For one, I’m disappointed with the administration’s slow response to this crisis. I’m surprised that Obama issued a statement last Friday still supporting the expansion of offshore oil and gas production in US waters, but I agree. I’m not surprised there was not a chorus of Democrats jumping on this statement.

Here’s a nice technical blow-by-blow of the Deepwater Horizon explosion by one of the workers on the rig:

Welcome to the World of Deep-water Risk

As I’ve said before, this accident is Mother Nature’s wake-up call to everyone. Deep-water drilling is a high-stakes game. It’s not exactly a “casino,” in that there’s a heck of a lot of settled science, engineering and technology involved.  But we’re sure finding out the hard way what all the risks are. And it’s becoming more and more clear how the totality of risk is a moving target. There’s geologic risk, technical risk, engineering risk, environmental risk, capital risk and market risk.

With each deep well, these risks all come together over one very tiny spot at the bottom of the ocean. So for all the oil that’s out there under deep water — and it’s a lot — the long-term calculus of risk and return is difficult to quantify.

This is big news all through the offshore industry. There are HUGE environmental issues, and certainly big political repercussions.

It’s the biggest ecological catastrophe for the US, with far-reaching ramifications across the entire economy and politics. Energy sustainability is now more than ever a hot-button political topic, and a highly emotional one especially since knowledge of the energy sector is so minimal and greenwashed. Through various energy, social and market policies over the past fifty years the US has built up every aspect of the national infrastructure around oil and solidified our dependence on it. Projections for the most viable alternatives are decades away. And now we’re watching while the rest of the world races each other to implement clean energy industries while we’re mired in bureaucracy and catering to a fickle electorate’s every caprice. Hope this tipping point for energy policy isn’t squandered yet again.

Here’s a GREAT letter to Congress by @nelderini on what our energy policy should aim for, within a global context and in light of our current energy infrastructure. Here’s an excerpt but the entire piece is not long so you should read it:

It’s time to come up with a real plan, an honest plan, to rebuild America under a new energy paradigm. One with serious, achievable 30-year and 50-year milestones that will slash our need for fossil fuels.

A plan based on facts and science, not political expediency. One that will create true, long-term wealth, prosperity, resiliency, and self-sufficiency.

We need a Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security to prepare the country for the decline of oil, not sweet lies from the EIA which completely ignore it. As Lester Brown observed, “only Sweden and Iceland actually have anything that remotely resembles a plan to effectively cope with a shrinking supply of oil.”

We want to stop spending half a trillion dollars a year for imported oil, and develop a defense strategy for the day when our imports dry up.

We need stable, simple feed-in tariffs, which have been proven successes in Germany, Japan and Spain…not complex, corruptible, ineffectual policies like cap-and-trade or cap-and-tax. And we need them for 30 years, not one.

We want solar on every rooftop, a wind turbine in every field and a micro-hydro turbine in every running stream, wherever viable resources exist. Distributed generation is resilient, and brings value to every community. Along with it, we need distributed power storage, and a smart grid with micro-islanding so we can fall back on our own resources if the grid goes down.

We want a plan to manage our resources for the long term health of our society, like Norway and Saudi Arabia have. Instead of planning to use our remaining oil and gas so we can drive in inefficient cars more cheaply, we should be planning to convert it into the renewables and efficiency gains we’ll need in the future.

We want a defensive strategy for our grid with hardening against cyber-attacks.

We need to reverse the long process of globalization and bring manufacturing back home. Instead of a society now dependent on complex, world-spanning, highly optimized supply chains, we need local resiliency, redundancy, and diversity in all the essential sectors: energy, water, food, and security.

Finally, we need energy education at all levels — from the street to the universities, from business to government employees.

Earth Day 2010 ironically kicked off with a blazing bonfire at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, 66km off the Louisiana coastline. The rig was contracted to a BP plc unit (who faces the brunt of bad PR), but it was owned and operated by Transocean Ltd, the world’s biggest offshore drilling contractor. After the initial explosion the platform burned for two days, then it sank into the Gulf of Mexico. WattsUpWithThat explains the drilling technology and below is a graphic from the Times-Picayune showing how difficult it is to shut off the leak. Images, like the one above, can be found on the boston.com site.

Full-scale investigations are under way to determine the cause of this accident, with all parties using the event to advance their political agendas, particularly with the climate policy negotiations currently raging on the Hill. Notwithstanding repercussions across the entire US ecology and economy, a quick note about the industry and technology:

There are over three thousand oil rigs in the Gulf extracting and moving crude petroleum to production. There has not been (that I’m aware of!) a blowout/spill in 30 years (since Ixtoc I in 1979). These platforms are amazing marvels of technology. Have you seen the National Geographic Megastructures on oil rigs? Their extreme technologies are alternately alarming and awe-inspiring with their attendant high risks and lessons which can only be learned the hard way. That said, accidents are bound to occur. Their use extends beyond extractive industries, and holds a lot of promise for geologic research.

Economically: Louisiana’s only natural defense against Gulf hurricanes (like 2005′s Katrina) is the vast marshlands of the Mississippi Delta. But given the engineering modifications of the Mississippi River and mismanaged agricultural technologies, this rapidly eroding coastal ecosystem today boasts the world’s largest and most notorious dead zone (the geographically larger Baltic Sea area having been a dead zone for millenia, but reversing since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of demand on expensive fertilisers, among many things). Rapid coastal erosion removes this buffer zone and exposes to the storm surges 1) the city of New Orleans, 2) the state’s vital oil and gas infrastructure, and 3) its energy distribution infrastructure upon which the entire country relies upon. It is the natural nursery ground for 40% of the country’s seafood. It is the natural habitat for over five million waterfowl and migratory birds, which is a significant tourism draw throughout the year. This watershed disaster will be calamitous for an already besieged economy.

Cleanup: Satellite data analysis boosts the initial crude oil leak estimates up (from an initially announced 1000, then 5000 just days ago) to a *whopping* 25,000 barrels a day, putting us less than two weeks away from eclipsing the Exxon Valdez catastrophe which drained 270,000 barrels into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989. The Sound was a challenge to clean up. How do you correct an environmental disaster of this magnitude in impenetrable swamps?

oh New Orleans… screwed. time and again.

Not so in New Orleans. The end of the holidays marks the start of another season also tied to the winter solstice, Mardi Gras. The trees and lights don’t go down, they just get the green, purple and gold ornaments added in. Adults get to be kids again and it all starts with the Twelfth Night Revelers bal masque!

Avoid the French Quarter frat scene– where Mardi Gras is reduced to a tacky garish spectacle that metrosexual yupster tourists looking for fast hard fun so they can feel cool lap right up– and you’ll see the magical transformation of N’awlins into a formalised make-believe world of monarchic rule in all its pomp, finery and regalia. Twelfth Night brings to life the Lord of Misrule, the Goddess of Chance, the enchanted courts with its jesters, the aristocratic pompadours and rituals of old…. Any life list should include this Mardi Gras and an invitation from a Krewe to either the Bacchus, Rex or Endymion Ball. These galas are an entire year in the making and are extraordinary sensory events.

I thought about this because K and I went to a dinner party the other night. One of the couples could hardly speak English and we command just a lick and a half of French, so needless to say our conversation with them wasn’t hopping. Then “la galette des Rois” came out, and suddenly conversation knew no boundaries, starting with this most token of culinary traditions associated with the run-up to Fat Tuesday across cultures.

The French “King Cake” is a flaky puff pastry with a dense center of frangipani– totally unlike our King Cake (I sooo want a Gambinos king cake delivery right now!). It’s served traditionally to draw the King to the Epiphany, with the youngest person in the group (likely a child) sent under the table to pick at random who gets the next slice of cake. The slice with the trinket in it (a collectible porcelain baby jesus in olden times) designates that person the new “King” (regardless of sex), and it becomes her/his turn to bring a cake to the next party.

(Ours had a glass duck, and I had the treat of finding the first trinket of the season. And we’re having dinner again with that couple tomorrow!)

So N’awlin’s King Cake (brought over by the French settlers) kicks off the Mardi Gras season, with the Twelfth Night Revelers using it to choose the Queen for their Ball… The Gambinos family is renowned for the past decades for their King Cakes. They will even deliver… So we are in the Carnival spirit, along with all the Tulane alums and Louisianans(sp?) in Phnom Penh. Unfortunately this year won’t be the year of the masqued gala (we’re too busy celebrating Bush’s departure to plan another event!), but the annual festivities must continue– even if it’s just a Pimps and Hoez murder mystery affair ;-)

And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry.

Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so.

How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.

— William Shakespeare

Consider our suicide economics. As if five years of steadily growing cutbacks to programs in environment, poverty reduction, welfare, and healthcare were not enough, the 2006 budget deliberated prior to Katrina contained $35 billion in further reductions. Billions in tax cuts for the wealthiest build brass at corporate offices instead of supporting much needed public investments ie. levee systems and emergency response networks. For the poor, that paltry check from Uncle Sam in effect adds up to significant cuts in health coverage and social security. Those lacking flexibility and capital are the most affected, as we’ve seen in the appalling news feeds from New Orleans. This drains the federal budget, compromising response to more urgent security matters. How dry can we squeeze an already record deficit?

The petroleum predicament. The period since the end of WWII saw the creation of a mammoth infrastructure that is extremely dependent on petroleum. Vast investments in this sector make it politically challenging to develop a clear energy policy exploring alternate power sources. But soaring global demand are straining low inventory levels. The bulk of our petroleum comes from repressive regimes in the Middle East, a region becoming increasingly unstable. The supply of natural gas that heats half the homes in the US also faces a bleak future. With depleted land-based wells, we now depend on the tenuous supply from the Gulf of Mexico.

If you follow the stock market you’ll have noticed the steady impact of the energy crisis, prior to Katrina. This has bearing on our monetary landscape, where dramatic shifts in processing and pricing such as we’ve seen in the past two weeks traditionally portend inflation. Thankfully the federal reserve on diligent watch have kept it at bay. But energy supply shocks affect more than just the Dow Jones and mortgages.

It ripples to other sectors, ie trade. Higher transportation and logistical costs attributable to the energy shortage from Katrina alone is wreaking havoc on crucial trade talks. The World Trade Organization (WTO) has been pressuring the US to lift agricultural subsidies to level the playing field for other countries that want access to US markets. But disaster relief programs in Katrina’s wake will depress commodity prices, leading to billions in government payments to farmers. This in turn compromises the administration’s effort to win new export markets for American production, where almost 30 percent of American farm receipts come from.

Globalization. Life has sped up, for everyone. A virus here in SE Asia can land on your doorstep in a mere seventeen hours. And medical technology have never kept pace with pathogenic ambitions, despite what the pharmaceutical sector might want to believe. We did not conquer SARS, Avian Influenza, or Japanese Encephalitis. These microbes lie waiting. The US Centers for Disease Control is part of homeland security. Are our assets ready?

The Iraq War. The Middle East’s autocrats and theocrats are stronger than ever. This was a war designed to prevent further terror; to create a compliant, free-market, pro-American client state; and to restrain Iran. Instead we accomplished the complete opposite by destabilizing the region, strengthening and fueling religious fanaticism and terrorist cells, and replacing Saddam Hussein with a worse alternative: a pro-Iranian regime. Iraq is now on the brink of a revolving civil war between the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis (read: millions dead in ethnic cleansing such as in Afghanistan 1979-92), if not a regional bloodbath sucking in Iran, Syria, and the rest of the Gulf States. This chaos will trigger a devastating disruption to our oil supply.

And through an intricate, inter-connected fiscal scheme, this foreign policy quagmire can catastrophically affect the dollar. A collapse in the dollar will bring down the world economy. We were forewarned against faulty and misleading information by a litany of esteemed Middle East scholars around the world before we attacked Iraq, yet we did not see past the mainstream media hype about “weapons of mass destruction”. Speaking of which, do we realize there is a monopoly on our media outlets by the same corporate interests (read: non-objective, interests-based soundbytes)?

The world order. By contravening the UN’s operational mandate in invading and destroying a sovereign state, we essentially revert to a pre-UN world order of alliances and unavoidable wars, with resumption of the arms race. Radical unilateralism and Pax Americana aspirations such as we’ve been pursuing cannot continue without incurring severe casualties on an already overextended military covering two fronts and the homeland.

The point. Our ambitions exceed capacity. US security is based on the strength of our socio-economic arrangements. We prioritized tax cuts and military offensives, and in a world of finite resources that decision has consequences. Katrina accomplished what a host of evidence-based rhetoric and literature could not: she exposed festering ills that threaten our national security and prosperity.

Our nation is barreling towards a calamitous disaster– and not necessarily by one spectacular act of terrorism. Decisions made in the US have global ramifications, and it rightly boomerangs back in a domino effect. We see that the structural integrity of our nation has been compromised by our leaders’ negligence. And it is buoyed by our apathy. We have to think beyond party lines, past faith-based divisions, and outside our small bubbles of existence. Are we confident in the direction our leadership is taking us? Because the security of our children’s America depends on it.