fact that BP has been included in all the discussions the scientists have had.
“It’s kind of paradoxical,” Heck said. “The way it’s set up, BP is involved in every step of the scientific process. That means they know the problems we are having and what our weaknesses are. They’re in on the conference calls, so let’s say I mention that we really don’t have any good pre-oil data from this one coastal area. Well, now they know this and later they can use this when we press for damages and they say ‘Not a valid claim.’
“This is particularly troubling when it comes to damage assessment, which is mostly what we are doing now. They’re not just in on every phone call, they’re out in the field with us. Their representatives came with us when we went to take pre-oil samples on the Gulf Islands, before the oil got this far. They watched us like hawks. You had to put on plastic gloves every time you took a sample to avoid cross-contamination. Well, one time we forgot to change the gloves. And you know they’re noting that and that later, when the divorce comes—and everyone knows the divorce is coming—they will say, Well, isn’t it true, Dr. Heck, that you didn’t change your gloves on every sample?’
Now, as the VOOs putter out to sea, I find myself irked by the fact that a whole region is beholden to a company. I hadn’t anticipated feeling this way. I am no Libertarian and I won’t be attending any Tea Party rallies anytime soon. But what about the original Tea Party? What about our autonomy and independence and responsibility to our own citizens? Questions bubble up. How can environmental groups and scientists be reporting to a British oil company? Are we really buying this crap? I can’t quite get my head around the fact that BP’s representatives are out on scientific survey boats, noting facts that might be useful as evidence in some future lawsuit. Or that their minions have been allowed to run the show at Fort Pickens, which is, after all, a national seashore.
Almost everyone along the Gulf seems to have signed a deal with the devil, a devil that in this case isn’t represented by horns and pitchfork, but by BP’s green and sunny logo. How can so many of our organizations, scientists, fishermen, and workmen be working for a foreign corporation? How about someone sensibly saying, “Hey guys, I don’t know about you, but it seems kind of wrong to me to hand over so much power—so much of our, excuse the word choice here, freedom—to a foreign corporate entity, particularly one that just soiled our waters and coasts.” Sure they should pay for the mess, but here’s an idea: what if we bossed them around and not them us?
I’m feeling worked up as I drive farther south, but the place quickly pulls me out of my overheated head. Soon I am splashing through three feet of standing water where the river has rushed over blacktop. My headlights flash on impromptu wetlands that cover the road. I observe a blackcrowned night heron along the edge of the water. My car sloshes through the overflow until I reach a small, rundown marina where a sign says, “Welcome to the southernmost point in Louisiana.” I find a spot beyond the fish-scaling table covered with old screws and rusted bolts, between some weeds, paint cans, and a midden of empty Bud Lights. I set up my lawn chair and telescope at the very tip of the land, the southernmost of the southernmost, and rest my now-cold coffee on an upside-down white plastic bucket.
It’s still half-dark, but I can make out a partially sunken tugboat that looks like it never recovered from Katrina, and the birds, of course, which are suddenly everywhere as the sky lightens. A green heron hunts from the dock, a half dozen more white ibises skirt an oily puddle, and egrets, splashes of white, dot the trees.
This is ground zero for the spill, or at least about as close as you can get to ground zero on the mainland. The oil is spewing some fifty miles across the water from where I stand. Yesterday, on the drive down from New Orleans, I pulled over and parked next to the water and called Rocky, my contact for the environmental magazine I am on assignment for, and explained that I wanted, needed, to get out on a boat. He replied calmly, “I can probably get you out on a boat tomorrow or the day after.” He did not understand. My world was not calm. Things were crackling in my head and I needed to seize the moment. I needed to get out on the water immediately. I tried to explain this. Though he still didn’t seem to get it, he gave up the name of a local charter fisherman.
Captain Sal’s line was busy but when I finally got through he agreed to take me out for a short ride, warning that some thunderstorms were coming in. Half an hour later we were pulling out of the Myrtle Grove Marina and down a canal in the bayou, heading toward the Gulf. As we flew across the water I saw my first oiled pelican. It was black and flapped heavily in front of our boat.
“There are too many rules about the oil,” Sal said, shaking his head. “We were out looking for birds and we saw a pelican sitting on some boom and we pulled up to him and the guy I was with grabbed him. If the bird had got over the boom he would have died. He was too oiled up. So we get him in the boat and then we call the hotline for the oiled animals. The girl on the phone says: ‘What’s your nearest cross street?’ And we say we ain’t near any streets—we’re on the water. And she says ‘Well, what’s the closest restaurant nearby?’ Well, I say, there are no restaurants—we’re on the water. So finally we get hold of the wildlife rescue people. They come up in their boat and meet us out on the water. We reach the bird out of the tank where we’d put it and they say ‘Whoa, whoa, don’t touch the bird.’ They put their white space suits on and their masks before taking the bird. All the while the poor bird is suffering. So we say ‘Hurry up. You don’t need the suits—just wash your hands after.’ And they tell us that if any of us are caught handling the bird the authorities could shut down our whole operation and fine us. They would rather have the bird escape and die than get in trouble for helping the bird.”
After a while, Sal and I made our way to the outer fringes of marsh. It was there that the oil first struck in large quantities, the great wave of it darkening the fringes of this immensely green and vital landscape, turning it into something dark and necrotic. What I saw was black and burnt, to the point where, if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought it was the result of a small forest fire. The place looked devastated.
“Erosion is what is killing us here,” said Sal, pointing at the black fringe. “And when the oil hit we got about five years of erosion in one night.”
It wasn’t a pleasant sight, but it was good to see with my own eyes. Even before the oil started to gush, I had started to connect the dots between our need to consume and our intensified storms; between our rising water and our use of fossil fuels; between the destruction of the wild places we love and our hunger to exploit the energy in those places. I am not alone in making these connections, of course. We are all vaguely aware that our gluttonous ways are unsustainable, but we’ve also got our lives to live, thank you very much. And yet. There, staring at the burnt marsh, it was harder to pretend that everything was hunky-dory, harder to pretend that we can skip through our lives with no consequences. There, staring right back at me, was the dark result of our choices.
I am not that hopeful about our ability to change. But this is not about hope. It is about looking a thing in the eye. It is about keeping an honest ledger sheet. It is about adding up what is lost and what is gained. Are we so desperately hungry for this one particular type of fuel that we are willing to sacrifice our beautiful places, our homes, in a desperate attempt to slurp up what is left? Maybe the answer is yes. But if it is, we can at least do the math with open eyes. What are we getting and what are we giving up? If this is really our national sacrifice zone, then we had better figure out just who or what is being sacrificed and who is doing the sacrificing. Sacrifice is tricky word, and as a verb, it cuts both ways. It’s also a broad word and many things, from paying more for twisty lightbulbs to sacrificing an Aztec virgin, fit under its tent. So far it has also been an ineffective word, with most of us turning our backs on the notion that anything really has to change.
We are all happy enough with the idea of sacrificing as long as that doesn’t involve sacrificing anything ourselves. But at some level we all know something has to
