Month 8, Day 26: Institutional Irresponsibility and the Culture of Malign Neglect

The Washington Post ran an article on the corruption in the Minerals Management Service — their willingness to let industry insiders write the regulations they were supposed to enforce. It’s infuriating.

The readiness of the Minerals Management Service to take dictation from corporate interests when it comes time to draft regulatory language is tragic but unsurprising. Republican appointees like James Watt are virtually without exception industry insiders who can expect to profit handsomely from their willingness to sacrifice the genuine environmental wealth of this country — wealth which by rights belongs to all of us. This affects every aspect of our government and our politics. Perhaps the most damaging manifestation of this systemic dysfunction is the inability of the U.S. Senate to pass meaningful legislation addressing climate change. By compromising, delaying and procrastinating, our politicians have enabled the continuing destruction of humanity’s common environmental inheritance in order to preserve the profits of some of the world’s largest corporations. The Senate is the Minerals Management Service writ large, and we are all of us the losers thereby.

Warren Senders