This time it's for his handling of the BP oil spill.
Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April
20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle
a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to
be underway. "Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour," Weird
Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio
Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than
all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat
the spill.
You would think that cleaning up the gulf would be the highest priority. You would be wrong. Political considerations far outweighed the minor issue of an environmental catastrophe.
The U.S. government responded with "Thanks but no thanks," remarked
Visser, despite BP's desire to bring in the Dutch equipment and despite
the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer --the Dutch government offered the
use of its equipment at no charge. Even after the U.S. refused, the
Dutch kept their vessels on standby, hoping the Americans would come
round. By May 5, the U.S. had not come round. To the contrary, the U.S.
had also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of
them with superior expertise and equipment --unlike the U.S., Europe has
robust fleets of Oil Spill Response Vessels that sail circles around
their make-shift U.S. counterparts.
Why does neither the U.S.
government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology
available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs
afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for
example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract
most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly
oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn't good enough for the U.S.
regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million -- if water
isn't at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of
Mexico.
Federal environmentalists demanded absolute purity. That is, until they finally had to admit they were overwhelmed and accepted the Dutch offer. Sort of.
The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP
spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer -- but only
partly. Because the U.S. didn't want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the
U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it
to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews
immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions
the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be
trained.
The Obama administration has deliberately delayed the gulf cleanup, deliberately courted environmental and economic disaster for the Gulf Coast. All of this for political payoff to labor unions. This is more than his usual mining for political opportunity from each crisis that comes along. It's becoming obvious that President Obama just doesn't do anything unless there is political advantage in it.
Afterthought: What it boils down to is this. By his delay, Obama is inflicting economic hardship upon the people of the Gulf Coast in order to direct federal cleanup funding to his labor union political base.
