Anderson's Reflection

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05.28.2010 -- 9:27 pm

More than enough guilt to go around as the Gulf bleeds

By Kathy Nance
Special to the Post-Dispatch

Philippe Cousteau Jr. calls it “the most horrible thing he has ever seen underwater.”

Cousteau is the grandson of Jacques Cousteau, legendary film maker and conservationist. The younger Cousteau is carrying on the family business as a documentary film maker and oceans correspondent for Planet Green and Animal Planet, as well as sitting on the boards of other conservation groups. He joined ABC News reporter Sam Champion on a dive through the toxic oil and dispersant plume in the gulf. The two had to be hosed down and scrubbed after surfacing. The mixture of petroleum and dispersant would have burned their skin on contact. And sea creatures are swimming, unprotected, through it.

I assume Philippe has seen many things both wonderful and horrible under the water. For him to say the after-effects of the British Petroluem Deepwater Horizon oil disaster are the most horrible he’s ever seen–

And it is horrible. We could ask British Petroleum to take all the money it has made, ever, and put it in a big pile. And add all the money its executives have made, ever, from their cost-cutting decisions, the decisions that led to this horror. We could tap the funds of lease co-owners Andarko Petroleum and Matsui Oil Exploration. We could add in all the profits of Transocean, the company that operated the rig. And the sizable profits of Halliburton, Inc., which was hired to cement the well. And Cameron International, hired to maintain the blowout preventer. All those billions and billions of dollars. And they still would not be enough to pay for what has been done.

What is the monetary value, after all, of an ecosystem? What is the value of marshes that harbor new sea life and feed migrating birds? What price can we put on pristine beaches? What is a fitting assessment for Cajun and Vietnamese fishing cultures destroyed? What is fair to replace the lives of 11 men lost in the initial explosion?

When Cousteau appeared May 25 on Good Morning America, Champion asked what the long-term effects are of the toxic chemicals being used to “disperse” the oil. And of the poisoned gumbo sinking to the Gulf of Mexico’s floor.

We don’t know, Cousteau said. Nothing like this has ever happened.

Nothing like this has ever happened. I can see the oil pumping from the sea floor, as though our Mother herself is bleeding from an artery. I can watch the shimmer of red death spreading on the Gulf’s surface, then sinking through the water column. And I feel that not only can I do nothing to make it better–but that also, I have contributed to this great crime.

I use things made out of plastic. I drive a car. I use an air conditioner. I eat foods that do not grow right outside my door. While it’s true that the car is an economy model, and the plastics are recycled, and the AC is used lightly, and the non-local foods are limited to winter and are organic–still, I feel that I am complicit in this. That I should do more.

Because in the end, it isn’t just about the crimes against nature perpetrated by a group of multinational corporations. Or a regulatory culture that let them get away with the behaviors that led to it. In the end, it’s about treating the living, holy planet that we share as though She is both disposable and a limitless warehouse created for our species alone.

In the end, I know that it was not just a moral and ethical breach at the highest government and corporate levels that is leading to ecological and cultural collapse. In the end, I also am responsible. And that is almost too horrible to bear.

I do not like to live in a space of despair, nor create from it. But those feelings are the most primal for me now. For a T. Thorn Coyle poem about this disaster that also is a prayer, and has more hope in it, follow this link. To read more about Philippe Cousteau Jr’s travels in Louisiana, check out his blog.