Wake Up Call

The view, more or less, from my office

If you haven't seen Mark's latest post over at After the Levees, by all means check it out. He links to this article from CNN/Fortune that points to a fact often overlooked by those who insist on belittling Louisiana even as they drive around in gas-hog automobiles:

On one level, the tepid response to what may be the nation's biggest environmental problem is inexplicable. Originally the petroleum industry located its refineries and plants in Louisiana to take advantage of the nearby oil and gas platforms, but it expanded their scope because the state, for better and worse, is one of the few that welcomes petrochemicals.

If the coastal environment became unsustainable, I don't know what other state would accept these facilities," says David Pursell, an analyst at Pickering Energy Partners, an investment-research group in Houston. "In Massachusetts, people are fighting wind farms."

Since 1978 the United States has not erected a single new oil refinery; all growth in capacity has come from adding on to existing plants, including those in Louisiana. The political impossibility of recreating the state's huge petrochemical complex elsewhere is rarely noted in the glib dicta, heard occasionally from economists, that the coast should not be rebuilt.

Americans in the other 49 states, in Pursell's view, should be "crossing their fingers" that Louisiana "will continue to be able to host these places."

And that will depend on whether the Louisiana coastline exists tomorrow in something like its present configuration.

To be honest, I can't say I'm thrilled by the industry--on some days, the air honestly stinks, probably as much as it does in Houston or Los Angeles--and no one will ever confuse a refinery with a scenic highway, despite what must be the most ironic road name in the country...but hosting the petrochemical industry (and supplying the raw material) is ONE of the resources the Gret Stet provides the rest of the country...and the rest of the country should be damned grateful.

You know, it won't take a WAR--a war that's doing NOTHING besides draining the army, depleting the treasury, and killing the wrong people, by the way--to fix things. All it would take is a committment: to honor an implicit obligation as defined by the Constitution, by statutory law, and by court decisions--a federal government obligation to protect its citizens and their property.

Besides, at least in New Orleans, they're actually AT FAULT. If you think legal responsibility is still a relevant concept, there's no other conclusion you can draw.