I know exactly where I was early in the morning on January 16, 2003. I was standing with my friend Martin and our children on the beach in Cape Canaveral watching Space Shuttle Columbia take off. It was an extraordinary sight - the closest I'd ever been to a launch during many annual Florida trips. On February 1 of that year I decided to watch Columbia's re-entry live on TV. Since I'd seen the launch it was gut-wrenching to watch the shuttle break up in the sky, strewing the remains of the crew and the spacecraft across Texas.
I also know where I was the morning of September 11, 2001: at the Sandals resort in Occho Rios, Jamaica watching a Wall Street investment program on CNN. The show was broadcast from a studio only a few blocks from the World Trade Centre when the towers were hit by the hijacked planes. I watched the terrible events unfold almost in real time; we remained glued to the television for days.
There's no entry in my journal for the morning of April 20, 2010 - it's likely I was working at the computer in my home office. That was the day of the explosion and subsequent oil spill from BP's Deep Water Horizon drill platform in the Gulf of Mexico, what is now the worst oil spill in US history.
So why do I mention these three apparently unrelated events?
Let's start with the space shuttle disaster. This was a huge turning point for NASA. Up until then, people had assumed NASA was a safety-obsessed organization. Ron Howard's 1995 film Apollo 13 reminded us of the heroic efforts NASA made to successfully save a crew of astronauts on a failing spacecraft. Over time, NASA's status and good record led to complacency. Management downplayed risks from the impact of foam insulation debris and didn't take extraordinary measures to check Columbia's exterior before re-entry because they couldn't imagine doing anything if a hole was found. Subsequent hearings investigations revealed that NASA did not, in fact, practice a true "safety culture." A risk-taking mentality ran through the organization, perhaps a hold-over from its early days testing manned and unmanned rockets. Dangerous trade-offs were made in the effort to stick to launch schedules. Take off; cross your fingers.
This is analogous to BP's operation in the Gulf. The oil industry is a macho place to start with, with companies risking enormous sums looking for a lucky strike. Even on dry land, oil well operations are dangerous. Move all this to an ocean oil rig and the macho culture of men living and working in uncomfortable and dangerous conditions increases, along with the dangers. Sure, BP had safety procedures in place, but it's emerged that BP's 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf and its 52-page site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig were riddled with omissions and glaring errors. An Associated Press analysis detailed how BP officials "have pretty much been making it up as they go along." The lengthy plans approved by the federal government last year vastly understated the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and overstated the company's preparedness to deal with one. (The range of estimates about how much oil was gushing each day became a farce all on its own.)
Simply put, BP extended a safety culture sufficient for operations on dry land into the ocean environment of deep sea drilling. It wasn't nearly enough: the ocean oil rig industry clearly needs a safety culture akin to that of the nuclear power industry, with comparable oversight.
As happened with NASA and space exploration in general, we must hope a complete re-think and re-regulation of the industry will follow the BP disaster.
Now let's look at the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The horrible events of that day are familiar to everyone so don't need recounting. Again, up until then Americans thought they were well protected by their government, its large army and its legendary FBI and CIA agencies. Only after the attacks did it emerge that an almost Keystone Kops level of incompetence existed among the different agencies. Apart from ordinary human stupidity and several presidents' failure to take Al Qaeda seriously enough, it turned out that the agencies charged with protecting Americans were legally prohibited from sharing information with one another, even on matters of national security.
9/11 was what technology entrepreneurs would call a "game changer." It triggered a total change in how the United States and the international community views terrorism and fights against it.
Likewise, governments and oil companies around the world will review their offshore drilling practices and put more safeguards in place. Offshore drilling in Alaska is now off the table. But it's more than that: our feelings about reliance on nonrenewable fossil fuels will change. Watch for an even keener demand for energy conservation and investments in solar, wind, tidal and other green energy options. Let's face it, when a wind turbine fails, an entire ocean isn't polluted!
Though it won't help the oil soaked birds and marine animals in the Gulf of Mexico right now, in time the BP spill may come to be thought of as the event that changed everything: the environment's 9/11. HMM
Guy Crittenden is editor of this magazine. Contact Guy at gcrittenden@hazmatmag.com