This is not the finest hour of the Obama administration. The spreading oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is an environmental catastrophe, and the Obama administration’s initial willingness to trust BP’s word on the severity of the accident wasted precious time that could have been used for preparation. When all is said and done, the spill could end up worse than the Exxon Valdez spill, which is the worst in U.S. history. The repercussions for energy policy, the oil industry, and most important, the environment will be felt for years to come.
But while the Obama administration has not covered itself in glory, and while the environmental impact will be devastating, there is one thing that this certainly is not.
This is not another Hurricane Katrina.
This was Hurricane Katrina. An horrific, catastrophic disaster of Biblical proportions. It killed at least 1836 people, caused over $90 billion in damage. The damage and death toll was compounded by a Bush administration reaction that allowed ongoing human suffering to stretch out for days, without serious action to alleviate it.
The ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is awful, and it will cause billions of dollars in damage. But it has so far claimed 11 lives, all of them on the Deepwater Horizon. That is 11 too many, but it is less than one percent of those lost in Katrina.
No people have been evacuated from their cities because of this spill. Nobody has been forced to take shelter in a stadium as the spill spreads. No one is going without food or water because of this. Nobody has lost their home.
By all means, criticize the Obama administration for a lackluster initial reaction to the spill. They deserve it. But don’t trivialize the truly awful devastation wrought by Katrina by comparing the two events. The comparison is ludicrous, and offensive. Period.
I live in Louisiana.
I’m not saying this is going to be another Katrina. Fact is, shrimpers and fishermen will lose their boats over this. There’s no unemployment for the self-employed.
Death will not be on the scale of Katrina, but the economic ramifications of this will last for years. The seafood industry will not be able to recover next season or even next year. Many are going to lose jobs over this.
It’s a sad sad time here. I can smell the oil from where I live…fully 150 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi.
You have my sympathy Belle. This is a disaster.
No, it’s not Katrina. But it doesn’t need to be compared to Katrina to be a disaster and to fairly raise the question of where the Feds have been. I believe that this kind of thing falls directly under Federal juristiction (I’ll welcome correction on that) and he’s been way too slow to react or marshal resources for this. As Belle points out, a lot of people are going to be thrown out of work for a very long time over this. I do wonder what the effect of food prices will be.
I think the Obama administration is completely rippable for their delayed reaction. I mean, I know it’s surprising that BP and Halliburton would downplay the size of the spill, but I still think that the folks in the government might have, I don’t know, shown a bit of skepticism.
No doubt, this is going to be very bad — I think the best analogy I’ve heard as far as impact on the energy industry is Three Mile Island, which killed off expansion of nuclear energy for more than a generation. And the impact on the economy is going to be bad-to-catastrophic. But it isn’t Katrina. Indeed, very few things are comparable to Katrina, and Thank God.
Proyect disagrees with you:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/obamas-katrina/
Apparently, BP lowballed the amount leaking and said everything is under control. Obama and his crew didn’t trust them and sent their own experts who discovered that the oil was leaking at a much higher rate. At that point the cleanup reaction took off. Don’t blame Obama for the last administration’s no regulation mess.
I live in New Orleans, and I haven’t really heard people comparing it with Katrina. I’ve heard people say this is the worst thing to happen since Katrina. And, I’ve heard people say that this is like another nail being pounded into a coffin. It’s going to have an effect on a number of aspects of life in Louisiana. The tourism industry and the seafood industry are codependent. The tourism industry is also dependent to a large degree on the health of the local wildlife. The smell is bothering people. And, it’s showing a populace that is already wary of elected officials that Louisiana and it’s people aren’t a large priority. A lot of people feel like the area is getting kicked back down right when it was dusting itself off and starting to get back up.
Thanks for this post. I live in the Netherlands, so am not as aware as those who live in the U.S. of either Katrina or this spill – I didn’t know there were over 1800 deaths in Katrina, for example. I was making comparisons indeed, in terms of how Obama responded and how this would have large-scale effects for years. That was wrong for me for ignoring the Katrina deaths.
Proyect disagrees with you:
Bully for him. But his solution — getting rid of capitalism will get rid of oil — is so unbelievably facile as to warrant no engagement. Last I checked, socialist, capitalist, and communist nations alike all consumed massive quantities of fossil fuels to drive the modern, energy-intensive lifestyle. I’m a strong supporter of investment in alternative fuels, and I believe we’re better off looking for oil alternatives sooner rather than later. But no matter what type of economy we have, we will need energy to run it — and until we come up with something better, that means we will need oil. The question is not whether we need oil, but how to best manage our resources to maximize safety and minimize environmental impact.
“Where’s the Obama administration?” is a reasonable reaction. The White House should be held accountable here, just as the last one was (from the left, at least) in 2005.
The two primary unreasonable reactions are “Obama is a hypocrite” and “Bush handled Katrina just fine,” which is not unrelated. I don’t know enough to take a position on Jeff’s (apparent) contention, which is that the oil spill is not similar enough to Katrina to justify saying Obama supporters are hypocritical. But even if they are, the Bush administration’s response to Katrina was too little, too late.
So I read this post as a warning against falling for the non sequitur. Don’t let anyone suggest that Obama’s response now lets Bush off the hook. It is perfectly logically consistent to say they’re both wrong.
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It seems like there is finally some good news with the spill. The Houston Chronicle reports, U.S. ships were being outfitted earlier this month with four pairs of skimming booms airlifted from the Netherlands and should be deployed within days.” Could this be the turning point? For all those feeling pretty gloomy about this situation, I recommend a good laugh… Here’s a funny joke, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3j7uSbccSc
I predict a very short career on Alas for you.