BP stock rises as the Gulf continues to ail

“There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings,’’ so begins Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring. “Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community … No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in the stricken world. The people had done it to themselves.’’ Today, the scene could also describe Japan’s current nuclear nightmare, or the potentially life-killing hydrologic fracturing over water sources for millions. Could be about mountaintop removal and a billion gallons of coal sludge spewing into the Emory River. Could be concentrated animal feeding operations where 100,000 cows or millions of chickens in one lot results in dead rivers and spoiled air. We know where Rachel Carson would be if she was around this Earth Day – the Gulf of Mexico with women like Diane Wilson, Terry Tempest Williams and Riki Ott. This Earth Day, the one-year anniversary of the British Petroleum-Transocean-Halliburton-EPA-Obama lie, is a microcosm of how all systems failed. Drilling and oil companies cut corners and facilitated the crime of the century. The U.S. government facilitated British Petroleum’s incompetence and continuous harm to the environment and Gulf communities. Major media dropped the ball and failed to grow a backbone to flail at the illegal, unethical no-fly zones and ‘closed beach’ clamp-downs. The real headline comes from people on the frontlines of the battle against BP, Big Oil, Big Incompetent Government: “This is the biggest cover-up in the history of America,” Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser has repeatedly said. He’s been working throughout the Gulf to bring mitigation, compensation and publicity to this failure in our country’s collusion with oil and deep ocean drilling. “It’s like you’re in bed with BP,” Nungesser told the Coast Guard and committees supposedly investigating the disaster. “Don’t tell me I got a voice in the way you put together that crappy document,” Nungesser said about the June 2010 cleanup plan. “It ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on.” BP’s stock rose a half a percent on the one-year mark of this 420-million gallon (maybe more) disaster. Billionaires scoff at the Southeast Asian-American fishers in Alabama who are collectively 75 percent unemployed. Laugh at the people of color throughout the region coughing up blood and watching loved ones shake and groan from the toxic brew British Petroleum unleashed for months. Thank ProPublica (they just won Pulitzer Prizes for their work on BP) and other non-co-opted journalists for their coverage of BP’s crime. Carpet bombing the Gulf with highly toxic and banned substances and drenching the gash where the Macando well spewed up to 800 million gallons of oil have created a giant biological warfare lab, an unfolding massive chemistry experiment. Rodney Soto, a Florida neurologist who draws blood from sick people exposed to the spill and the cancer-causing Corexit (a banned dispersant), analyzes humans for volatile compounds. “We’re not only talking about hundreds of thousands of people already having symptoms, but we could potentially be seeing the tip of the iceberg here – the entire population in the Gulf Coast and maybe spreading further into the United States.” Not the sort of perspective you’ll hear on CNN, NPR or CBS. There is a term called agnotology, which I’ve been studying and writing about tied to climate change and environmental justice. Agnotology — Culturally constructed ignorance, purposefully created by special interest groups working hard to create confusion and suppress the truth. The media and BP have said that it used 1.8 million gallons of dispersant before the well was capped July 15. But Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), studying documents from BP, concludes,”The validity of those numbers are now in question.” These documents suggest that BP, with the approval of the U.S. Coast Guard, continued regular use of Corexit on the water despite a May 25, 2010, directive by the EPA that BP scale back these activities to “rare cases.” Various formulas of Corexit in the Gulf were banned in England. Dispersants are toxic, and while some scientists at first thought using them was better than doing nothing, Rep. Markey – along with other researchers – reiterated these pesticides had never been used on such a scale before. Markey wasn’t the only one looking at discrepancies between how much dispersant BP reported it was using and how much it actually was applied. BP told the Coast Guard on June 16, 2010, that its use of Corexit never exceeded 3,365 gallons in any recent day. E-mails to Congress told a different story. In fighting the oil spill on June 12 and 13, BP’s e-mails confirm it used 14,305 gallons and 36,000 gallons respectively. That’s two days’ worth of Corexit at 50,305 gallons. The carpet bombing of the Gulf and the unending injection at the broken well head of this junk, more toxic and less effective than 12 other industry products, belie the absolute misinformation campaign of the Oil Industry, media and government, as well as the disconnection that Americans have when it comes to understanding the spill’s enormity – 240 to 880 million gallons – and the volume of dispersants used. Christopher Reddy, an associate scientist of marine chemistry and geochemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, stated that 1 million barrels (42 million gallons) of dispersants was applied to the Gulf of Mexico. The Times Picayune newspaper admitted an error – one million barrels of Corexit 9527-A and Corexit 9500 – had been turned into “gallons.” Accident? Wishful thinking? Agnotologic strategy? The mixture has resulted in Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon compounds and petroleum/dispersant remnants, as well as degraded byproducts of the mixture. The EPA considers Corexit 9527 “an acute health hazard.” It’s a brew of chemicals kept secret by Nalco, which harms red blood cells, kidneys, and the liver. The 2-butoxyethanol in Corexit 9527 causes lasting health problems in workers involved in cleaning up Alaska’s Exxon Valdez oil spill.