Overheard on Meredith St.: They should'a known better

(Sidewalk Society HQ, in colder times)


The TV has been off here for awhile. People have been sending links to the BP disaster and I've been avoiding them. I've got a strong stomach, but it does not include live executions. I can't watch live executions.

I couldn't go to the movie The Stoning of Soraya M or A Mighty Heart and couldn't watch internet video of Daniel Pearl. I've avoided everything BP related like the wife in the famous Isaac Asimov sci fi story who decided she could no longer look at the sun after her astronaut husband fell into it.  Mel Gibson's necro-p*rn depictions of death in Brave Heart and Passion of the Christ pushed limits I don't want pushed. It physically sickens me. It diminishes my optimism for the survival of our species.

But nobody can live in a media-saturated world like ours and not get some of the ooze on you. So satellite images of slick swirls and undersea plumes along with the usual oil drenched herons and dead fishies have been washing up on my shores. I won't bore you. You've seen them.  Predictably, it's been eating at me, so last night I took it outside for a confab with two of the charter members of our Meredith St. Sidewalk Society. (So dubbed par moi.) 

A questioned "how could they not have planned for this." She believed that with stakes as high as these, an ultimate cork, a kill switch should have been in place from the start and should have been triggered immediately. How could they not have foreseen this? A is a social worker. She is well-versed in society's rhetorical questions.

G, who works as a corporate buyer said that it is a systemic management problem. Somewhere along the line some technical person filed a report or expressed a reservation that he or she sent up the line. The techs, the engineers expect their bosses to champion and air their concerns to their bosses. But the reality is that contrarian voices are always quashed in favor of consensus and group think, which G says is very powerful.

For the corporate animal--life, income, future depend on going along. Projects must move to completion or heads will roll. You better think long and hard before you stand up and say "halt the presses." I said that from Challenger to 911 to Exxon Valdez, decisionmakers have historically devalued their internal watchdogs in favor of expedience. It is in our nature to do so. It isn't until truly large catastrophic failure that we wise up. For the oil industry, the Exxon Valdez wasn't enough. Maybe there aren't as many double-hulled tankers out there as used to be but the industry's tepid response shows they didn't get it then. They do now. This industry has shown itself as failure-ready as any.

A pointed out that given the ecological disaster they cause that it should be different. That they should be held to a higher standard. How could I disagree when it is the shame of our generation, yo Boomers, that we didn't suck it up for the next generation. Back in the 70's when we had another oil crisis and a president telling us that we needed to make some sacrifices, if we'd started investing hard capital in clean energy, then our kids wouldn't have to suck it up.  Even investing in post-3 Mile Island nuclear power is a sober choice we should've done a long time ago.

The old peanut farmer was right, but what he was saying was too damned unpleasant. Our solution was to kick out the farmer and hire the actor. The actor had a much more upbeat message. Our kids will pay for the expedient choices we've made in the last 30 years. We won't be alive to see it. G disagreed with that last statement. He said ecological collapse is happening so fast, that we might. He smiled wryly as he said it.

It is human nature to ignore our watchdogs until it is too late. Global warming and more grotesque ecological disasters will kick our butts.  Whether we'll pull them out of the fire in time to save our species is anybody's guess. I don't like this guessing game.  A couple of years ago, I had to write an intro to astronaut John W. Young who was the keynote speaker for a big corporate meeting.  Young's NASA bio page tells why he remains so adamant about space exploration.

"He [Young] will continue to advocate the development of the technologies that will allow us to live and work on the Moon and Mars. Those technologies over the long (or short) haul will save civilization on Earth." What he's saying is that he thinks we'll "screw the pooch" here on our homeworld and our ability to colonize other worlds will determine our outcome as a species. This is an astronaut, not an end of the world crackpot.

The oil company execs in this Reuter's article are shocked. They didn't anticipate this. Some commenters say that you can't lay this on the desk of the CEO, that the blame is as diffuse as an undersea plume. G, A and I think that's dead wrong. Every CEO's job is to protect and nurture their watchdogs and contrarions. They are often the only people making real sense. I say if you are a CEO, your lack of disaster management is your personal disaster. That's the job. Suck it up.

Is crisis preventable? Not 100%. Is it manageable? How could we do any worse than we do now? Hope hangs on a thread, (but she wasn't at last night's meeting). It's coming on summer here at Sidewalk Society headquarters, (shown above in colder times). Is it winter in America? Increasingly, serious and sober people are saying it is. We damned well need to start listening to them.