Diablogue #1, Part 4: BP – impacts are rife, but what about opportunities?

In Part 3 of this, our first diablogue, Jill Damatac interpreted the responsibility apportioned to each stakeholder in the Deepwater Horizon disaster: for BP, the formidable environmental clean-up; for other major oil companies, their expertise and technical capacity to support the task; and for the Government, regulatory oversight and quality control.  A reasoned approach to the tangible impacts of the crisis, allocating to each party the duties that they (should) know best.  Now, we sit back and watch the generations pass before environmental conditions in the Gulf of Mexico are restored to their previous levels.  Sorted (she says, with skepticism).

My (other) concern with the agreed division of responsibility is its dismissal of the intangible implications of the spill, including the economic impacts on industries and communities surrounding the Gulf, not to mention the impacts on the energy industry itself (the long-term effects have been likened to those of Three Mile Island), the potential setbacks to US energy policy, and the possible damage to political relations between the USA and UK.  Who will take responsibility for managing these elements of the disaster, and how? 

But these are questions for another day.  This article is focused not on the impacts, but on the opportunities arising from BP’s blunder.  And yes, there are indeed opportunities.  Let us consider.

As the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, notoriously stated in the midst of the USA’s burgeoning financial downturn in November 2008,

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.

Bizarre as this statement seemed, Emanuel explained his rationale that crises provide opportunities to realise and achieve things that may not have been achieved before.  I could not agree more.  Catastrophic as global disasters are, it is so frequently the grim realisation of actual risk that stimulates the type of action and innovation desperately needed, but ignored in the day to day context of ignorance and denial.  Take, for example, the scientific evidence gained in the 1980s that human activity was systematically destroying the ozone layer (see Farman et al., Nature Vol. 315, May 1985).  This shock finding led quickly to the adoption of the Montreal Protocol (1987), an international agreement which, if adhered to, should enable the full recovery of the ozone layer by 2050.  In similar vein, the incredible potential of nuclear fission to generate clean energy became apparent as a direct result of the development of the atomic bomb, in the face of mid-20th century global warfare.

So what opportunities can we realise from this current disaster?

Firstly, I suggest new environmental innovation and the development of the green technology market.  When the BBC website asked readers to submit their ideas on how the oil spill should have been stopped, the site was deluged with responses.  In capturing the attention of the global populace, Deepwater Horizon has also captured the imagination of innovators and would-be inventors worldwide.  And this is just the informal research and development sector.  The proximity of the disaster to the intellectual might of the USA could bring a stimulus for the growth of industries and venture capitalists focused on green technologies.  The United States has long been criticised for its slow acceptance of all things environmental, but recent events may bring home the need for pro-activity and preparedness to respond to environmental risk, and the economic opportunities in doing so.  BP’s inability to respond effectively to the causes and consequences of the spill has demonstrated the gap in the market.  The New York Times has evidenced the poor progress in developing clean-up technologies since the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.  Entrepreneurs are surely standing in the wings ready to pounce on the next technological breakthrough?

Offshore wind turbines

Secondly, the disaster places new impetus on the US Government to address its ailing environmental regulations.  As Zygmunt J.B. Plater, a law professor at Boston College, remarked in the New York Times, the spill in the Gulf may become a “wake-up call” for environmental causes across the board.  The United States has historically lagged behind many nations on environmental policy.  International treaties have been signed in abundance in a gesture of lip service, but rarely ratified.  See, for example, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity; the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants; and the Kyoto Protocol, signed by President Clinton, but rejected by President George W. Bush in 2001.  We may now at last see the advancement of the US approach to environmental management.  Environmental groups are predicting a new awareness of wetlands, biodiversity and water quality, while President Obama’s Oval Office address last week stressed the need to end the US “addiction” to fossil fuels.  Obama called on the Senate to pass an Energy Bill that would diversify energy supplies towards cleaner generation.  Tightening of environmental regulations imposed on industry has also been cited.  We see here an opportunity not only to advance the baseline mechanisms for environmental protection in the USA, but also to take enormous steps forward for international environmental policy if the US lends its support.

Mr. Obama’s push to diversify energy supplies leads me to my final window of opportunity.  It has already been suggested that a shift towards new forms of energy may need an additional 500,000 engineers worldwide to satisfy its needs during the next two decades.  The events at Deepwater Horizon lend further importance to the necessity of encouraging the brightest talent into an industry characterised by risk.   The ongoing need to address energy security concerns in an environmentally acceptable way, acts as a metaphorical sponge soaking up skilled professionals into a dynamic and endlessly vibrant economic sector.  Investment is likely to be ploughed into complex facilities such as nuclear power stations, offshore wind farms, tidal power, and upgrading energy infrastructure on a vast scale.  This provides extensive opportunities for firms and individuals with advanced technical skills and the ability to work in highly regulated environments.  It is already anticipated that the oil and gas industry alone will increase its graduate recruitment by 50 per cent next year to cope with global demands for expert engineering services.  Here we see surefire evidence of an industry with a flourishing future, and the opportunity for skilling and re-skilling to meet rigorous professional criteria; an overwhelmingly positive story in the current economic climate, and one which incidents in the Gulf serve only to drive forwards.

Now all we need is an additional division of responsibility to ensure that the opportunities are pursued with similar rigour, and simultaneously with the management of impacts.  Over to you, Mr. Obama.

 

 

Tags: Business, Climate change, Design & Technology, Diablogue, Economics, Environment, Politics