Catastrophic Oil Spill in Mauritius Is A Worldwide Problem

Cleome Barber was born in South Bend, Indiana to a Mauritian mother and British father and has lived here in the U.S., in Mauritius, France, and England. A recent graduate of Columbia University, she's currently living in New York City working for the Color of Music Collective, an organization dedicated to amplifying the voices of people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals working in the music industry. Because she's the only person I know from Mauritius and because Climate Change is one of the issues that motivates her, I asked her to share her perspective on the catastrophic Mauritian oil spill.





What An Unprecedented Environmental Disaster On One Small Island Can Teach Us About The Immediate Necessity Of Ecological Preservation
by Cleome Barber

On July 25th, the Japanese bulk carrier ship MV Wakashio plowed directly into the coral reef that surrounds the tropical African island of Mauritius. After 13 days, the vessel’s hull slowly split open and its fuel tanks began to leak into the country’s world-famous lagoons, setting off an extremely dangerous ecological disaster. This tragedy, which threatens not only the fragile Mauritian ecosystem but also the country’s economy, was entirely preventable. As the Trump administration finalizes its plans to drill in the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the situation in Mauritius is more pertinent than ever. What can we learn about the importance of ecological preservation from its mishandling?

Mauritius: from Dodo bird extinction to oil spill eco-disaster

After growing up with a Mauritian mother and calling the small country my home from 2009-2010, I’ve learned first-hand what a special place it is. Mauritius is an independent nation off the south-eastern coast of Africa (think Madagascar, but much smaller at only 35 miles long, and about 700 miles farther into the middle of the Indian Ocean). It’s a volcanic island with spectacular mountains, masses of sugar cane fields, and stunning white sand beaches. One of its most impressive features is the coral reef which surrounds the island. The reef acts as an important ecosystem for small fish and other organisms while also creating a blockade against large waves and predators like sharks. As a result of this barrier, the water in the lagoons between the reef and beaches is perfectly still and crystal clear, making the island a dream vacation destination.

The island’s geography is only one of the many incredible characteristics of this small nation. With no indigenous human population, Mauritius has a long and involved history of colonization. After its initial discovery by Portuguese sailors in 1507, the Dutch established a series of settlements on the island as a stopover for ships to help break up their long ocean voyages. In 1715, France took control of the island, establishing important ports and agricultural infrastructure. In 1810, the sugar plantation island was ceded to the United Kingdom until 1968, when the long-time colony finally gained its independence and became the Republic of Mauritius. The Dutch, French, and British all relied on the labor of slaves to build their successful colony. With the abolition of slavery under the British in 1835, former slaveowners were compensated for their loss while former slaves were left destitute and required to fulfill a mandatory period of labor for their previous enslavers as a condition of emancipation. It was during this time that the British developed their indenture system using workers from India in the sugar industry, and leaving the former enslaved Africans little recourse but to move to the coast where they subsisted on fishing. It is their descendants, still settled at the shore, who are most directly affected by the oil spill, which is endangering their health, and making their livelihood extremely precarious. Due to this complicated history of colonization and enslavement, the modern population of Mauritius, which sits around 1.3 million, is remarkably diverse. The majority of Mauritians today are of Indian, French, English, African or Chinese descent, and most (like my mother) are at least trilingual, speaking Mauritian Creole, French, and English.

Like the human population, the flora and fauna of Mauritius is incredibly diverse, owing to the island’s unique volcanic origins and pre-colonial isolation. Many of the plant and animal species that inhabit Mauritius are endemic, meaning that they exist only on the main island and its islets. As humans colonized the land and brought new alien species with them, over 100 Mauritian species became extinct and many more are still endangered today. Perhaps the most famous of these now extinct endemic species is the Dodo bird which was killed off by Dutch settlers and their ship rats by the end of the 1600s. Today, groups like the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation have been actively working to protect endangered species like the Mauritian Fody and Pink Pigeon to ensure the Dodo’s tragic end isn’t repeated. Collaboratively with similar organizations, they’ve successfully established many important nature reserves and conservation sites throughout the island. When the Wakashio plunged into the Mauritian reef, these protected species and their ecosystems faced the immediate threat of extinction, undoing decades of impressive work from conservation organizations like the MWF.

The Wakashio crash: a lesson in accountability and stepping up for the environment

At present, the question on everyone’s mind is: how the hell did this happen? Owned by the Japanese Nagashiki Shipping Co and licensed in Panama, MV Wakashio was traveling along a common shipping route to South America. According to satellite imaging, Wakashio was predicted to collide with Mauritius several days in advance. However, there were no attempts made by either the sailors or Mauritian officials to shift the boat’s trajectory. Even as Wakashio approached the island, the vessel made no effort to slow down or change direction. Nagashiki Shipping Co has since accepted responsibility for the catastrophe and issued a formal apology, yet the full extent of aid they are extending to mitigate the travesty is unclear.

After its unprecedented collision, the carrier sat on the reef with fuel tanks still intact for 13 days before 1,000+ tons of oil spilled out through the cracked hull and into the lagoon. Only one mile away, the Ile Aux Aigrettes islet, a crucial Mauritian Wildlife Foundation conservation site, was put in immediate danger. During those 13 days before the leak, Mauritian authorities stalled, missing the opportunity to initiate an operation that would preemptively remove oil from the ship’s tanks prior to its disintegration. When oil began to spill, the MWF acted quickly to remove hundreds of plants and animals from Ile Aux Aigrettes to nurseries until a solution is found. 10 days later, the remaining 3,000 tons of fuel were successfully extracted, and on August 16th, the vessel split fully in half. The next task at hand will be for authorities to tow the larger half out to sea where it can sink, while the smaller half will remain lodged in the reef.

With intervention from both the Nagashiki Shipping Company and the Mauritian government  woefully nonexistent, Mauritian residents took matters into their own hands. France was the only country to answer the call for help, but it was left to Mauritians to spearhead, organize and implement an ingenious ad-hoc eco rescue mission. Using social media, thousands of volunteers from across the island quickly mobilized to contain the oil spill. Mauritians collected fabric, sugar cane straw left over from the recent harvest, and plastic bottles to construct long booms that prevent oil from spreading on the water’s surface. To advance efforts and compensate for a lack of external foreign aid, Mauritians even trimmed their own hair to provide extra padding for the makeshift booms. Despite the many health risks, Mauritian citizens moved to the frontlines and fought for their environment and livelihoods where authorities had faltered.

While the efforts of resident volunteers have been essential for dealing with immediate clean-up, questions of long-term effects on Mauritian life are moving into focus. After the current situation is controlled and oil is contained, there will be many prolonged environmental implications. For instance, the affected coastline and neighboring beaches will be polluted for years to come. This means that not only fish, birds, and coral are in danger, but the health of fishermen, swimmers, and those reliant on the tourism industry is also jeopardized. The damage done to the reef itself also has significant long-term implications. Coral reefs provide many crucial services like regulating water temperature, sea levels, and ocean acidification. Already fragile because of the effects of climate change, this crash has aggravated the reef’s ecosystem to the extent that it is unlikely to ever recover.

I am endlessly proud of the Mauritian people who united and mobilized immediately to save their environment. However, this incident serves as a bleak reminder of the negligence that leads to so many preventable environmental disasters. As global warming persists and human-fueled climate change continues to cause so many ecological catastrophes around the world, who will be burdened with the task of cleaning up the mess?

Moving forward, there are several immediate issues we must address in order to prevent the mishandling of environmental crises like this one:

• We need to urge the acceleration of a transition to electric shipping fleets. This ensures that in the event of another vessel crash, there is no fuel on board to create another dangerous oil spill.
• We need to elect officials who understand the impending threat of climate change and will support funding research into new technologies that reverse its effects and mitigate damage caused by incidents like this.
• Immediately, we must also pressure Congress to reverse Alaskan drilling plans. Placing protected wildlife at risk for the excavation of oil is never worth it.

Additional actions for those looking to support Mauritian clean-up efforts:

• Donate to Eco-Sud, an environmental NGO in the affected Blue Bay-Mahébourg area assisting with all disaster-related expenses
• Donate to the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation to support their conservation efforts (mention “Wakashio” in the message to ensure funds are directed to this disaster)
• Contact the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation if you can offer professional expertise for immediate clean-up efforts and solutions that will alleviate long-term effects of this disaster

Nearly 70 Organizations Call on Obama to Protect the Gulf of Mexico

Map depicting the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (source: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.)

by Gaius Publius

"The question now is whether we will have the courage to act [on climate change] before it’s too late."
    –Barack Obama, 2013

We've written about Obama, his language, his legacy, and his climate change actions here — "Climate Change and Barack Obama’s Legacy" — and in that piece discussed Obama's refusal to completely close public land and waters for fossil fuel extraction. Quoting Farron Cousins:

Under President Obama’s watch, the United States has become the largest fossil fuel producer on the planet when accounting for both oil and liquefied natural gas production. In terms of just crude oil production, the U.S. falls to third place, behind Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Oil and gas obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) now accounts for 50% of U.S. oil production, and, thanks to the Republican-controlled [but Democratic-enabled] Congress, the 40-year-long ban on crude oil exports was lifted.

Meanwhile, the government is still auctioning offshore oil and gas leases, even after President Obama presided over the largest ever oil spill in U.S. waters. Fracking continues its incredible boom, despite reports showing a rise in human-caused earthquakes related to fracking wastewater injections.

We also noted:

• Federal lands and waters could have accounted for 24 percent of all energy-related GHG emissions in the United States in 2012.

• Combustion of coal from federal lands accounts for more than 57 percent of all emissions from fossil-fuel production on federal lands.

• Methane pollution from venting and flaring from onshore federal leases rose more than 51 percent between 2008 and 2013, according to government data.

All excellent reasons for a legacy-seeking president to end all fossil fuel extraction on publicly held land and waters. Nevertheless, Obama has in the main resisted. Yes, there have been some new restriction of offshore drilling in the new five-year plan, but only to drilling in the Atlantic Ocean — that is, off the wealth-populated eastern seaboard.

Now come nearly 70 environmental organizations to ask that he do just that — end all offshore drilling. From the Sierra Club press release (my emphasis):

Nearly 70 Organizations Call on President Obama to Protect the Gulf of Mexico

Groups Call for the Gulf to be Excluded from the Five Year Plan
Tuesday, October 4, 2016

New Orleans, LA -- Today, nearly 70 groups sent a letter to President Obama, urging him to build on his climate legacy and remove the Gulf of Mexico from the 2017-2022 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program and immediately initiate a plan to transition the region away from a fossil fuel economy and towards one powered by clean energy.

In the latest draft of the five year offshore drilling plan released in March, the Obama administration removed leases in the Atlantic Ocean, but kept in leasing for the the Arctic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

As of 2016, more than 20 million acres of the Gulf have been leased to the oil and gas industry, and the 2017-2022 leasing plan, in its current state, will open it up further. Currently, approximately 80 percent of the previously leased acreage has yet to be developed.

Groups point to significant environmental impacts felt throughout the Gulf as a result of offshore drilling, noting numerous pipeline bursts, spills, and rig failures that have inundated the waters with oil and toxins, as well as onshore effects leveled by the petrochemical industry against communities of color across the region.

The letter calls for fossil fuel operations to be replaced with a clean energy alternative: wind. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the Gulf of Mexico has the potential to generate 5,000 MW of wind power by 2030, supporting more than 20,000 full-time jobs.

More here. The letter is here (pdf).

Barack Obama is being challenged to choose. Does he want to protect the high-wealth eastern seaboard only and let the oil-and-gas industry risk trashing the less wealthy Gulf states (see map above)? Or does he want to save the coastal and offshore environment for all the citizens of the U.S. — and indeed of the world?

Is he counting on half measures to fully guarantee his legacy? I guess that depends on what you take his legacy needs to be, including the need for big-money donors like those mentioned here.

More simply: Does Barack Obama himself have the courage he called for? Or will that be his legacy, that he did not?

GP
  

Hillary Voted For The Bill That Resulted In The Deepwater Horizon Spill, Bernie Voted Against It

BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill killed 11 workers and gushed oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days (around 210 million gallons), the granddaddy of all marine oil spills. It may still be leaking. The oil ruined beaches in Louisiana and Florida, wrecked fishing industries and tourism, devastated wildlife populations and continues to cause serious illnesses among children along the coasts. The economic consequences were well over $100 billion. BP paid a big fine. Were there any consequences for the politicians who oversaw all this? Certainly not for Bobby Jindal, who went on to be elected governor of Louisiana. And, truth be told, not for any elected officials on any level. But when a Bernie supporter put out the chart below, mentioning how Hillary had been one of the senators to back off-shore drilling-- but not in her state, "not in the Finger Lakes" and "not off Long Island" she said on the floor of the Senate-- there were Hillary backers who challenged the assertion. Richard Champion, a scholar at the University of Iowa, looked into it for us.

by Dr. Richard Champion

From PolitiFact: In 2006, [Bernie Sanders] was part of the House minority that voted against then-Louisiana Rep. Bobby Jindal’s Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act. Clinton supported that bill’s companion in the Senate, the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (GOMESA) of 2006.

Here's is Hillary Clinton's statement on her vote for the GOMESA bill: Long and short of it: "[W]e need to expand domestic oil and gas production."

Now, it's pretty to difficult to sort through the byzantine oil leasing records. It would be nice to find a government list of leases opened up by the passage of the GOMESA bill, but it "seems" very likely that Lease Sale 206, from which the explosion of Deepwater Horizon came, was the result of GOMESA. Also, you have this Mother Jones article (they're usually pretty good) that sets the timeline:

The Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, which was signed by George W. Bush that December, gave states a cut of offshore oil royalties in exchange for opening up 8.3 million acres of the western Gulf to drilling, including 5.8 million acres that had previously been set off-limits by Congress.

...In March 2008, Bush's interior secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, announced the first sale of an oil lease under the new law. On the block that day was also Lease Sale 206, the parcel that BP snatched up and later converted into a fountain of oily havoc.

Now to be fair to Clinton, the "nice" thing about GOMESA was that it resulted in much more revenue sharing between the oil companies and the surrounding states in exchange for opening up large sections of the Gulf for drilling. Mary Landrieu, in her failed reelection bid last year, often touted her work for the passage of GOMESA.

To make this relevant to the current presidential race, is fits well with Bernie Sanders' "new" pitch that he has been right all along (for decades, really) while Hillary made politically expedient votes, possibly angling for campaign donors, only to flip to oppose all this drilling in 2015 to remove space between her and Sanders. Clinton was among a minority of Democratic Senators to vote for the bill.

As for Sanders, he voted both against Bobby Jindal’s Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act bill, which GOMESA was based upon, and the bill's final passage, where it was bundled with a bunch of other bills in the Tax Relief and Health Care Act which he was one of only 45 House members to vote against.

To complete Hillary's flip-flop, from that PolitiFact article: "Clinton split with Obama this August after he gave oil companies permission to drill in the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea, tweeting: "The Arctic is a unique treasure. Given what we know, it's not worth the risk of drilling."

Updated version... whoever makes these might think about adding in that Bernie says anyone who covered up the tapes of the police shooting in Chicago (Rahm Emanuel) should resign, while Hillary, of course, expressed complete confidence in one of the most corrupt men to ever sit in a congressional seat (Rahm Emanuel). Yeah, yeah, I know... she'll be calling for Rahm to resign too someday (or asking him to join her staff... you never know with her).

The Constant Cost of Carbon — Another California Oil Spill

Oil spill off Santa Barbara coast (Credit: Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

by Gaius Publius

Thoreau once wrote, "We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us." The full quote is:

We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man…. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon.

It's likewise said that we don't grow corn; corn grows us, then uses us to spread its genetic material around the country and the globe at our expense. At that task, corn is successful beyond its dreams.

In the same way, we don't burn carbon — oil and gas. By burning the earth, it burns us, and in the process uses us to burn itself, to desequester its long earth-buried atoms and reenter the atmosphere as a gas. Through most of the history of life on earth, CO2 has been far more prevalent in the atmosphere than it has been during the age of humans.

The blue line near the middle shows CO2 concentration during the age of humans, which started about 200,000 years ago. The horizontal dotted line shows 400 ppm, where we are today. The tall red line on the right is where we're headed by 2100 under "business as usual." Notice how neatly that matches most of the past (source).

While carbon is burning us, creating this world, it's also poisoning us, creating this world, a world of ever-increasing spills and explosions, of groundwater arsenic and unlivable shorelines. About those shorelines ...

Oil Spill Off Santa Barbara Coast (Again)

As reported by the LA Times and the Santa Barbara Independent, there's a pretty serious oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast in an area called Refugio State Beach. The source of the spill is a shoreline pipeline whose leak detection mechanism apparently failed to work. The leak poured what was first reported as 21,000 gallons of oil into the ocean ...

During the several-hours-long leak, about 21,000 gallons of oil escaped the pipeline, Coast Guard officials estimated. Coast Guard crews stopped the leak by 3 p.m., said Petty Officer Andrea Anderson.

... but those estimates were apparently provided by the pipeline company itself, Plains All American Pipeline, to the Coast Guard (my emphasis throughout):

The accident has been classified by federal responders as a “medium-sized” spill and was traced to an underground pipeline a few hundred yards inland above Highway 101. The 24-inch pipe is owned and operated by Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline, which stopped the leak at approximately 3 p.m. It’s unclear how long the pipe was leaking, what caused it to break, or exactly how much crude escaped. Plains initially reported that 21,000 gallons of oil made its way into the ocean, but that number is expected to rise after county, Coast Guard, and state Fish and Wildlife personnel tally the true damage.

Nice of the Coast Guard to take the company's word and make it their own. An update at the Independent offered this correction:

Lt. Jonathan McCormick with the U.S. Coast Guard said an estimated 21,000 gallons of oil spilled into the ocean. That estimate comes from Plains All American Pipeline. An independent assessment has not yet been completed, he said, and it's unknown how many gallons of crude remain on land and along the shoreline.

The latest news from the AP puts the number of gallons much higher:

BREAKING: Pipeline company: Up to 105,000 gallons of oil might have spilled from California line.

I'm willing to bet that's not the last word, especially since the source is, again, the pipeline company, with an economic interest in underplaying the problem.

About That Pipeline Company ...

The version of the story at the Independent has some background on Plains All American Pipeline:

Founded in 1998, Plains All American Pipeline is in the business of transporting and storing crude oil and natural gas all over the continent. According to the SEC, the company’s net revenue last year was $1.39 billion. Tuesday’s spill was the latest in a number of similar accidents in recent years. The EPA has recorded at least 10 serious incidents in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Kansas; between June 2004 and September 2007, more than 273,000 gallons of crude was leaked, and in a 2010 settlement with EPA, the company agreed to spend $41 million to upgrade 10,400 miles of pipeline and pay $3.2 million in civil penalties. In 2011, Plains’ Canadian division was responsible for three major accidents in Alberta.

Last May, a 130-mile Plains pipeline that runs through Los Angeles County ruptured and sent 19,000 gallons of crude through the streets of Atwater Village. The leak lasted around 45 minutes, covered a half-mile area in oil, and caused the evacuation of nearby buildings. According to news reports, Plains was not aware of the spill until residents called the city fire department, which then had to notify the company.

Not a small company. And it apparently swings enough pipe of its own to get special oversight dispensations:

The broken Plains pipeline funnels 45,000-50,000 barrels of produced oil a day between ExxonMobil's Las Flores Canyon Processing Facility near Refugio to the Plains-owned Gaviota pumping station. From there, it travels to refineries in Kern County. The 10-mile pipeline was installed in the early 1990s. Notably, it’s the only piece of energy infrastructure on Santa Barbara County land that’s not under the county’s watch. When pipe was put in, Plains successfully sued to place it under the supervision of the State Fire Marshal's Office, arguing state management pre-empted local oversight.

I'd be remiss in not telling you that Plains is "sorry" and "deeply regrets" the incident. So do their stockholders, but I'm guessing on that. The stockholders have yet to speak.

The Political Angle — the California Congressional Delegation

California's District 24 is represented by Lois Capps, who was quoted in the Independent as saying:

“I am deeply saddened by the images coming from the scene at Refugio,” Rep. Lois Capps said Wednesday morning. “This incident is yet another stark reminder of the serious risks to our environment and economy that come from drilling for oil.”

While Capps may be a friend of the coastline (by backing sure-to-fail bills in the U.S. House), she's also a corporate-friend member of the New Dem Coalition and refused to take a position on county Measure P, which would have banned fracking in Santa Barbara County and the Channel Islands.

Measure P lost:

Most Santa Barbara County residents didn’t vote on Tuesday, but those who did made one thing clear: They didn’t support Measure P. Shot down by a whopping 62.65 percent of voters, the contentious initiative — which would have banned all new fracking, acidizing, and cyclic steam injection wells in the county’s unincorporated regions — pitted environmentalists sounding the alarm on climate change against the oil industry calling for fair regulations. And the oil industry — with help from operators in Santa Barbara County and beyond — dug into its deep pockets, shelling out approximately $6.6 million to defeat the measure, while Measure P supporters raised just more than $400,000.

You can buy a lot of votes and lay down a lot of fog with $6.6 million ... in a county election no less.

Lois Capps is retiring after this term and Blue America is looking for a replacement who is more in keeping with what the district needs. In the meantime, in a neighboring district, CA-44, Blue America has endorsed progressive candidate Nanette Barragán.

About that race, Howie writes via email:

CA-44 is an open congressional seat because Janice Hahn is running for Supervisor. One of the most corrupt Sacramento politicians, Isadore Hall, is the Establishment fave. He's the second biggest recipient of money from Big Oil in the legislature and he's the lobbyists' favorite lawmaker. His opponent, Nanette Barragán, got into politics fighting Big Oil-- and beating them.

You can contribute to the Barragán campaign, along with other Blue America candidates, here (adjust the split in any way you like, including 100% for Barragán).

We End Where We Began

We began this piece with the idea that the trains ride us, the corn gene breeds us and feeds us for its own propagation ... and our oil burns us so it can return to the skies.

I'm not sure we can stop the trains — the march of technology — but we can stop the march of carbon into the atmosphere. All we have to do is adopt an Easter Island solution and depose its human agents:

You're a villager on Easter Island. People are cutting down trees right and left, and many are getting worried. At some point, the number of worried villagers reaches critical mass, and they go as a group to the island chief and say, "Look, we have to stop cutting trees, like now." The chief, who's also CEO of a wood products company, checks his bottom line and orders the cutting to continue.

Do the villagers walk away? Or do they depose the chief?

There's always a choice ... 

And now is the time to make it. We can end the rule of carbon, and those who suck money from it, the minute we really want to.

GP

State of ​E​mergency in West Virginia After ​100-Car Oil Train Derails, Explodes​

by Gaius Publius

There are two ends to the climate crisis story, the output end and the input end, chained together in a way that can't be broken. Each side drives the other, is needed by the other, and each side is deadly to humans.

At the output end, we have carbon emission from burning fossil fuels. I've covered that topic fairly extensively, most recently here:

Greenland Ilulissat Glacier Break-Up — Largest Calving Event Ever Recorded

And Another — “Arctic Glacier’s Galloping Melt Baffles Scientists”

Global Air Pollution Has Offset Arctic Warming By 60%

For an 10,000-foot view of of the consequences of continued carbon emissions, start here.

At the input end, we have the constant exploration, drilling, fracking, transport and storage of the yet-to-be-burned carbon-based fuels, with associated leaks, fires, explosions, and soil, air, water contamination. As I said, both sides are deadly. This is a story about the input side, the source-and-transport end of the carbon-emissions story.

Train Derailment Sends Crude Oil Cars into Kanawha River; Explosions Erupt

So reads the news. Carbon burns, and if it burns, it can blow up. In this case, it blew up part of a West Virginia town. Here's the tale via the WV MetroNews (my emphasis throughout):

MOUNT CARBON, W.Va. — Multiple tanker rail cars carrying crude oil derailed Monday afternoon in Fayette County, triggering explosions and a 100-yard-high flames as several cars rolled through a residential subdivision and into the Kanawha River. CSX officials say “at least one rail car appears to have ruptured and caught fire.”

At least one house was destroyed, but police have found no evidence of fatalities. CSX said one person was treated for potential inhalation (of fumes).

In a statement Monday evening CSX said its teams “are working with first responders to address the fire, to determine how many rail cars derailed and to deploy environmental protective and monitoring measures on land, air and in the nearby Kanawha River.

An undetermined number of cars of the CSX train, believed to be 12-15, jumped the tracks at about 1:20 p.m. Eyewitness Randy Fitzwater of Boomer said he thought a plane had crashed.

“I heard this loud noise. It sounded like a jet airplane flew over my house and then I heard an explosion,” Fitzwater told MetroNews. “I looked across the river and I could see this big ball of flame.” ...

Another eyewitness, who declined to give her name, told MetroNews “the flames were going at least 300 feet in the air … black smoke everywhere.” She reported hearing several explosions “that shook my whole house. I could feel the heat through my door.”

The perp is something the oil industry wants badly — fracked "Bakken crude" oil:

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s office said the tanker cars were carrying highly flammable Bakken crude from North Dakota to Yorktown, Va. Governor’s spokesman Chris Stadleman said it was unclear what caused the derailment or how many cars tumbled into the river.

The Bakken reserve, in North Dakota, Montana and Canada, is a hotbed of fracking: Wikipedia is especially prescient here:

The application of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies have caused a boom in Bakken production since 2000. By the end of 2010, oil production rates had reached 458,000 barrels (72,800 m³) per day, thereby outstripping the pipeline capacity to ship oil out of the Bakken.^[9][10] There is some controversy over the safety of shipping it by rail.^[11] This was illustrated by the 2013 Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in which a unit train carrying 77 tank cars full of highly volatile Bakken oil through Quebec from North Dakota to the Irving Oil Refinery in New Brunswick derailed and exploded in the town centre of Lac-Mégantic, destroying 30 buildings (half the downtown core) and killing 47 people.^[12] The explosion was estimated to have a 1-kilometre (0.62 mi) blast radius.^[13]

Water treatment plants are affected, as the river is used for drinking water by several towns in the area. The LA Times:

West Virginia American Water shut down its Montgomery treatment plant because the facility draws water from an area near the incident.

"We expect that approximately 2,000 customers in the Montgomery area will lose their water service within a few hours if the plant remains shut down," the company said on Facebook\P [sic]

The plant will not be reopened until it is confirmed the water is safe, it said.

Part of the problem is that oil trains are long, and can blow up anywhere en route. According to the BBC:

The train consisted of two locomotives and 109 wagons and was travelling from North Dakota to Yorktown, Virginia.

By the way, the price of oil is near the break-even price of Bakken crude:

As of January 2015, estimates varied on the break-even oil price for drilling Bakken wells. The North Dakota Department of Natural Resources estimated overall break-even to be just below US$40 per barrel. An analyst for Wood McKenzie said that the overall break-even price was US$62/barrel, but in high-productivity areas such as Sanish Field and Parshall Oil Field, the break-even price was US$38-US$40 per barrel.^[14]

Is the stuff even worth fracking, digging and shipping? If you're a capital investor, you already know the answer — you can't cash in a closed well, especially if you've spent (or borrowed) the money up front to open it.

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Keep On Doing

This is, of course, an obvious story, and an obviously wrong thing to do. The devil at the output end — emissions that cause global warming — are chained to (entirely dependent on) the devil at the input end, where the carbon is acquired and used. We're being killed by both.


Courtesy photo Matthew Thomas. Flames shoot skyward after a CSX train derailed near Mount Carbon, W.Va., on Monday.

And don't let the pipeline addicts fool you. Pipelines are as unsafe as any other way of transporting poison. You have a choice — exploding fiery trains, or leaking poisonous pipelines. Some choice, right?

The industry won't tell you this, but there is a third choice — get off of oil entirely. Damned if you do, saved if you never go near the stuff again. It's up to you, West Virginia. This time around, you're the one paying the price.

GP

Another Day, Another Fred Upton Oil Spill In Southwest Michigan

A gas pipeline owned by Trans Canada, the Keystone XL villains, and running from Canada to Texas ruptured... but not in Canada nor in Texas. The victims were in Michigan, in Berrien County, ironically, the second most populous county in MI-06, the home district of House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman, "drill, baby, drill" zombie Fred Upton. The county leans Republican. Upton wins there (56% in 2012) and so did Romney (53%) and failed GOP senate candidate Pete Hoekstra (50%). Upton has been one of the leading figures in the country pushing a Big OIl and Gas agenda that includes more dangerous pipelines, tax breaks, loopholes galore and everything their lawyers and lobbyists come up with to boost profits at the expense of consumers. Since 1990, Upton has taken $646,950 from Big Oil; in 2012 alone they gave him $208,300 and so far this year, he's scooped up $177,450. They like Upton. He bottles up environmental studies and green energy bills in his committee and lets their lobbyists have final say over every bill that passes out of the committee.

That works well for Big Oil… but not so well for ordinary residents of his own southwest Michigan district, like the 500 people forced out of their homes because of the latest oil pipeline explosion this week.

Vic Rogers, a farmer that lives just a quarter mile from where the blast occurred, says he heard a loud noise around 2 a.m. and came outside to see a geyser of mud and dirt 200 feet in the area.

The area around the pipeline is now swampy.

Rogers says Trans Canada, the company that owns the pipeline, has advised him that his three acres of potatoes around the explosion may be contaminated and should not be harvested.

Rogers says he's lived on this farm his entire life and he recalls as a child similar pipeline explosion some 40 years ago, when the company was putting in a second gas line.

He says back then the walls of his home were cracked.

A representative from Trans Canada says the line that broke was a large main, 24 to 30 inches in diameter.

The spokesperson says soon, after the system indicated a drop in pressure, the automatic valves started to shut both sides of the line.

The company does not know what caused the rupture and they say a thorough investigation will be conducted. Results could take weeks if not months.

In the meantime, people are worried about clean-up and about the quality of the water and soil.

1 p.m. UPDATE: The Berrien Co. Sheriff's Office tells WSBT that the evacuation order is still in place, pending an all-clear on air quality checks.

How many counties in Michigan have to be polluted by oil spills before voters in MI-06 throw Upton out? In 2010 the congressman who the L.A. Times dubbed the "biggest threat to planet Earth on planet Earth" saw another catastrophic oil spill from the industry that finances his political career-- this one in Calhoun county. In July of 2010 another oil pipeline broke and polluted the Kalamazoo River, the largest inland oil spill (over a million gallons) and one of the most expensive spills, not just in Michigan, but anywhere in America. Like the Keystone XL Pipeline being pushed so aggressively by Upton and his right-wing, bought-off allies, this pipeline also carried highly toxic bitumen, heavy Canadian oil sands, that sank to the bottom of the river.

The Canadian company, which was fined $3.7 million for negligence, estimated the cleanup costs could go as high as $5 million and take weeks. It's been years and the costs are $765 million. Cleanup efforts were still being conducted at the end of 2013. Watch this short video about the oil company coverup.

Blue America has endorsed Paul Clements, the progressive Democrat running against Upton this year. Steve Israel and the DCCC are, once again, working hard to protect Upton is a very tight swing district. Upton would have virtually no chance to be reelected without the diktat from Israel that the DCCC not help Clements. Israel does not target GOP leaders of committee chairmen (in return for his own immunity) and he does not target fellow frat brothers in his ridiculous Center Aisle Caucus (like Upton). That pretty much explains why the Republicans will keep control of the House until Pelosi fires Israel. That won't happen this cycle. If you'd like to help replace Fred Upton with Paul Clements, you can contribute directly to Paul's campaign here. You're never hear anything remotely like this from Fred Upton… It's Paul's statements on Climate Change and the environment:

Climate change is the greatest threat to Michigan and to the world in the 21st century. We need to keep global warming under two degrees Celsius, but this takes a strong international agreement limiting greenhouse gas emissions in each country. Such an agreement can only be reached with American leadership.

Recently Michigan has seen failures of apple and cherry crops, Lake Michigan at historic lows, some of the hottest and driest summers in our history, and increased flooding from stronger storms and heavier rainfall. These and other influences from climate change are likely to get worse. With runaway climate change we could lose half our species of plants, trees, animals and birds. West Michigan could have a climate similar to West Texas by the end of the century, with summers seven degrees Fahrenheit hotter than today. But around the world it would be even more disastrous. Runaway climate change is likely to cause droughts and floods that drive millions from their homes, collapsing governments, and wars over water and other resources.

The technology exists to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius. Southwest Michigan must lead in manufacturing based on this technology. America must take the lead to negotiate an international agreement, address the harms from climate change, and develop the technologies for a clean energy future.

…In America and around the world we are “mining” natural resources such as water supplies, fisheries, and forests. We are withdrawing more each year than nature regenerates. Also, polluters and others who harm the environment usually do not pay the cost of their pollution.

We should move toward full cost accounting, taxing polluters for environmental harms. For example, coal-based power plants should be taxed for the health effects from their pollution, and nuclear energy, oil and natural gas companies should be held liable for accidents and other harms they may cause.

Michigan is blessed with great lakes, forests, rivers and wildlife. It is our responsibility to sustain these blessings for future generations.

OK, The GOP Wants To Rape And Plunder The Environment-- What About The Democrats?

The wonders of tar sands oil comes to beautiful Michigan

I was uneasy about Obama right from the start. I did vote for him in 2008, despite my fears that he was a corporate shill masquerading as a progressive. When his first term proved me right, I had no problem at all voting for a third party candidate in 2012. But I must say, there was one policy area where I actually did trust Obama and believed everything he said: the environment, especially in regard to global warming. His administration hasn't lived up. They're obviously not a bunch of rapacious plunderers like any garden variety GOP administration but they haven't done half as well as what was desperately needed. What surprised me this week is that a Gallup survey indicates that a plurality of Americans agree that a lot more needs to be done to protect the environment.

Americans tilt toward the view that the government is doing too little to protect the environment-- at 47%-- while 16% say it is doing too much. Another 35% say the government's efforts on the environment are about right. These views have not changed much since 2010, although Americans in most years between 1992 and 2006 were more likely than they are today to say the government was doing too little to protect the environment.

...Significantly more Democrats (59%) than Republicans (33%) say the government is doing too little to protect the environment-- reflecting general philosophical differences in approach to the role of government across party lines. And, concomitantly, more than one in four Republicans vs. 2% of Democrats say the government is doing too much to protect the environment.

Of course it isn't only Republicans who sell out to the corporate special interests and criminally participate in wrecking the environment. The highest lifetime score for any Republican, a dismal 38.41, is held by New Jersey mainstream conservative Frank LoBiondo. There are 21 House Democrats with worse scores! With the exception of 4 astonishingly corrupt Blue Dogs-- John Barrow (GA), Henry Cuellar (TX), Collin Peterson (MN) and Jim Costa (CA)-- all the Democrats with the low scores are freshmen. In fact the only freshmen with 100% pro-environmental scores are

• Joyce Beatty (D-OH)
• Tony Cardenas (D-CA)
• Matt Cartwright (D-PA)
• Jared Huffman (D-CA)
• Alan Lowenthal (D-CA)
• Rick Nolan (D-MN)
• Donald Payne (D-NJ)
• Mark Pocan (D-WI)
• Mark Takano (D-CA)
• Mark Veasey (D-TX)

The only other freshman with a stellar progressive voting record is Carol Shea Porter (D-NH). No one else cuts the mustard, although only one has a zero rating similar to a few dozen Republicans: ConservaDem Gloria Negrete McLeod (CA). The House hasn't voted on the Keystone XL pipeline yet. The Senate kind of did. Last week, North Dakota Big Oil and Gas shill John Hoeven introduced an amendment promoting it and it cleared the Democratically-controlled Senate 62-37, every single Republican and 17 Democrats voted YES, these Democrats:

• Max Baucus (MT), who was actually a cosponsor with Hoeven (and has taken $375,315 from Big Oil and Gas)
• Mark Begich (AK- $185,205)
• Michael Bennet (CO- $149,920)
• Tom Carper (DE- $88,060)
• Bob Casey (PA- $131,350)
• Chris Coons (DE)
• Joe Donnelly (IN)
• Kay Hagan (NC)
• Heidi Heitkamp (ND- $58,250)
• Tim Johnson (SD- $130,006)
• Mary Landrieu (LA- $967,474)
• Joe Manchin (WV- $253,400)
• Claire McCaskill (MO- $84,208)
• Bill Nelson (FL- $93,617)
• Mark Pryor (AR- $197,800)
• John Tester (MT-$58,366)
• Mark Warner (VA- $82,700)

The video above is a campaign ad from Karl Rove protege Tim Griffin. He now represents Mayflower, Arkansas, the town drowning in tar sands oil. So... speaking of the Keystone Pipeline that the Republicans and other conservative whores are so eager to see approved, Brad Plummer wrote about a trip down the pipeline from Alberta to Texas in yesterday's Washington Post a kind of a synopsis of a book by his colleague Steven Mufson. Key points:

1) Extracting oil from tar sands is carbon-intensive, but Shell thinks it can be viable even with a carbon tax

2) In Alberta, the process of mining tar sands for oil has produced huge “tailings” ponds that can be a menace to birds.

3) TransCanada has been buying up rights-of-way across the Great Plains in anticipation that the pipeline will be approved-- and, when necessary, asking the courts to exercise eminent domain

4) The oil industry in North Dakota is now growing so fast that companies are struggling to find workers.

5) TransCanada is promising that it now has the technology to guard against pipeline leaks…

6) …But many environmentalists say that tar-sands pipelines are overly leak prone

7) The oil in the Keystone Pipeline is destined for Port Arthur, Tex., which has seen a boom in refinery capacity-- but without much benefit to the actual city

Serious tar sands oil spills in Arkansas and Minnesota last week serve as another warning to greedy politicians eager to please their corporate masters.

An ExxonMobil pipeline transporting heavy crude from Canada ruptured Friday dumping thousands of barrels of oil and water in an Arkansas subdivision, forcing the evacuation of almost two dozen homes according to Reuters. Exxon's Pegasus pipeline-- which has a capacity of more than 90,000 barrels per day-- was shut down shortly after the leak was discovered. Company officials had no estimate on when the pipeline might reopen as of Sunday. The incident in Arkansas came just days after a train carrying Canadian oil derailed in Western Minnesota spilling an estimated 30,000 gallons of crude.

Chris Hayes had more on the Arkansas catastrophe-- and what it says out our oil-soaked future-- on his new MSNBC show.

Random Musings on 2010 (4)

Paraguayan superpatriot Larissa Riquelme: Playboy Brazil hearts the lovely Larissa, who really, really loves her countrymen -- see No. 3. Note: There are racier clips of the pride of Paraguay online, but we're taking the, er, higher road here. (Okay, higher-ish.)

by Noah

1. Regarding Leslie Stahl’s recent Boehner interview on 60 Minutes: I'm no Obama fan, but Stahl wasted no time in revealing her pro-Republican bias. Two questions in, she made the conflict a matter of President Obama’s “tone,” as if he were to blame, not Boehner. No mention of his “hell no you can’t” tone. Nope. It was all on the President. As Howie said in his post the day after, Stahl’s interview seemed completely scripted. She let Boehner whine about how President Obama should note that the campaign is over, and then she let him proceed to spew one Repug campaign slogan after another.

Stahl’s phony-assed interview was as bad as, if not worse than, any of the contrived crap we see on Fox. She disgraced 60 Minutes. It was what I call “press-release journalism” at its worst. What’s next? Hannity joins 60 Minutes?

2. Speaking of Boehner-boy, you know what his constant weeping says to me? It says that the new speaker of the House, the guy who is third in line for the White House, is mentally and/or emotionally unstable. Something unhealthy is going on, threatening to boil to the surface. Can you imagine if President Obama was all weepy all the time? There’d be even more screaming for his removal from office than there has been. Darrell Issa would be investigating his psychological profile and Fox and CNN would be calling him unfit for office. As it is, it will be interesting to see how Boehner deals with the pressure of the job he has.

3. If I was giving out awards this year, Paraguayan lingerie model Larissa Riquelme would get the “Some People Only Get 10 Minutes Of Fame” Award. It just happens that Larrisa is a very enthusiastic cheerleader for her country’s World Cup (soccer) team. She even pledged to run naked through the streets of Asunción if her team won the World Cup. Alas, her team didn’t quite get to the finals. What’s a double-D-cup exhibionista to do? Ms. Riquelme decided to run wild and run free through Asunción anyway, wearing only her aura of patriotism. Funny, I get the feeling she would have pulled off her stunt even if Paraguay had no team at all. Her ego got even more of the best of her when she said her run “will be a present to all of the players, and for the people in Paraguay to enjoy.”

Just call it the “Running of the Boobs.” If she was Italian, Larissa -- who stores her Blackberry in her own soft, warm, heaving personal silicon valley (where else?) -- would be president of her country already! Run, Larissa! Run until you’re playing soccer with your own tits!

Not to be outdone in the "class" area, Dutch porn star Bobbi Eden pledged to give a BJ to all of her Twitter followers, all 23,000 of them. Busy girl!

4. Explanation of the year: When Pastor George Alan Rekers of the Family Research Council was caught at Miami International with a male escort, he quickly spun the tale that he had hired the escort strictly to carry his luggage. Never mind that photos showed Rekers handling his own baggage. Rekers made his reputation -- his bones, if you will -- by ceaselessly preaching that gays can be converted, not to Christianity, but to heterosexuality. The fact that the company that Rekers hired his escort from is called Rentboy and has a very explicit website shouldn’t raise any flags. Nope, no way! Rekers’ escort, identified as Lucien, has stated that Rekers paid for daily nude total-body massages (family research?) and created a name for his preferred massage techinique, “The Long Stroke.” In the Lord’s Kingdom, there are many closets.

5. On June 4, McDonald's recalled some special promotional glasses because they contained toxins. I note that they have yet to recall their burgers.

6. Also in early June, Glenn Beck went on one of his tantrums and put the blame for 9/11 on Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Alsud, aka the world’s 19th-richest man and the second-largest shareholder in News Corporation, the corporate parent of Fox News. The prince’s share of NewsCorp is second only to that of Rupert Murdoch himself. Apparently unaware that he was going after one of his own bosses, Beck went on and on about how the prince not only was linked to 9/11 but has contributed large sums to Harvard and Georgetown, where there are studies programs named after him, and how the prince had come to NYC and offended Rudy Guiliani by offering a $10 million check after 9/11 -- some sort of guilt money, perhaps. The prince even blamed U.S. policy for the 9/11 attacks.

But Beck forgot at least one thing: The Fox check that he puts in the bank every week is backed by money that comes from the prince’s large investment in the company he works for. Beck, by his own definition, is as guilty of accepting tainted money as Georgetown and Harvard. So, while Rudy and most New Yorkers were offended when the prince offered his tainted money, Glenn Beck? Not so much.

Said Glenn:

Giuliani said, "Take your check. We don't want your money. There is no way, America, that if it was us, that we would allow that to happen."

But what does Glenn do? Answer: He’s glad to take the check, every week. The immense irony of a Saudi who decries U.S. policy helping to fund Fox News has escaped him and the rest of the Fox psychopaths entirely. Some brains are just too primitive to be able to process the info.

7. Six weeks after the Gulf oil fiasco began, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour was still saying that the gusher wasn’t a problem, that it was just a “harmless sheen” on the water and “it’s not poisonous.” Well, what should we expect? He was a national chairman of the Republican Party. He even said that the media was causing the economic problems caused by the rig blowup. Oh, and when President Obama came to his state, he managed to be out of town each time. I guess he didn’t want to be photographed with a, you know, er, a, that one. What a load! Go for a swim, Haley.

8. At the same time Barbour was spouting his nonsense, BP head Tony Hayward was saying he wanted his life back, and saying he’ll consider delaying or reducing a $10 billion payout to shareholders if Americans don't say nicer things about him and BP. In most circles, such things are considered blackmail, and petulant and childish too. The truly amazing thing, though, is not the wealth of oil his company has but his wealth of corporate arrogance. This ass-wipe is going around making his prissybrit demands when, in the world the rest of us inhabit, he's a prime candidate for a truck-dragging down the turnpike, or at least a 30-year stay in Gitmo.

My court system would make him swim to Cuba with Haley Barbour. This is the guy who killed the Gulf. If it kills him in return, it’s only fitting. Hayward and Barbour wouldn’t get 600 yards before they started trying to use each other as a support float. Hayward is a villain cut from the same cloth as those in James Bond movies. His greed kept him from adopting safety measures like a $500K acoustic switch that could have prevented the disaster, just like Dubya could have prevented 9/11 by reading a memo about people who wanted to hijack some planes. Once the disaster happened, Hayward wouldn’t let those doing the cleanup wear respirators or other safety gear, because it made his company look bad. This was after we knew what happened to the health of those cleaning up “the pile” at the WTC. This walking piece of shit has poisoned an ocean and now deliberately inflicts illness against those who shovel his shit against his cancerous tide.

Does humankind get any more evil? Where is he on the list? Dr. No? Stavro Blofeld? Or the all-too-real-life evildoers Idi Amin or Pol Pot? It makes me wonder just who my senators are laughing, drinking and having dinner with tonight. Hayward is just one of his kind.

9. New Kentucky Teabagger Sen. Dr. Rand Paul is about to avail himself of a very nice government health plan. He also pulled in half of his fees as a doctor from Medicare. That’s all very good for him, but for you? He wants to undo the Obama healthcare reform, and Medicare. You get nothing. To hypocrites like Dr. Paul, you are nothing. He’s probably already best buds with Maryland’s new Congressdope Dr. Andy Harris.

10. Someone could set up a nice little business doing interventions to rescue Fox viewers. If the holidays show families one thing, it’s that just about every family has a Fox cultist in their midst. Perhaps the A&E Intervention TV show could do a spinoff.

Thirty years ago families would worry about a family member's well-being when that family member fell under the spell of some brainwashing crackpot guru and joined a cult. Now the crackpot gurus have prime-time TV shows and a whole network dedicated to creating a bizarro world of misinformation and hate financed by two Australian and Saudi Arabian billionaires. So there are now many, many more brainwashed victims walking around like batalions of Manson Girls. In fact, Charlie is probably quite proud, and very jealous, eagerly anticipating so much more chaos than just his oft-dreamed-of race war

I foresee a thriving future for the professional interventionist field! Medical schools will soon start offering tens of thousands of doctoral degrees in intervention and rehab. The need is growing so large that it may even put a huge dent in the unemployment figures. Need a job? Become an interventionist! The future is wide open -- if there is a future!


NOAH'S YEAR 2010 IN REVIEW

10 Random Musings (1)
2010, Looking Back: To Republicans, It Was So Much More Than Just a Speech to Kids
Random Musings on 2010 (2)
Random Musings on 2010 (3)

And don't forget 2009's 12 Days of Christmas Scorn.

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The rescue: the week after

A rescuer in the mine in Yuzhou, China, where -- with 30 miners already known dead -- hope was all but abandoned for the still-missing seven.

by Ken

When I wrote last week, bleary-eyed from my overnight glued-to-the-tube vigil, about the still-ongoing Chilean mine rescue, I noted in closing:

There will be plenty of time to talk about the cost of this whole operation, and where it fits into the grand scheme of the socioeconomic order. For now, I'm as dumbfounded as anybody.

Fortunately, The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik has covered a good deal of that still-to-be-covered territory in a "Talk of the Town Piece, "A Way Out" (under the heading "Story of the Week"), in the new issue (Oct. 25).

I'm pleased to see that Gopnik's basic take isn't much different from mine.

Chilean miner madness: it has been the condition of the past week in New York City, despite the fact that it is, in essence, a small story involving a country that no one has paid much attention to, and with no obvious ripples affecting us here in the United States. . . . [W]ho wouldn't be moved by hearing the Chilean national anthem, sung by proud Chileans as the miners rose to the surface. Chilean exceptionalism! it's a beautiful thing.

The truth is that this was an honest-to-God human-interest story, whose appeal is the eternal appeal of all child-down-a-well sstories; it is a story of something bad that turned out fine in the end. In the repetitive ribbon of stories that enwrap our existence, there are too few tales of this kind. . . . Only in a handful of stories, curiously set in places very high or very low -- astronauts lost in space, mountaineers marooned on summits, and these trapped miners -- is there hope of a true happy ending, in which losses are restored and sorrows cease.

Gopnik suggests some of the ways in which the rescue might be Hollywoodified, including "relocat[ion] to West Virginia, where the men can be blonder and speak English." He notes, however:

The real heroes are hard to dramatize -- the rescue workers who went down into the mine to show the miners how the rescue would work, and then stayed there till the end. True courage is mostly choices, not gestures -- difficult to make dramatic.

And then he gets into some of that stuff I left for some later time.

In the midst of it all, three significant facts got lost: what was being mined (copper and gold); how much a Chilean miner typically earns (sixteen hundred dollars a month); and how many Chilean miners have died in accidents in the past decade (about three hundred and forty).

At the end of the week, after every miner was up,. safe and sound, it was odd to see how eager the TV anchors were to insist that the worst lay ahead for them -- and not just for the miner whose mistress showed up in place of his wife. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a real thing, but let's not underestimate the power of post-traumatic stress delight: thierty-three men can now say, for the rest of their lives, "At least I'm not trapped down at the bottom of a mine." Certainly, veterans of war suffer, but how many also shine with the quiet feeling that, from now on, life can never get quiet enough. People are trapped by circumstances; other people help them. There is a way out. Since this is the fable that every life hopes to trace, maybe the madness isn't so mad at all.

In addition to the endless coverage, as Gopnik notes, of the prophesied gloom and doom for the rescued 33, already we're seeing stories about splits among them (cf. "Rescued Miners' Secrecy Pact Erodes in Spotlight"), including breeches of supposed "unity" pacts on post-rescue activities and cooperative profiteering. I don't care. I don't propose to pay any attention.

If there are guys who think they can make a killing on what they've been through, I don't begrudge them. If there are guys willing to sell themselves for a pittance, I feel bad for them. I will just note that nobody's going to make as much as a nickel off my interest.

I'm saddened to see reports that the death toll has reached 30 and hope was fading for the still-missing seven miners in Henan province, China ("Hopes Fade for China Miners After Deadly Leak"). Of course hopes for the 33 Chilean miners had also been all but written off. The Chinese outcome, however, is overwhelmingly the more usual one.

The CNN correspondent in Hong Kong who was monitoring online response to the rescue doings overnight noted a wave of bitterness from Chinese commenters who paid tribute to the Chilean government's resolve to rescue its miners, in contrast to their own government's record of relative insouciance. As Gopnik notes, one of the factors in the Chilean government's determination was its own poor record with the mine disasters that are apparently a regular occurrence in mining the subterranean riches of Chile's desolate northern Atacama desert.

Certainly I'm hoping some attention will rub off onto the dreadful U.S. record of mine safety, and safety with respect to resource extraction generally, in the Glorious Era of Deregulation, in which finally we succeeded in getting that damned gummint off our backs. The Bush regime's unapologetic contempt for the very idea of enforcing even the laws and regulations on the books could only be read as acceptance that the human toll -- in deaths, incapacitations, and just plain physical deterioration, without even getting into the vast realm of environmental spoilage -- is "the price we pay" for obtaining those resources, an attitude that appeared to have been carried over intact into the Obama administration version of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, helping lay the groundwork for the Gulf oil-spill disaster.

Without in any way diminishing the uplift of the worldwide outpouring of interest and concern evidenced during the Chilean rescue, which understandably was the primary concern until the trapped miners were safely above ground, we can see, I think, that longer-term what should concern us is the exceptional nature of that outcome.

Yesterday the Scranton Times-Tribune published this editorial:

Make more happy endings

People around the world watched joyfully last week as, one by one, 33 Chilean miners who had been trapped a half mile underground for six weeks emerged into the arms of their loved ones.

The event had special resonance for Northeast Pennsylvania, where most older residents easily can recall the shock, tension and, most often, despair rather than joy resulting from deep-mine accidents.

It's worth noting that the successful rescue was at least partly due to American engineering expertise, from the involvement of NASA engineers who designed the rescue capsule, to American drilling experts who responded to the scene from as far away as Afghanistan.

And it's a reminder as well that mine safety in the United States itself remains a work in progress - the most recent evidence of which was the explosion in April that killed 29 miners at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia.

The technology used to extricate the Chilean miners is marvelous. But the objective in the United States should be to ensure that safety regulation and enforcement preclude the need to use that technology.

"A work in progress" seems an awfully kindly characterization, especially with reference to the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, which was presided over by Massey Energy's career-criminal CEO Don Blankenship, whose business is essentially built on spitting at mining laws and regulations, and who by now should surely be serving a host of concurrent life sentences for the murders of his miners (presuming he's tried by a judge he hasn't bought) rather than proclaiming government efforts to regulate mine safety "as silly as global warming."

Every day a thug like Blankenship goes unindicted is another day of mockery of any pretense to concern for either the people he employs or the land he befouls.

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