One Year After

It’s been a year since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Over this year, reports about the severity of the resulting oil spill and its effects have varied widely, and there remain conflicting reports about the long-term effects of this disaster. What do we know? What have we learned?

One thing on which the majority of people looking at its effects can agree is that we don’t know enough at this point to know what to expect in the future for the gulf and its coastal communities.

Immediately after the explosion last year, this blog had two posts that talked about it. One of them, The Day After, was written on April 23, the day after Earth Day. It talked about the discouragement of having something like this happen around the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day, especially given that an oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969 is said to have inspired Sen. Gaylord Nelson’s proposal to have such a day. But then the post added this: “The good news the day after Earth Day is that there doesn’t seem to be a major oil spill, though there is an oil slick that at last report…measured ten miles by ten miles.” The days immediately after the explosion were like that – conflicting information, an effort to minimize worries about the disaster, and a public eager to believe the more positive reports.

On April 24 I posted Two Days After. The main point of the piece was that environmental problems were most probably not going to be solved by either the political establishment or industry. The Kerry-Graham-Lieberman climate bill had been put on hold. As for the oil rig explosion, there was this:

The Coast Guard discovered today that, contrary to earlier reports, the well that fed the oil rig that exploded and burned last week, collapsing into the Gulf of Mexico on Earth Day, is leaking oil. This evening’s story from the AP about the situation reports that the oil slick has grown to a twenty by twenty mile square.

Things suddenly looked very different! As information continued to change over weeks and months, it was often hard to tell the size and scope of the disaster.

An Associated Press article from this week, Scientists: Gulf health nearly at pre-spill level, surveys some of the scientific opinions about where we stand a year later. While there is some disagreement, the overall consensus is that the health of the Gulf waters is close to where it was before the oil spill. That rating is not particularly high. The article explains:

If that pre-spill grade isn't impressive, it's because the Gulf has long been an environmental victim_ oil from drilling and natural seepage, overfishing, hurricanes and a huge oxygen-depleted dead zone caused by absorbing 40 percent of America's farm and urban runoff from the Mississippi River.

A close reading of the article reveals that while this standard sort of overall rating is back to where it was, many of the scientists expressed concerns in interviews about what we might see down the road that either hasn’t shown up yet or isn’t the sort of thing taken into account in grading the overall health of the gulf. There is simply a lack of data in some areas. Of particular concern are observations of effects on certain animals: dolphins, sea turtles, crabs. Effects on cetaceans (dolphins and whales), for example, can be found here where the NOAA Fisheries unit posts information about the “cetacean unusual mortality event” in the northern Gulf of Mexico.

What do we know? We know that environmental disasters affect all living things, including human beings. We know that ecosystems are complex and there are things we simply don’t know, such as the long-term effects of the dispersants that were used. It’s very difficult to predict the effects of this sort of disaster.

What have we learned? Apart from what scientists and the oil industry might have learned, those of us who aren’t directly involved in it have observed a couple of things. One is that collectively we have short attention spans. Once the aerial shots of the huge oil slick and the close-ups of pelicans covered in oil were gone, we moved on to other things. Little has been done to prevent another such disaster from happening partly because there is not a strong and sustained outcry from the public for policies to change. Things look pretty normal now, and we move on.

Related to this is something else we have learned yet again: we see things as isolated that are really connected. The concerns about the proposed oil pipeline through Nebraska are connected to the Gulf oil disaster; in both cases, local ecosystems are put at risk because of our addiction to oil. The situation in the Gulf is connected to the way we devalue poor people, people of color, and nonhuman creatures. It has to do with an inability to see the connection between our own consumer habits and the suffering of other people. It’s connected very much to the Gospel, to the command to love our neighbors, and to the teaching that the way we treat the most powerless people is the way we treat Christ (Matthew 25).

An assessment not of the science but of some of these other concerns comes from Patty Whitney, a Louisiana coastal communities advocate. Her piece, For Gulf Coast Residents, the Oil Spill Nightmare Continues appeared in Jim Wallis’s God’s Politics blog yesterday. She describes the ongoing social and economic effects of the oil spill on Gulf Coast communities, ending her post with these words:

The cameras and attention needed to bring light upon the injustices that continue are darkened and silent. The plight of the voiceless has been minimized and shrugged off in the name of scoring points for one political party or another in a unique game of one-upmanship. The fact that God’s creations are priceless makes them value-less in our society, which only measures value by the dollar.

So, where are we one year later? Still suffering the impacts of human-made and natural disasters. Still fearing that the other shoe is yet to drop. Still fighting for justice. Still tired. Still aware that God is the Master and the final judge, and that God doesn’t value things by the dollar. We’re counting on that.

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(Photo courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard)

Advent 4: Magnificat

In churches this morning, we remember Mary’s visit to Elizabeth (Luke 1:39-55) and the joyful Song of Mary , the Magnificat. The first part of Mary’s song praises God and talks about what God has done for her; the middle of the song describes God’s inversion of the economic and political order – casting down the mighty while lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good things while the rich are sent away empty -- and it ends with a reminder of God’s promise of mercy. It’s a song about God creating something that’s very new and yet grounded in God’s eternal care and love for God’s people.

Our Daily Office lessons yesterday included Christ’s clear call in Matthew 25 to care for people who are poor, sick, powerless, or lonely. Whenever we do something to serve “the least of these” we are serving Christ; whenever we ignore the needs of the least of these, we turn our backs on Christ. It was in many ways a fitting lesson for the end of the Copenhagen climate conference. The politics of the conference dictated an outcome that keeps the nations in conversation about climate change and leaves the door open for a significant agreement at some unspecified time in the future, but it also leaves people in poorer nations that are already feeling negative effects from climate change where they were at the beginning of the conference. The wealthier nations like the United States, aware of the lack of political will back home to do the hard work of making deep cuts in carbon emissions, negotiated this the way we do other issues.

Compromise is a grand thing, and a few tentative first steps can be claimed as a political victory on many issues, but the physics of climate change doesn’t leave any room for political expediency or compromise. Just as not making a decision is a sort of decision in itself, so declaring ourselves favorable to the idea of making some undefined cuts in carbon emissions without making the commitment to deep change that science tells us is necessary is a decision to turn our backs through our inaction on those who are harmed first and worst by climate change.

One dynamic of this conference was that President Obama did not have a clean energy bill from our Congress to show a real commitment from Americans. The Senate will be debating this legislation in coming weeks and months. Today’s Omaha World Herald has an op-ed piece signed by several of us Nebraska clergy that articulates why climate change is a faith issue that calls for our attention.

In Mary’s song, we hear her joyful faith in God’s mercy and in God’s love for the least of these. Where is our merciful and loving God in the news from Copenhagen, when the needs of the least of these were sacrificed to the agendas of the rich and powerful? God’s promises endure; God calls us back again and again to live in harmony with God’s intentions for our world. Reports from Copenhagen talked about the crowds of people from all over the world who gathered every day and every night outside of the Bella Center, bringing the needs of the poor and vulnerable to the ears of those in power, and giving encouragement and support to the delegates from less powerful places. God is working through these people and through all of us whose words and actions bring the needs of all people – and all species – to the attention of the rest of the world.

This may not look like a success, just as Mary’s baby in the manger didn’t look like a king. God works with whatever is available, and what is available are people of faith who are willing to look at the science of climate change, and look at God’s children who will be most severely affected by climate change, and then do what we can to help. Mary had no power or influence, and yet because of her faith, God was able to use Mary to become Incarnate and change everything for all of us.

The weather in central Nebraska today was sunny and warmer than it has been in several days. With beautiful snow cover still on most of the fields, a big blue sky, and the sound of running water from melting ice and snow, our souls might well magnify the Lord out of sheer joy in God’s creation. Climate scientists tell us that this is a critical time for the future of our climate, and of the planet to which human life is adapted. This is the time for people of faith who find joy in God’s creation and comfort in God’s promises to listen carefully, watch carefully, and see where God is calling us to speak and act.