Romance and Offshore Drilling

A story as old as time

On a cool yet comfortable cloudless evening, two young lovers finish a romantic stroll hand-in-hand along a gentle surf.  The soft dunes of fine white sand call to us and we sit atop the tallest nearby mound overlooking the quiet beach, the vast expanse of undisturbed ocean, and the falling sun in the sky.  As the sun sets with a brilliant array of colors, she leans in, gives me a gentle kiss, and places her head on my shoulder as I lean mine on top of hers.  We continue to sit in a comfortable silence, each imagining what the other is thinking, as the horizon blurs and slowly melds the distant water and the darkening sky into one continuous surreal vista.  Did we hold that embrace minutes?  Hours?  Eternity.  The only sounds are the rhythmic and peaceful breaking of the placid waves and the occasional melody of a seagull.  Meanwhile, mutual feelings of peace, insignificance, and a sense of fresh possibilities and inspiration concurrently invade our minds as our solitude causes us to internalize and contemplate our place and time in the universe.  Anything seems possible.  Conflict seems unnecessary, selfish, and short-sighted.  Our luck in finding each other a palpable sensation.  We slide closer.  Suddenly, as if in a fairytale, our eyes are drawn slightly upward in wonder as we trace the path of a shooting star as it speeds across the darkness glowing ever brighter before finally puffing out.  “We’re supposed to make wishes now”, she whispers to me. 

This is a true personal story.  We would go on to get married and, over twenty years after this sensational experience, we are still happily espoused and this memory will always be one of my favorites.  I like to believe that our wishes from that night continue to play themselves out.

Like so many others, what drew us to the beach and led to that beautiful and unforgettable moment was the awe-inspiring vastness of uninterrupted ocean water as far as the eye can see sparking the mind’s imagination to engage and priorities to be reorganized.  Similar scenes have caused poets to wax eloquently, writers to find their words, painters to turn canvases into masterpieces, lovers to dream, and geniuses to focus. 

Sadly, in typical Trump administration fashion, they have moved to open all of the US coastline to offshore drilling for oil and gas.  Oh, sorry, all except Florida where his precious Mar-a-lago estate just happens to be.  This should frustrate you emotionally if you’ve ever sat on a beach and enjoyed the view.  Of course, there is also the issue of environmental concerns.  Even if succumb to not believing in human’s effect on climate change, there is still the matter of pollution and contamination.  You must also consider the negative financial impacts on tourism at coastal communities due to disturbed beach views.  I’ve been to cities that have drilling platforms off the coast and it doesn’t inspire any sense of awe and detracts from desires to hit the beach.  It’s not like more oil drilling is even needed.  OPEC has been asking the US to REDUCE drilling for years as there has been a glut in supply.  As most will tell you, the promise being made is that it will result in job creation.  On the other hand, our national unemployment rate is below the point at which the Federal Reserve considers full employment.  While we can always do better, we MUST always ask “at what cost”.  Hurting the economies and jobs along the coast, harming the environment, and destroying pristine nature are but a few of the reasons that this is definitely not worth it.  Not at this time, if ever, in this instance. 

As I’ve stated many times in the past, Trump has an obvious propensity and bias to promote oil and coal as many of his decisions have gone above and beyond to increase their profits while cutting protections for workers, slashing regulations designed to keep our environment safe and clean, and, as in this case, going against the wishes of leaders in both parties.  Opening up the nation’s coastlines to drilling is more of the same, just a more extreme version.  There are so many crazy issues occurring constantly that it’s impossible for the concerned public to stay focused on particular topics.  This is one, though, that we need to remain steadfast about.  With the very rare exception, politicians of neither party or any coastal state wants this.  The hypocrisy of an administration that touts its extreme view of state’s rights and minimal federal government making this decision against that states’ wishes should worry everyone.  Many other issues need to be dealt with right now, too, obviously, but let’s not let this one slide.

Eric Trump made a statement last week that his dad, the President, isn’t a racist by stating, “My father sees one color, green.”  The irony, as someone close to me pointed out, is that seeing only one color is basically the definition of racism!  Of course, this wouldn’t be in the traditional sense, so I’ll call it economic racism:  the misguided belief that making more money at the top is more important than clean air, clean water, the health and wealth of those less fortunate, etc. and the failure to see the more beneficial long-term effects to the economy that would result in a more balanced, forward-thinking approach.

Let’s inspire more of this:

     On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

- ‘On the Beach at Night Alone’ by Walt Whitman

Rather than as Robert Graves, noted war poet, stated in ‘The Beach’

The horny boatman, who has seen whales
And flying fishes, who has sailed as far
As Demerara and the Ivory Coast,
Will warn them, when they crowd to hear his talks,
That every ocean smells of tar.

We deserve better.  As we stand together, we will be better.
- Dave Williams

Which would you rather stare out at?

Solo swim