It’s a beautiful morning. Shafts of sunshine are fiercely visible in between trees, flashing here and there as we drive through the rolling farmland North of Baltimore. It’s an absolutely stunning day – but seeing that the light appears as solid beams falling from the sky tells me everything I need to know about the humidity outside the vehicle, and frankly I should never see this side of morning.
Last night we played Brewers Alley and, despite being a bar show, it was a great night. We were joined by Kristen on cello and we had a very intent audience. A rarity in a bar show – we had moments of absolute silence, absolute focus. We probably couldn’t have had it with a larger audience, but we had that beautiful balance where the room didn’t feel empty but hadn’t reached the critical mass where people don’t care there’s music and decide that we’re just background noise.
The last couple of days have seen some mounting fear in me as I watch the Gulf of Mexico’s oil gusher become more and more hopeless. Now BP is saying they won’t be able to cut off oil until August, which on the one hand is insane… and on the other hand really puts our power into perspective.
Five thousand feet down, what does the United States government have that can pop down there and deal with it? Nothing, really. (well, in truth I don’t know this for certain, but unlike space exploration, I think deep water exploration has been mostly a privately-funded endeavour). It’s really an example of us stretching too far without considering the consequences….
Not that I’m saying we should ever, as a daring and curious species, shy away from something because we say the personal danger is too great. We’ll always have insane souls willing to populate the bodies that are test pilots and stunt car drivers and thrill seekers and explorers – and as a species our entire evolution depends on having individuals who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the rest of us. But in that same context, we need to weigh the danger to our world and our species.
It just doesn’t seem like there was much of a backup plan.
It’s like we’ve unthinkingly unleashed a monster. The genie from the bottle, the monsters from the box – whatever. I’m watching Lost for the first time, and I wonder if the much hinted at Smoke Monster is anything similar…. Spreading dark tentacles insidiously under the waters of the Atlantic…
Oh how I hate sea monsters.
An interesting article in the NY Times talks about our faith in technology and about risk management – and I don’t question the benefits of nuclear power (despite its American demonization) even after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl because I don’t believe in throwing out the baby with the bathwater. abandoning the technology simply because we haven’t gotten it right yet. But in this case we’ve created a problem that we can’t GET to. It’s a problem we CAN solve – if we can reach it. But the pressure and the water and the limited ability to get things to the site, It just seems like that should’ve been taken into account BEFORE something went wrong.
We don’t test airplanes over cities. And we don’t race cars without first cordoning off the track. We don’t start toying with really scary viruses until we’ve build a technologically marvelous containment facility – and I guess we should take a lesson from the Abyss and not go drilling holes without building an environment where we can be on top of the situation every step of the way.
And then ask the aliens for help.
