“You’re not thinking with your dipstick, & you obviously didn’t think out the 9/11 comparison & how quickly airline flights were allowed to “take flight” again.

I detailed my preferred analogy, and my argument is well thought out. The reason Big Oil wouldn’t use the 9/11 analogy is that it concedes that a moratorium (on 33 new wells, not thousands of existing wells) is appropriate, and now the only discussion is over the length of moratorium. The analogy began during a 30 day moratorium, which they thought was excessive.

I’d be happy to discuss the issue of appropriate length of moratoriums, but that’s a different issue than whether or not ANY moratorium OF ANY LENGTH is appropriate. Obviously that wasn’t the argument that they were trying to make when this analogy/talking point was introduced.

Let’s use the 9/11 analogy. PLEASE!

Based on this duly accepted analogy, what sort’ve timeframe are we looking at before we allow flights over the US again/drilling to be recommenced?

I have seen the statistics of what’s going to happen to Louisiana, economically speaking. We aren’t talking about folks who make $36K/year getting into serious employment/financial/economic hardships here.

STARTING salaries for roughnecks being hired for offshore work is $40K/year. That’s with health, retirement, & not including your Safety Bonus. That’s with ZERO WORK EXPERIENCE. Gotta valid license, steel toed boots, & can you pass a physical & a drug screen? You can make $40K/year offshore.

That’s again a STARTING salary. Folks are making WAY more than that in the Gulf. $272 a week in Unemployment Insurance Benefits isn’t going to pay their housenotes, their grocery bills, keep their lights on, etc.

This is going to have a trickle down effect on a host of businesses, both large & small, from self-employed house-cleaners to car dealerships, up & down the line.

You’re not thinking with your dipstick, & you obviously didn’t think out the 9/11 comparison & how quickly airline flights were allowed to “take flight” again.

If I’m not mistaken, the relief well theory was floated by a certain someone with an aversion to links on your old blog.

Who was that? Hmm…I wonder…Hmm…

As I noted, that only goes to the severity of the risk involved. You’re still have the similarities I noted — that there is a disaster, that the risk of recurrence during a moratorium is very small, and that the risk of severe economic consequences is almost certain. The analogy is exaggerated because the risk is smaller with an airplane crash, but it still has explanatory value because it exemplifies those three factors quite well.

You say that it’s a different “type” of risk, but I don’t see how that’s really relevant; the only logically relevant factor is that the risk is more severe. Of course the nature of the risk differs — it would differ in almost every analogy, including the one you cite (toxic waste on land causes different types of injury from an oil spill, I assure you). While the severity of the risk on either side is indeed important, the fact remains that you’re dealing with a very, very small risk one one side of the scale that can be further mitigated with additional safety precautions. In both cases, you wouldn’t come anywhere near satisfying a cost/benefit analysis, and so the policy is irrational.

I don’t see what part of this conclusion you disagree with. You seem to concede that the certain risk of major economic loss completely outweighs the risk of another major oil spill during the six month period. That’s the point the analogy tries to make — it’s an imperfect but effective reductio ad absurdum, or reductio ad incommodum.

No it’s not, unless you also envisage a comparable ongoing disaster resulting from the crash that no one knows how to quickly stop and that affects millions of people. The airlines carrying toxic waste scenario is much more “apt”– I thought I went over this at length, but the point seemed to elude you.

Thousands of jobs might be lost from the moratorium. But thousands of jobs have been lost to the spill– as well as costs to environment, diet, recreation, culture, way of life– and it could happen again during the next drilling procedure. Yes– six months is a “long time” but so is 86 days to plug an oil gusher, and let me know when the oil slick is no longer in the Gulf. There is no comparable airline crash scenario that led to unchecked, ongoing, daily disasters for months on end. But that is part of the reason why it was deliberately chosen– it’s inaccurate. It’s not a matter of SCOPE of risk– the airline industry has no parallel to this– it’s a difference in TYPE of risk.

I don’t agree with the “premises” of the analogy, though I might agree in part with part of its conclusion. I mentioned in my piece that I will discuss the moratorium in greater depth in my next column, so this is not the totality of the my reaction to it.

I disagree; although it’s an exaggeration, the analogy still basically works. Just because you can distinguish it in some ways doesn’t mean it doesn’t have explanatory value. You cite the fact that we aren’t just talking about a single plane crash, which is fair enough, but we’re also not talking about a brief let’s-just-step-back-for-a-second type of moratorium (as happened post 9/11). Six months is a long time and is guaranteed to cause long term economic damages. These vessels will leave and they won’t come back for a while. Jobs will be lost, and they won’t return quickly.

In any case, the analogy is apt because in both cases you have a major catastrophe caused by a certain economic activity, a very small risk of a recurrence of that catastrophe within the near future if the activity is not stopped during that time, and a virtual guarantee of major economic consequences if the activity is stopped during that time. The vision of grounding all planes out of panic following a single disaster for an extended period is as good a way as any to explain the situation. In both cases, the proposed moratorium doesn’t even pass the laugh test, to say nothing of a cost-benefit analysis. When you consider that other, less severe measures can be taken, the idea of an extended moratorium appears downright absurd.

I think it’s very telling that you spend an entire opinion piece ranting against an analogy, when at the end you agree with its basic premise — your only complaint is that it’s an exaggeration because the implied scope of the risks differs. I must say, this leaves me more than a bit confused. You’re facing down the loss of thousands of jobs in an economically fragile region due to a policy that both liberals and conservatives throughout the state believe to be entirely ill-advised, and yet your reaction is to spend several paragraphs criticizing pundits for using an somewhat overstated analogy to make the case.

It’s clear to me that you aren’t directing your outrage in the right direction.

Michael says:

“require ALL deep water rigs to drill relief wells to guard against accidents.”

I agree. A thousand amens.

“Once they drill relief wells in deep water, have them move to the shallows and do the same there. With some 3,000 or so rigs in operation, that could provide large numbers of jobs for a significant time.”

It’s very pretty to think so. But at $100 million per relief well, the chances of the industry (or the govt) coughing up $300 billion in the name of extreme environmental safety for existing wells is pure fantasy.