876 Chapter 32 Shocks and Responses: 1992–Present
drilling pipe and exploded, blasting eleven workers
from the platform and engulfing it in flames. (The
bodies of the workers were not found.) Oil gushed
from the damaged pipe, an upsetting image cap-
tured by underwater cameras and transmitted by
streaming video on the Web. The world watched in
horror as BP’s repeated attempts to cap the well
failed; weeks passed as hundreds of millions of gal-
lons of oil spewed into the Gulf, fouling marshes and
beaches, killing fish, birds, and aquatic life. Obama
called it the “worst environmental disaster America
has faced.”
Pressure built on him to “do something.” Exactly
what was unclear. “He can’t put on scuba gear and go
down and stop this well,” observed New York City
mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican. Obama
forced BP to set aside $20 billion to cover damage
claims and sacked the director of the Minerals
Management Service for failing to adequately inspect
the off-shore platforms. He also declared a six-month
moratorium on deepwater drilling, pending the
inspection of existing platforms.
But this provoked howls of protest. Opponents
of the moratorium included both of Louisiana’s sena-
tors and its governor, Bobby Jindal, who noted that
the oil industry accounted for 17 percent of
Louisiana’s jobs and much of the state’s revenue.
“The last thing we need is to enact public policies
that will certainly destroy thousands of existing jobs,”
Jindal added. Such opposition underscored the
dilemma confronting a nation whose thirst for cheap
oil was unquenchable. The exhaustion of oil reserves
beneath the earth’s landmass necessitated offshore
drilling; but the environmental risks of deep-sea
drilling were all too apparent.
Obama resurrected his campaign goal of promot-
ing alternative sources of energy, such as solar and
wind power. But such solutions seemed to lie far in
the future. Whether the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico
would reinvigorate the environmental movement
remained to be seen.Afghanistan, Again
The economic crisis and the environmental
calamity in the Gulf of Mexico notwithstanding,
Afghanistan loomed as the dominant issue for
Obama’s presidency. Few could have imagined such
a development in December 2001, when the war in
Afghanistan appeared to be over. The Taliban hadA brown pelican surveys the ecological damage caused by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.