By PETER S. FERRARA
Columnist
—
When Hamlet talks of facing a "sea of troubles," he might as well be referring to what is currently washing up on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. At the time he says this, Hamlet is considering suicide. Now comes word of a charter boat captain with the oddly appropriate name of William Allen Kruse. Evidently despondent over the collapse of the fishing and cruising business in Gulf Shores, Alabama, Captain Kruse put a pistol to his head and ended his life on Wednesday. Answering the question "To be or not to be," Kruse decided not to be.
His is not the first nor will it be the last death that can be attributed to the strangling and polluting of our coastal waters and beaches from Louisiana to Florida and beyond. The human death toll will never equal that of the hundreds of thousands-- maybe millions-- of creatures whose lives are being snuffed out because an oil company -- British Petroleum -- proved that while good at cutting corners digging wells, they are terrible at dealing with accidents. The first casualties in this current disaster were the men who died on the Deepwater Horizon rig when it exploded into flames. What followed was more death and destruction as millions of barrels of toxic crude oil gushed into the waters of the Gulf. Marine life immediately began dying, both from the oil and the chemical dispersants BP used to break it up. Then came the birds in their migratory nesting grounds along America's southern shores. Now the dreaded spectacle of death by hopelessness and despair is rising like an angry sunrise over those troubled waters.
"All the waters are closed. There's no charter business anymore. You go out on some of the beaches now, with the oil, you can't even get in the water. It's really crippled the tourism and fishing industry here." So said Stan Vinson, coroner for Baldwin County, which includes Gulf Shores. "He (Captain Kruse) had been quite despondent about the oil crisis."
We are now over two months into this environmental catastrophe, with no end in sight. The simple truth is that BP lied to Congress and to the government agency supposedly overseeing the mining and minerals companies about its ability to contain an oil spill. Subsequent investigations will reveal if there was any criminal activity related to what led up to this mess. What is clear is that mistakes were made up and down the line. What may be worse is that all of this could be a prelude to more disasters about to happen. (By the way, do earthquakes occur in the Gulf of Mexico? Just wondering about all those wells on the ocean floor.)
A most telling moment occurred when Representative Henry Waxman was grilling BP's CEO Tony Hayward. When asked specifically about shortcuts and mistakes made in the process of drilling on the Deepwater Horizon rig, Hayward shrugged: "We dig hundreds of wells."
"That's what I'm worried about," Waxman replied in disgust. But never mind, folks. That weekend found Tony Hayward at sea. No, he wasn't on the Gulf. Rather he was enjoying yachting races in water the oil companies are yet to pollute. I guess he was, as he said, trying "to get my life back." So it was as well with the BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg's unfortunate gaffe about caring for "the small people" affected by the spill. It seems like there is a huge disconnect between the folks at the top of the economic food chain and those farther down who pay the price when the fat cats screw up.
The time it will take for the Gulf to fully recover, if it ever does, will be measured not in years but in generations. And what happened with BP is no isolated case. Does anyone really believe Shell or Exxon or anybody else is capable of dealing with a drilling disaster like this? Poor President Obama is caught in between suspending work on further deep sea drilling, which immediately costs us tens of thousands of jobs, and acting to minimize the damage to our coast, which also costs us countless jobs. Like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the international economic crisis, Obama's between a rock and a hard place. I wish those so quick to criticize would ask themselves what they would do in his place and cut the man some slack. It won't happen because, as the pundits put it, "politics ain't bean bags." Good luck, Mr. President.
I don't believe we should all rush out and boycott BP. We want this giant conglomerate to remain solvent and stay out of bankruptcy. And this event does absolutely nothing to change the love we Americans have for the English. They are our brothers and sisters and always will be. Still I wonder, sadly, how much BP will pony up to support the late Captain Kruse's family and the deck hands who once worked on his boat named "The Rookie." What a shame that "The Rookie" got taken out of the game so cruelly.
