pédagogie des catastrophes

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill could become the worst environmental disaster on the records. 800.000 liters oil are leaking from the collapsed pipe every day, devastating the most productive marine fishery in the US and one of the most important touristic destination in the country. It is also possible that the oil will be caught in the Gulf stream and pollute a much wider area. It is a major calamity, which has completely overwhelmed the response capacity of both BP and the US administration, and might have longer-lasting consequences than any hurricane ever happened in the area, by shutting down the whole region's economy for years, and destroying the functioning of the local environment.

Fox News might have been a little bit extreme in blaming the collapse to a deliberate sabotage, Texas Governor Rick Perry instead claimed that the oil rig collapse be an "Act of God" (a man-made disaster!). Then changed his mind and called it a "technical failure". While the first two definitions are obviously an attempt to deny any responsibility by BP, calling what happened a "technical failure" is part a more subtle strategy.

Drilling 1500 m underwater a 6000 m deep hole is a challenge for our most advanced technology. It is risky, and can result in unpredictable, or unavoidable, events. BP might be found guilty of not having installed an extra security switch (compulsory in Brazil and Norway) in case the main one fails, of having downplayed the emergency in the beginning, of having reacted slowly or ineffectively. And it might be fined or have to pay the cleaning and the damages.

But what's really at stake for the company, as well as for any other major player in this field, is not to have to install an extra switch on each pipe or even to be fined for US$ 16 billion to repay the losses. These guys' annual income is higher than that. They wouldn't go out of business if the environmental or security regulations changed. What they really need is to avoid the deep cultural change that events like this could cause.

The Exxon Valdez and the Prestige disasters, the Sidoarjo mud flow, as well as swine flu, avian influenza, E. Coli or Salmonella outbreaks from contaminated food in the US, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, even natural disasters like Katrina or the earthquakes in Haiti and China are presented and elaborated in our memory as unique situations that have different technical causes, that a different technical solutions might have avoided. That will never happen again, once the technology is available and the laws are respected.

But they collectively are a demonstration of the hidden costs of our development. Environmental degradation, social inequalities, reduced health and security levels, are all consequences of the same economic processes aimed at making available on a large scale any sort of cheap consumer goods. As long as we consider this kind of consumption a fundamental right of ours, the very basis of our lifestyle, of our culture, we keep reproducing the conditions that lead to such disasters, making cheap fossil fuels and cheap labor desirable, and strong environmental and security regulations, social services and welfare deleterious. We choose to maintain a system in which somebody else is subsidizing part of our well-being with his own.

These choices might not be conscious. Externalities are mostly invisible, either hidden from our sight or so diluted we can't really realize their existence. Disasters (both man-made and natural) can be useful in revealing them, uncovering some of the indirect implications of the ways societies work. Of how we decide to produce and consume stuff, to distribute resources and profits. Of where the weaknesses of our system are. Disasters like this can be a wake-up call for the people.

But it is fundamental to let such an event speak. Calling it, telling it a certain way, means giving it a certain meaning, and it's not a neutral process. Isolating each situation, making it one more different accident in a disorganized series of technical failures, might work just fine in preventing the very same event from happening again. It surely works perfectly in hiding the need for a more substantive, radical change.