Matters of Opinion

... Revving up the vacuum.

- Nature provides a vacuum - Buffalo News Editorial
   It’s no good to rely on creatures at the bottom of the food chain to make up for errors made at the top of the corporate ladder. But it does appear that a certain kind of ocean-going bacteria knows its business better than the people who were supposed to be guaranteeing the safety of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
   [New microbe discovered eating oil spill in Gulf - Buffalo News 8/25/10] 
   Of course, that’s the way it is with microbes and men. The tiny creatures are about one thing — finding something to eat. The big men are about something else — finding someone else to blame.
   [Report: BP probe faults employees on Gulf blowout - Buffalo News 8/30/10] 
   Even as the various investigations of the causes of the April 20 explosion at the BP drilling project continued in recent days, bringing more revelations of carelessness and finger-pointing, the necessarily oversimplified reports of scientists looking into the disaster’s results provided a glimmer of hope that the earth may not be as defenseless as we had feared. ...
   Loosing a large colony of oil-eating microbes on the next oil spill, then, might also create what’s called a hypoxic dead zone — though work being done on the oil spill area now suggests that side-effect is little seen.
   So far, then, the promise of an elixir that cures all manner of oil spills remains science fiction.
   The facts, still emerging, continue to suggest that greedy corporate executives were seeking profit while off-loading responsibility. Those people failed to build the kind of safety regime that would seem basic for any company or companies that, one would normally suppose, would prefer that their multibillion-dollar investments not be blown to bits before the world’s — and their stockholders’ – eyes.
   Apparently, corporations will not behave in such a common-sense manner unless we, by law, require them to.
    [Wish I could claim that headline. It was the chief's brainstorm.] 

   Related:
- It could have been worse - Pensacola News Journal Editorial
   The bottom line: We can't trust the oil industry to police itself.
- New Orleans is counting on the Obama administration to deliver for our future - New Orleans Times-Picayune Editorial
- Oil spill fix is looking slippery - Northwest Florida Daily News Editorial
- BP claims process sure to be long ordeal - Tuscaloosa News Editorial
- Let them eat fish - Charlotte Dennett/The Huffington Post

-- George Pyle/The Buffalo News

Finding energy.

   Buffalo News Opinion section editorialistias today celebrate the growing use of alternative energy to power buildings and the release of some human potential in New York public schools.

- Boost alternative energy - Buffalo News Editorial
  As the millions of gallons of oil spilled and the billions of dollars of corporate and taxpayer assets spent in the Gulf of Mexico attest, the fossil-fuel economy is no cheap fix.
   The large-scale development of alternative sources of energy has been put off for decades, largely on the belief that they are somehow more expensive than the petroleum-based powerhouses we have relied on since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. And, measured in the most shortsighted ways possible, they usually are.
   If nothing else, solar energy, wind energy and the like are often seen as economic losers because their profits will not accumulate to the same powerful and well-connected corporations that we are accustomed to paying for our wasteful lifestyles.
   At the same time, the pollution that is the unavoidable byproduct of a carbon-based economy -- from the strip mine to the smokestack -- is not generally figured into the prices we pay per gallon, or per kilowatt-hour, or even per thousand cubic feet. Those costs show up in our taxes, our health care bills and other things that are detrimental to our quality of life -- such as the need to police the world and protect ourselves from petro-financed terrorism. ...
   Solar and wind energy ... may cost us money now in taxpayer subsidies or higher cost kilowatts. But those price tags can only come down as the technology advances and adoption becomes more widespread. And those price tags are much more likely to be complete, with none of the asterisks or hidden charges that come with fossil-fuel power.
   Energy should be like that. Clear as sunshine. Transparent as wind.

   Related:
- Reckless calls at Deepwater Horizon - New Orleans Times-Picayne Editorial
- BP should share research about impact of oil spill - Biloxi [Miss.] Sun Herald Editorial 
- Oil slick - Santa Rosa Press-Democrat Editorial
   But even if the leak has been controlled, the catastrophic effects of BP’s myriad failures will continue for a long time.
- Seafood safety - Dothan [Ala.] Eagle Editorial
- Oil giants form joint oil-spill-fighting venture without BP - MarketWatch
   Four of the big five Western oil majors have formed a $1 billion nonprofit joint venture aimed at combating future oil spills, possibly to head off stricter offshore-drilling rules.
- New York Power Authority's Great Lakes Offshore Wind Project and 100 MW Solar Photovoltaic Initiative.   
 

Jim Cameron to the rescue?

   The lead eddie in today's Buffalo News Opinion section:

- Get to the bottom - Buffalo News Editorial
   If any laws were broken in the human-caused disaster now swamping the Gulf of Mexico, then something is wrong with the humans who caused it. If such a thing can happen without breaking any laws, then something is wrong with the law.
   The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform — which killed 11 workers — is called an accident. And that is true, in the sense that nobody associated with well owner BP, rig operator Transocean or drilling contractor Halliburton could possibly have wanted it to happen.
   But it certainly should not have required the perfect clarity of hindsight to have known all along that the standards of care and level of oversight involved in the drilling of this well were far short of what should have been expected. ...
   The well is so deep, in an environment that few engineers have any knowledge of, that some have suggested the job ought to be turned over to James Cameron,* the filmmaker responsible for “Titanic” and “Avatar.” Cameron was also the creator of a lesser-known but more relevant adventure flick called “The Abyss,” in which the heroes who work on underwater drilling rigs prevail only with the intervention of a race of deep-water beings who, so far, have not presented their credentials to the Coast Guard.

   Related:
- Prosecuting Crimes Against the Earth - David M. Uhlmann/The New York Times
   No one thinks BP, Transocean or Halliburton intended to spill oil into the gulf. But given good evidence, the government could argue that the companies cut corners or deviated so much from standard industry practice that they knew a blowout could happen.
- How To Punish BP - Daniel Gross/Slate
   Your most creative, incisive and sadistic ideas for how to make the company suffer.  
- Will the oil spill force us to face facts about oil, energy policy? - Star-Ledger Editorial
   If this doesn’t shake us out of our addiction to oil, perhaps nothing will until the final drop is sucked out of the earth and burned.
- Oil rig cops are asleep at switch - Sacramento Bee Editorial
   Unfortunately, this sea change hasn't yet extended to the U.S. Department of Interior and its Minerals Management Service. As Shashank Bengali of McClatchy's Washington Bureau reported Thursday, the MMS this week was prepared to let oil firms go ahead with 31 deep-water drilling plans for the Gulf of Mexico, nearly half of which the agency had approved since the April 20 explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
- Louisiana deserves answers, Mr. President - New Orleans Times-Picayune Editorial
   Your visit is appreciated, Mr. President. But visiting Louisiana is not the same as listening to us and answering our questions.
- Why is Tony Hayward still on the job? - Eugene Robinson/The Washington Post
   How is it possible that BP chief executive Tony Hayward hasn't been fired? At this point, how can anyone believe a word the man says? If he told me my mother loves me, I'd want a second source. 

* OK. The original print version of this said the director's name was David Cameron. [That's somebody else.]
   I fixed it, not just because that makes it accurate, but also because I get to use the witty headline and then explain it with this:

-- George Pyle/The Buffalo News

Thinking globally, acting in Lockport

   The lead editorial in today's Buffalo News Opinion section is our take on the Copenhagen climate summit that concluded, somewhat anti-climactically -- but a little bit pro-climately -- earlier this month: Not much, but better than nothing:
- Moving ahead on climate
   The United States must now continue its leadership on this score, not only at conference tables but also, and perhaps more importantly, in laboratories and universities. It is there that the technological solutions to this problem, the ways to power a 21st century economy without 18th century smokestacks, will be developed, offered to the world and make the United States the global climate savior it always should have been.
   The official White House takeaway: "A Meaningful and Unprecedented Breakthrough Here in Copenhagen"
   Editorial views from The Los Angeles Times [U.S. must lead], The Syracuse Post-Standard [It's everyone's responsibility], The Oklahoman [It's all a load of liberal guilt.], The Louisville Courier-Journal [Obama did well just to avoid collapse.], and The Cleveland Plain Dealer [Nice side deal on U.S.-Russian arms.]

   The second eddie is at least something that's a little easier to get your head around.
- A vision in Lockport
   Just when it seemed as if a small section of Genesee and Locust streets in the City of Lockport would end up another statistic among run-down, violence-plagued neighborhoods, hard work by dedicated community activists and the intervention of a Syracuse nonprofit organization may wind up saving the day.
   Background from The Buffalo News and The Lockport Union-Sun & Journal.

-- George Pyle/The Buffalo News
  [AP Photo above is a Greenpeace billboard in the Copenhagen airport, showing a computer-aged photo of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva as he might look in the year 2020. Which gives us a song cue to go out on.]
   

The most important man you never heard of.

   I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space.
- Adm. James T. Kirk

   Norman Borlaug was from Iowa, too. He worked mostly in Mexico, Africa and Asia, but he might as well have been light years away for all the attention the news media paid little attention to him. Until he died a week ago last Saturday at the age of 95. 
- Borlaug, who saved millions from hunger, dies  
    Scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug rose from his childhood on an Iowa farm to develop a type of wheat that helped feed the world, fostering a movement that is credited with saving up to 1 billion people from starvation. [AP/The Buffalo News. Honors list]

    Our editorial praised his accomplishments, with a little "yes, but" thrown in:
- A giant passes
   The first round of the Green Revolution is not sustainable. But, if the next generation is as smart and as industrious as Norman Borlaug was, it won’t have to be.

   A few years ago, I wrote a book about him. OK, it was a page (43) in a book about the sins of modern agriculture called "Raising Less Corn, More Hell."
   Anything is better than mass starvation, plus all the migration, social upheaval, epidemics, and wars that would certainly accompany any significant increase in the number of hungry people. Thus, when the scientist whose work was credited for sparking the Green Revolution, American agronomist Norman Borlaug, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970, it was not one of the science prizes. He received the Nobel Peace Prize.
    Still, this substantial victory has come at substantial costs, costs that have been driven by political and economic factors at least as much as by any changes in crop science. In fact, Borlaug could rightfully be compared to better-known atomic geniuses such as Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, and Enrico Fermi, whose understanding and development of nuclear energy were co-opted to become the property of governments and industries that would happily sell a hundred Nobel Peace Prizes for short-term gain.

   Other commentary from The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Des Moines Register, National Post and The Wall Street Journal.

-- George Pyle/The Buffalo News