression of ineptitude.
ReplyDeleteRon, this event looks like Exhibit A for your book review. You didn't have prior knowledge about this, did you?
ReplyDeleteSeriously, though, I need to get rid of a growing suspicion that there the escaping oil cannot be stopped by some military application. I read "nuke it" early on which is an empty-headed suggestion since nuclear explosions are magnitudes more catastrophic than what is happening.
But between that extreme and what looks like a modern version of a bucket brigade there has to be something more dramatic. We read about "bunker busters" that work on the surface. What if one of those were delivered to the site and detonated by a Suicide ROV?
Or torpedoes... Do they only navigate horizontally? What would happen if a torpedo went vertically into the hole? If the borehole were destroyed wouldn't that stop the flow of oil?
Are those "nearby" drilling operations (which take a month or two) aimed at stopping the gusher or redirecting it into the BP revenue stream?
I have other questions as well. What is the distance from the floor of the gulf down to where the oil was struck? I read somewhere that the oil may be another mile or so further down. If that is so, BP is only taking measures that do not threaten the loss of this single well. I know oil is valuable, but more than the sacrifices we are witnessing?
One of my worst recollections of the Katrina disaster is a phone call from Australia to a local talk show host in Atlanta who asked "WHERE are your AMPHIBIOUS VEHICLES?" The question was a good one. Our military can move heavy equipment and entire armies ashore using massive hovercraft which might well have been deployed to rescue people from the Superdome and elsewhere.
I'm no engineer. I'm just an old guy playing sidewalk superintendent. But it looks to me like lots more can be tried than what we have been watching.