Oil-Covered Cygnets are Not Black Swans

So . . . I’m starting to think that this BP oil spill might be important. All that marine life and all those birds irreparably harmed. And the thousands and thousands of rocks that need cleaning. Only two months in, and the Deepwater Horizon spill has already garnered the hotly-contested title of worst environmental disaster in history.

And don’t get my wrong – despite my glib tone, this is indeed a big deal. Huge. But one thing it’s not is a Black Swan (despite turning many swans black in the process – I kid, I kid).

For an event to be a Black Swan it must be three things: rare, impactful, and unforeseen. This spill meets the first two criteria, but I don’t buy that no one knew that this could happen. In fact, I suspect that everyone (so long as they are not in denial or lying) knew that this was a possibility. And we, collectively as a society, made the decision to drill anyway. I know there was no referendum (in case you were wondering when the vote was) but we loves our oil, and we needed more, so we took a risk.

In any endeavour there is risk. Drilling into the bottom of the ocean for oil carries with it the risk that oil will flow out into the water. So when something goes wrong (which was eventually inevitable), we can’t then claim that this shouldn’t have happened. The fact that a risk existed means that it should have happened, under certain circumstances and over enough time.

Interestingly, the (Republican) governors of the Gulf states all want to resume drilling as soon as possible. Why? Because they get jobs, money, and oil from doing so. They know that another Deepwater Horizon could happen, despite what they may say. But the benefits exceed the risks, in their estimations.

Their bureaucratic cousins in Washington want to investigate allegations that BP “cut corners” in their drilling operation and that they made a tradeoff between safety and cost. Of course they did. I would, you would, the politicians would. That is their job. In hindsight they made the wrong choice (assuming that the leak wouldn’t have happened if there were more safety measures, which we don’t know), but at the time everyone was okay with the choice and it conformed to the law of the land. If those laws are insufficient, change the law; in other words, don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Until we stop requiring oil (which will only happen when it runs out, at which point our society will collapse, and roving gangs of zombies will hunt us for our brains), drilling will continue. And for as long as drilling continues, oil spills will happen. This is the tradeoff, and we are all a part of it. Blaming BP does nothing – they just happened to be the owner of the well that leaked. It could have been any of the other oil companies.

So let’s figure out how to stop the leak before the fish steal all of our precious oil.