It is quite clear we had no real remedies for that nightmare of mine, often repeated recently in the last year, about what one does when the oil line breaks in two. Of course, I never thought of the rig exploding, but I was wondering how one goes about putting a twist-tie on the gusher.
Well, we don't. Or, it's a coin toss at best. We really haven't tried this emergency stuff out one mile under water, but by extrapolation - since it works at 200 feet - we figure it will work just fine.
This is not really a rational approach.
It mimics rationality and science, but it is almost pure faith disguised as due diligence and giving work to endless lawyers and bureaucrats... but it is not based on credible evidence.
Anyhow, if we really have no reliable remedies in our technology for the glitches of our technology, what remedies do we have when things go south with Mother Nature?
Suppose, for example, the Ogalalla Aquifer goes bust, or the Great Man Made River in Libya depletes its aquifer... or the projects in China. What then? When it come to natural disasters, we don't even pretend to have a remedy.
What if the fishing stocks in the ocean crash? We don't really know the mathematics of sustaining life while scooping up great portions of the population and killing them. We really don't. If things go wrong, there is no remedy. Same with Global Warming: not a chance to sing or dance.
If there are no remedies better than 50/50, a cost-benefit analysis using these probabilities is called for: no charade of science where we "pretend" the equipment works at 100 feet, therefore it will function at 5,000 feet.
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The sad but undeniable fact about the oil spill that is murdering the Gulf of Mexico is that BP did not have remedy at hand for this disastrous spill because they never believed it would happen. If it's not going to happen, then why cut into profits by developing advanced technology to deal with disastrous spills. Of course, this company has proven more than once that it doesn't give a shit about safe operations. Capitalism has hard time concealing its malevolence in the past few years.
Just think of the potential cost of the possible disaster of Genetically Modified crops ! We have been told they are safe, just like we were told that all oil companies had magical twist-ties for emergencies.
It's not just capitalism, it's bloody stupidity. If a society is so stupid that their banks destroy the financial system, then it should come as no surprise that the oil industry will destroy vast portions of the environment, that genetic modifcations will wreak havoc...........
I cannot disagree. But I guess if you examine it really closely, you could conclude that it's a stupid notion that capitalism is built on to start with. It's premised on the idea of an pie that never gets consumed, a well that never runs dry. Limitless resources. And it's got an eating disorder to boot.
I think of it as "American" capitalism.
American Capitalism is the Frontier that never gives out: there's always new land just beyond the ridge or the river.
If America had not an entire continent of vast size to grow in - if it originally had had more constraints - those constraints would have effected our capitalism in different ways.
Technology gives the illusion of the possibility of endless resources once again: witness the over-fishing of the seas - our technology and equipment allow us to scrape the sea floor and net everything that breathes.
But once again we run up against the wall of scarcity when the fish stocks crash.
People talk of the fact that the Internet and iPhones may be making us less of a community and more of isolated individuals; well, or course they do. The aim is to restore the limitless Frontier where rugged individualism holds sway.
We have never experienced Community, and it is only a word for us that is suspiciously close to the word "communism".
Very interesting notion, this idea that the American Frontier (capitalized)shaped the fundamental presumptions of the practice of capitalism here. But don't you think at least the thoughtful among us have already rejected technology as a resource multiplier? It appears to be at least as destructive as it is bountiful.
The ones in power have not rejected tech as a resource multiplier. They will use that aspect of technology to do the "panem et circenses" thing: bread and circuses for the voters.
And the Trip to Bountiful !
How long could we study the concept of Bountiful in America: 1940 to 2010 ! Ironies and illusions.
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