The Citizen’s accidental correspondent, Jimmy Descant, reports from New Orleans about the BP oil spill. Descant, who grew up in New Orleans, landed in Salida to rebuild after losing everything to Hurricane Katrina. Descant has been in New Orleans for Jazz Fest, an opportunity to reconnect with friends, share his art and reacquaint himself with the people, place and spirit that fuels so much of his inspiration. Descant talks about the growing environmental fallout from the spill and its affect on him and New Orleans. Links throughout the story were researched and placed by Citizen writer Lee Hart.
I’m guessing all y’all know what happened down here last week, and the heart pounding love for the City and the comeback that is contrasted by this absolute catastrophe in the Gulf. People are crying and disgusted and it’s like a hurricane, slowly getting bigger and worse every day. Animals that aren’t covered in oil are dying and washing up on beaches already.
I haven’t seen the beaches yet, but you could smell the test oil burn the other day all the way up here. There are photos around online of the oil getting to shore even though they put out booms which are inflated long surface chains that tries to keep the oil contained, but not very effective due to the high winds these past few days.
They only saved one oily bird yesterday; 11 men died in the rig explosion. They are paying people to get out and do work, but BP and the Fed waited like a week before launching help, doing PR first as always. There is supposed to massive movement now but I haven’t checked on it.
Everyone’s motto is to eat as much seafood as possible in the next couple weeks because of the possibility of the death of all the oyster beds and seafood industries on the coast. President Barack Obama showed up yesterday to placate but is still going ahead with massive offshore leases along all the Gulf and east coasts. “Spill, baby, spill.”
Like Katrina, it was all PR first and then slow action, and then Band-Aids and studies. People down here can only take so much, and you see it in their eyes. There’s not much hope or coastal restoration or hurricane buffer marshes being built now. We’ll see how the tides turn with 220,000 gallons a day spewing undaunted.
I’m sick about it as so many are… I have a friend who is an avid coastal fisherman and he is getting his family together to get down to Grand Isle to do what he’s done or decades before the oil completely covers the Louisiana coast. After my political shows of 2003-2008, and then the Inaugural Ball art show, I was trying to put the dark political art behind me but now, it’s all Soylent Blackness as inspiration. The comparisons of Nestle and BP go hand and hand corporate and politician wise, though this is catastrophic right now. I feel so let down, by Obama especially, but he’s a bought and paid for politician and shows it, looking like Bush when he came months after Katrina, hugging and kissing and promising, and then saying that he will go ahead with all oil leases he just okayed, and HOPE that the oil co.’s will provide safeguards, but that may take years and we have to have energy so there’s no teeth to it. Sen. Mary Landrieu said it’s not the time to back away from more drilling. Seems they want to destroy everything then say well, it’s not worth anything at all anymore so let’s just exploit it to the ninth degree. The Governor just a couple months ago cheered the opening of a new GIANT Monsanto plant on the river above New Orleans. All about jobs, not about deadly pollutants. More severe art to come, but I’m trying to balance it out.
When the Citizen asked Descant what good he hoped could come in the aftermath of this travesty; here’s his reply.
More intelligence? More changeover to renewables? More disgust from the public? After Katrina I drove people away with my ranting, but geez, what else does it take for the general public to say enough? I guess it hasn’t gotten bad enough yet. The comaraderie here of the locals with the coast Cajuns and everyone else who isn’t making the fortunes on these tragedies is astounding in a good way. Some realizations of what is actually going to happen to the Louisiana coast is good, that the destruction is exponential, and the care and restoration is just a fingertip.
My people are still here and still keeping up the life and the fight and the soul albeit some through blinders so they don’t hurt themselves or anyone else, while they’re being treated as serfs who slowly die of cancer. Watch the TV show Treme on HBO to get the most real show about New Orleans and the Katrina aftermath too. To be clear, Katrina didn’t flood New Orleans, it was the Corpse (sic) of Engineers and every other fat cat who sucked the blood out of what could have been.
But Jazz Fest was so great it was if if people decided to suspend think about the spill until after this festival that is such a shining light of goodness and soul.
Note: This Huffington Post article lists ways you can get involved and help.
Jimmy D is a great guy and a talented artist and this oil leak is nothing short of a catastrophe. His report comes from the gut. He makes emotional unsubstantiated accusations and predictions but offers no solutions. That’s his homeland being destroyed, yet again. Anyone in his position would likely respond the same.
Renewable fuel is decades away from being up to the task so, unfortunately, we need domestic oil and the Gulf has oodles of it.
One solution may be natural gas. We have enough to fuel the nation for 100 years and we could have all commercial vehicles running on natural gas in 3 to 5 years. For some reason, harvesting that resource is not a priority to this government. Perhaps big oil interests are hindering that move but who knows for sure.
Until the situation changes, we have no other choice but to harvest oil.