Well, Well, Well....

And here's a shock: it now appears that Halliburton, the company that brought us the Iraq War as well as the gutting of environmental regulations to promote the Marcellus Shale feeding frenzy, knew weeks beforehand that the cement mixture it planned to use to seal the bottom of the Deepwater Horizon well was unstable. Halliburton has steadfastly denied that it did anything wrong or that it had any prior knowledge of faulty methods or materials.

Halliburton lied.

And when Halliburton lied, 11 human workers--and countless non-human workers--died.

If the Iraq War is any indication, Halliburton's punishment for its criminal malfeasance and suppression of the truth will be . . . well, nothing.

When you go to the polls tomorrow, all fed up with the damn Democrats and itching to make a change, to get the country back on track, to axe Obamacare, to do away with the new regulations on Wall Street, to lock in tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent of Americans, or whatever the hell else you plan to vote for, remember this: a vote for the Republicans is a vote for Halliburton, a vote for everything Halliburton stands for: rampant corporate greed and disregard for human (and non-human) life. It's not about limiting government, cutting taxes, restoring individual liberties, or any of that tea-party crap; it's about limiting government, cutting taxes, and restoring individual liberties for the people and corporations who are ruining this country and this world.

But hey, if you can live with that, vote for Halliburton. Maybe they'll be so thankful they'll clean up their act.

Oil's Well That Ends Well

Reports are that as of Sunday, the relief well that BP dug to intersect with the blown-out Deepwater Horizon well has served its purpose: the flow of oil into the Gulf has stopped.

This is, of course, good news. The bad news is that, in the meantime, untold millions of gallons have gushed into the Gulf. The biota, non-human and human, in the affected area will never be the same.

The well blew on April 20. It's now September 22. That's five mighty momentous months.

If this incident has taught us any lesson, it's that some things are far easier to start than to stop. Wars. Wildfires. Love affairs.

And, gee, wells.

Will the closing of the BP well mark a moment of rebirth, or simply a pause in the ruinous train of consequences that brought us to this point? When we look back at this event twenty years from now, will we see this day as a boost for clean energy, or a reprieve for its dirty predecessor?

It's impossible to say. On the one hand, even as I write, new wells--oil and natural gas--are being dug, around the world as well as in my own backyard. On the other, a growing coalition of activists, scientists, and politicians is moving, however haltingly, in the direction of a new energy future.

We commemorate September 11 as the day our nation was confronted with, and triumphed over, a great evil. Let's hope that, years from now, we remember its double--September 22--in somewhat the same way, as a triumph over our own worst instincts and as a birthday for the good.

Going up in Flames

For those who cling to the illusion that natural gas is a cleaner, safer source of energy than oil--and that would include all the politicians, businesspeople, and lobbyists in my home state pushing natural gas drilling as the solution to our energy woes--yesterday's natural gas explosion in San Bruno, California might come as a shock. Following close on the heels of the BP oil well blowout, this massive explosion--which killed at least six people, wounded many others, destroyed over 50 homes, and smothered the horizon in flames--should tell us that there simply is no safe source of energy that involves drilling or burning.

To drill is to kill. If only to burn were to learn.

The California explosion didn't involve drilling, of course. But it still staggers the imagination that gas prospectors in my state--in my city--are talking about digging wells near, around, and even under people's homes. The stuff they're digging for isn't cotton candy, after all. It's a flammable, poisonous, deadly substance. It blows up. It makes people (and other living things) sick. It makes people (and others) die. And let's not forget that burning it does cause greenhouse gas emissions. Less is not none.

The more I think about this issue, the more I perceive our society to be paralyzed--unwilling or unable to move, to develop, to change. I keep wondering what it's going to take to jolt us out of this fossil fuel haze we're living in. A natural gas explosion that kills 10,000 people? An oil spill that we just can't plug? Yesterday's blast happened very near a public playground, which fortunately was deserted at the time. But is that what it's going to take?

I hope not. I hope no children are sacrificed on the altars of our addiction.

But I know that they are sacrificed every day: sickened, killed, brain-damaged, deprived of their present and future.

I read yesterday that Barack Obama, offered a free solar panel for the White House (one of the old, but still functional, panels installed by Jimmy Carter and removed by Ronald Reagan), refused to commit to the installation, his press secretary explaining that the issue was "complicated." Personally, I don't see the complication. He's got children. What kind of future does he want for them?

Apparently, one that's going up in flames.

3-D Versus Reali-D

I saw my first 3-D movie a few days ago: Toy Story 3. I'd missed the brief, late-70s 3-D craze; it didn't last long, it wasn't supposed to be very good, I wasn't very interested. But these days, it seems as if every kids' movie, action movie, or fantasy/sci-fi movie is coming out in 3-D as well as 2-D options, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I didn't like it that much. It wasn't that it made me queasy or headachey (my main fears beforehand); it was that for me, it detracted from certain important elements of the viewing experience without adding enough compensatory benefits. First, the glasses darken the screen slightly, which I found bothersome. More important, the 3-D elements tend to deflect attention from the total composition of the shot; as a film guy, I like to see the whole screen, not just the single element that pops off the screen. And finally, to my thinking, those "eye-popping" elements (as they're always billed) didn't provide enough pop to justify their existence; they appeared moderately three-dimensional, but nowhere near as much as I'd been led to believe. And since only individual elements of any given shot possessed even that modest degree of three-dimensionality, the effect was ultimately counter-productive, emphasizing the flatness of everything else and in so doing destroying the illusion that was supposedly being achieved.

But even if they do figure out ways to improve or perfect the illusion, I wonder at a deeper level why we're so gung-ho about 3-D movies to begin with. Is this really something the culture needs, or even desires? Has there been a stampede or a crusade for movies that mimic reality? On the whole, I'm concerned that the lines we conventionally drew between the actual and the virtual, the real and the fantastic, the worthwhile and the frivolous or merely entertaining, are being assaulted: when people spend more time talking or texting on mobile devices than interacting with the people in front of them, when email supplants face-to-face communication and kids can name infinitely more brand logos than indigenous plants in their neighborhood, when our very bodies and the ground they inhabit take a back seat to immersive, but unreal, experiences, I worry about the profound consequences for our ability to live as a society, to engage in meaningful and intimate relationships, to care for the earth, to be truly creative, reflective, and wise. I addressed these worries a while ago in a short story, "Your Name Here," which concerns a society that has fashioned a virtual heaven, and in a creative nonfiction essay, "Positioning," which explores the implications of virtual technologies for our experience of space and place. I raise these worries again in light of the BP oil spill, the ongoing collapse of world markets and local neighborhoods, and the effects I've perceived in my own life of over-reliance on mediated reality.

Life has always been 3-D. Maybe movies shouldn't be. Maybe we need to keep stable and intact the lines between what is and what merely seems to be.

Yeah, That Should Work

Having apparently exhausted all the human, technological, and governmental resources at our disposal--this includes Kevin Costner's really big centrifuges, which didn't work at all--Alabama Governor Bob Riley has turned to another resource: God.

That is to say, he named yesterday a state day of prayer and urged Alabamians to pray for those affected by the oil spill.

Now, there's a long history in this country of declaring days of prayer. The Puritans did it (usually when the crop was bad, witches were causing trouble, or Native Americans were peskily taking up arms to remain on their lands). Presidents have called such days during times of social unrest, economic downturn, and war. It seems that a group called "Catholics against Obamacare" called a day of prayer for September 11, 2009 in hopes of "Barack Obama's conversion and for the truth about his health care bill to come out." So there's ample precedent for Riley's call.

And I guess, in the big scheme of things, such a call is fairly harmless. That is, while it's unlikely to produce any tangible benefits--it certainly won't plug the leak, purge the waters and beaches, save the pelicans, or contribute one iota toward the clean-up effort--it won't actually make matters worse (as most of the technological shenanigans of the past months have).

But there is a way of thinking that suggests that days of prayer are ultimately counter-productive. If we content ourselves with praying, are we not avoiding the actions (both short-term and long-term) that might truly resolve the problem? Even worse, are we not giving ourselves license to continue performing the actions that are producing the problem? Hey, I PRAYED! So what if I bought an SUV and voted for a "drill, baby, drill" candidate?

This is why civil rights leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King always linked prayer to action and reform. For these leaders, prayer was not an end in itself; it was preparation--mental, spiritual, social--for the real work that had yet to be performed. It was a means of purification, yes--but purification in the interest of selfless action, not purification in order to proclaim, self-servingly, one's own moral rectitude. Prayer to address the problem, not to wash one's hands of it.

That's the kind of prayer we need now. Because frankly, that water's pretty oily for hand-washing.

All Apologies

BP has now released a commercial apologizing for the catastrophic (and apparently unstoppable) oil spill in the Gulf. In the commercial, CEO Tony Hayward, earlier blasted for his off-the-cuff "get my life back" comment, stares earnestly into the camera and tells everyone that BP is trying its very hardest to clean up the mess. He praises the government, assures citizens that no tax dollars will go to the clean-up, expresses his deepest concern for the people of the Gulf states, and takes "full responsibility" for the environmental disaster.

Meanwhile, in the world of sports, Jim Joyce, the umpire whose bad call deprived pitcher Armando Galarraga of a perfect game, issued an apology of his own, this one apparently full of profanity--at least, the reports I read had lots of words bleeped out--in which he took full responsibility for the muffed call. A friend of mine, posting the story on Facebook, suggested that Joyce's willingness to apologize, and the gracious acceptance of said apology by everyone affected by his call, showed the sort of moral courage that BP lacks. Indeed, she even went so far as to say (I'm quoting,and not kidding) that "If Joyce, Galarraga, and [manager Jim] Leyland ran BP, there wouldn't be a spill or the spectacle of the guy at the top whining that he wants his life back. . . ."

Frankly, I don't follow the logic. If Jim Leyland ran BP, he'd drill holes into the ocean floor; that's what the CEOs of oil companies do. And when one of those holes sprang a leak, as it most assuredly would, he'd apologize, just as Hayward has (however belatedly) apologized, because that's also what the CEOs of oil companies do.

But who cares? Apologies are easy; hell, I make them all the time. On the other hand, I also try to avoid doing things for which no apology could possibly be useful or even acceptable. So, for example, I don't drill holes into the ocean floor and release millions of gallons of crude into a fragile ecosystem.

When I was a teenager, I umped a few ball games to make some money, and I made plenty of bad calls; though I was a good ballplayer, I wasn't much of an umpire. But since it seems all I need to do to redeem myself is apologize, I'd like to say "I'm sorry" to all the kids whose strikes were actually balls, and to the runner I called out when the first baseman had clearly trapped the throw.

I'm sure everyone feels better now. I'm sure the people and pelicans of the Gulf can all sleep soundly.

Vikings Liking Warming

So I read today in National Geographic that many folks in Greenland are enthusiastic about global warming. Remember, the Vikings settled the place during a particularly warm period--and vanished when the climate cooled during the Little Ice Age of the 15th century. If the island heats up again and the ice sheet melts in whole or in part, that will enable a longer and more diverse growing season, prompt tourism, and--most importantly--open up frozen seas to offshore drilling. It could be a great boon for Greenland's economy.

Of course, if the Greenland ice sheet melts in its entirety, sea levels worldwide will rise by some 24 feet, inundating coastlines everywhere (including, presumably, Greenland's own). And when you start to equate offshore drilling with economic nirvana, you have to remember the minor detail of the BP oil spill, which has killed the fishing and tourism industries of the affected areas for the foreseeable future, not to mention introducing long-term clean-up and public health costs that will certainly be borne largely by the communities, not by BP. And, oh yeah, there's that pesky problem of destroying the planet we live on.

All of which proves that the people of Greenland, at least those who look to global warming for salvation, are no more or less insane than the rest of us. The Vikings failed when the climate unexpectedly and unpredictably shifted on them. These days, we can see it coming--and still we refuse to believe.

Dances with Wells

So I learned today that BP has brought in actor Kevin Costner, he of Dances with Wolves fame, to help solve its little environmental and public relations disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Seems as if, for the past fifteen years, Costner has been funding research and development of a new device designed to separate oil from water (something like a huge centrifuge, as I understand it). On a trial basis, BP is shipping a bunch of the gizmos in to see if they'll be any more effective at stopping the bleed than the other newfangled gizmos they've already tried (remember how well the giant dome on the ocean floor worked?).

Now, Costner strikes me as a pretty square guy, a pretty earnest guy, but also a pretty useless guy when it comes to realistically appraising and addressing the grimy realities of life. All his films, from The Untouchables to Field of Dreams to Robin Hood to Dances with Wolves, feature idealistic dreamers who come face to face with the brutal facts of the real world, with its nasty politics, greed, militarism, and meanness, and whose response to those realities is simple: fight or flight. Thus some of his heroes become vigilantes; others choose heaven--whether in the form of an Iowa corn field or a Lakota encampment--over the soiled and sordid world. All, in other words, choose escape--escape from responsibility, from complexity, from the real work of life--over the far more difficult task of responsible, committed action. They either shoot somebody with their own gun or run away from somebody else's. They embrace fantasy over reality. Is this really the right guy to clean up the horrid reality of the BP oil spill? With sci-fi centrifuges, no less?

Of course, of course, we have to clean up the spill, and if Costner's thingamajigs work, then hallelujah. But what then? Continue to pump oil from the ocean's floor, secure in the knowledge that we've got us a really groovy techno-marvel to clean up our messes? Don't we see that, in looking to a guy like Costner and a gadget like his to address this problem, we're applying the same faulty, fantasy logic that got us into the mess in the first place?

We had a legitimate alternative before this mess occurred. It was called cleaning up our act, ending our addiction to fossil fuels, seeding renewable energy, changing our ways. We still have that alternative--though every day we fail to act, every day we continue to gobble and vomit oil, we set ourselves back who knows how many tens of years and tens of millions of lives. Nonetheless, we do have a choice: we can face the difficult realities of an alternate future, change our own behavior, join with like-minded peers, pledge to elect politicians who share our vision, and reform our world.

Or we can call up Kevin Costner and ask him if he's got any really big centrifuges.

Of Oil and Water

The cataclysmic BP oil spill now spreading through the Gulf of Mexico signifies--if any further signifying were needed--why America's (and the world's) addiction to fossil fuels cannot be reconciled with any reasonable vision of a sustainable planet. Forget global warming for the moment; forget wars over oil; forget fine particulate pollution (in Pittsburgh, where I hail from, the good news is that we've moved up from the nation's worst air to the nation's third worst). Just look at the well belching hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude into the world's waters, and ask yourself: how long is it going to take before we realize that we're on a crash course with doomsday?

Then there's the recent coal mine explosion in West Virginia's Upper Big Branch mine that killed 29 workers. Coal, the cheapest and dirtiest fossil fuel around, is responsible, one way or another, for thousands of deaths every year: deaths from accidents, from air pollution, from contaminated waters. I heard recently that there's an investigation underway into corruption in the regulatory agencies that supposedly oversee coal mining. Seems as if mine inspectors are on the take. Seems as if while we're paying with our lives, they're just getting paid.

And then there's the ongoing dispute in Pennsylvania over the Marcellus shale, a natural gas-rich formation that underlies much of our state. The drilling companies rushing to take advantage of this lucrative sink of fossil fuels is refusing to pay a severance tax to help mitigate the environmental damages their activities will surely cause. If they're taxed, they say, they'll take their business elsewhere, depriving us of the thousands of (good?) jobs they'd otherwise bring. Every other state in the nation that authorizes deep well drilling imposes a severance tax, but the Pennsylvania legislature can't seem to bring itself to do the same. More fossil fuels, more deaths, more damage, more destruction, and no one to pay for it.

A quick definition of addiction: knowing you're killing yourself but refusing to stop. That pretty much sums up the state of the world as we continue to pump junk into our veins and waters.