A Visit To India Is Hard To Leave Behind: What separates New Delhi from the Everglades

(Counterpunch, March 20, 2012) At two in the morning, the sleek, modern airport at New Delhi hummed with activity. Most travelers pointed westbound to European capitals and from there, mid morning connections to the Americas.

What piqued my curiosity at that ungodly hour: airport security worked at half pace while the crowds piled behind. For the most part, India’s bureaucratic indifference was far from sight during a three-week visit.

Here at the moment of departure, anxious lines pushed and security responded with its own laws of gravity, and I felt the curious pull of the familiar, something that reminded me of home. You know what they say about Schenectady: it’s not hell but you can see it from there?

The places that hold us, whether in Uttar Pradesh or New York, have their tell tales. For example, in Florida –my home–, the sign of the eternal, damning wheel is the predisposition of bureaucrats to work hand-in-glove with politicians and lobbyists to destroy the Everglades.

Taking Over BP

(Counterpunch) As a routine strategy, “managing expectations” is the best way to deal with disaster. It is easy to understand why BP’s first instinct was to keep the video feed of the oil spill 5,000 feet underground from flowing to the public. BP is continuing to harass and to limit access of reporters from viewing and reporting damaged wildlife. Those oiled birds and sea turtles are toxic to corporate power. The images also contribute substantially to the pressures rising on the Obama administration, as the Gulf of Mexico turns into a horror over a long, hot summer.

Stage Managing a Catastrophe in the Gulf: From “Top Hat” to “Top Kill”

(Counterpunch) From the very first, the Gulf Oil Spill has been about “managing expectations”. Coast Guard Admiral Mary Landry used exactly that term in an early televised press conference about “Top Hat”, the first failed intervention to stop tens of millions of gallons of oil from leaking into the Gulf. “Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry cautioned about high expections for the containment system. ‘So, please, I have to manage your expectations and just understand that our job is not done until this well is sealed, until this well is cemented, our job is not done ’til then.’” (Crews prepare to take contraption to Gulf oil leak, AP, May 5, 2010)

The Tragedy of Managed Expectations in the Gulf: When There’s No Good News, Make Some Up

(Counterpunch) Where is the Gulf oil? This morning googling the question produces 16,676 related articles. It is the spatter of zeitgeist, of Youtube clips, talk shows, nightly news, CSPAN and press conferences from sea to sea shining with petroleum. The hidden clouds of oil spilled by BP into the Gulf of Mexico may or may not be light, may or may not be dispersed into droplets or globs, may or may not coat beaches, wetlands and mangroves along the Gulf coast for decades to come: toxic as the day is long. According to AP, “At first we had a lot of concern about surface animals like turtles, whales and dolphins,” said Paul Montagna, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi who studies Gulf reefs. “Now we’re concerned about everything.” (Deep sea oil plumes, chemical dispersants pose risks for the Gulf’s coral reefs, food chain”, May 17 2010)

Risk and Consequences: Wrecking the Gulf

Deepwater Horizon represents the first instant, large-scale defeat in the era of climate change hopelessness. Capitulations to come will bring far deeper misery and chaos; a real-time slaughter of the lambs. I’m not sure what to do with this despondent news, but I am not inclined to rousing speeches about national character and sacrifice. Not with so many thieves running loose.

Killing the Gulf of Mexico: Unacceptable Risks

Did we have to kill the Gulf of Mexico to stop, “Drill, baby, drill”? Before the spill from Deepwater Horizon is contained, Florida will see exactly the environmental catastrophe that kept offshore oil away from Florida’s coasts until the November 2008 elections. “Drill, baby, drill!”. The question arises: why must the American public “see” an environmental disaster before believing it represented an unacceptable risk all along?

No More Fish? Let Them Eat Cake: Oceans in the age of greed

(Counterpunch) A noteworthy report in The New York Times, “In Florida, the Seafood Becomes Less Local”, makes the case obvious to anyone with half a brain: the vision of the oceans to be the world’s future breadbasket is rapidly fading in the rear view mirror. I grew up with that vision. I can remember it in my fourth grade social studies because we were tested on it: where will our future food come from? From the oceans.

Coral Reef Meltdown

(Published at Counterpunch.com)  The past few days I’ve been thinking about Dr. James Speth’s call for “civic unreasonableness” and NASA’s Dr. James Hansen’s appeal for scientists to drop “objectivity” from muting their involvement, communicating to the public the impacts of global warming.

Counterpunch: Who will buy my house?

What the Sale of the Carlyle Group Tells Us About the Collapse of the Housing Market

Would someone from Dubai or China please come to Miami and buy my home?

This seems a reasonable plea, given this morning’s news that the big private equity firm, (in which President George HW Bush made his fortune after leaving the White House)-the Carlyle Group–sold 7.5 percent of itself to the United Arab Emirates. 19.9 percent of NASDAQ is being sold to Dubai, that couldn’t get our ports but getting the platform on which US equities trade. China, discontent with the value of its foreign currency investments, has set up its own fund to invest directly, not just in US debt, the value of which is declining to record lows against other currencies.

Since no one else is going to buy my house, I invite foreign economic ministers to spend a few nights with me in Miami -we’ll put you up, give you the keys to the Toyota hybrid so you can drive around and see the value we’ve created from the sunshine state.

Great Awakening to protect Florida’s natural resources

Ever optimistic, I hope the hallway conversation at this weekend’s Everglades Coalition meeting is lit with news of the Great Awakening.

The Great Awakening began last year when increasing numbers of Floridians from the Gulf to the Atlantic found the same words to express what they were seeing happen to our quality of life, our beaches, our fishing, our coral reefs, our rivers and Everglades. “Look,” people said to their elected officials, “everything we value is at risk from pollution streaming from Lake Okeechobee.”

Risk measured against the passage of time is a constant theme for Everglades advocates, now gathering on Hutchinson Island. But a wider, more impatient audience can grasp what is at stake from the point of view of another island, 2,000 miles from the nearest shore.

When Western explorers discovered Easter Island in 1722, they were stunned, as we are, by colossal lava monoliths staring mutely to the Pacific from a barren landscape.