Commentary : The Blight of Offshore Oil Rigs

We wanted to live here, the millions of us along California’s coast, and for all of the right reasons--temperate climate, smog-free air, surf and sand and a view of the ocean that stretches out forever. Looking west, it’s a place where you can see the gradual curve of the ocean planet and that vast, uncorrupted splendor of the Pacific.

All of us can still enjoy this on most of Orange County’s shoreline, and our brilliant view of the sea remains undisturbed for hundreds of miles. But drive up the coast sometime and look at the shape of our future. I took that drive a few months ago and stopped just south of Santa Barbara for Sunday breakfast. We had a table by the window that looked out on the deep blue Pacific where the morning sun was flashing highlights onto the breaking waves. And a few miles offshore, spreading across the whole sweep of the sea, four giant oil rigs intruded into the sky.

Their encroachment into that pristine expanse of the beautiful Pacific creates a kind of sensual jolt. Though I’ve seen these rigs a dozen times, I was still left with the feelings of sadness and frustration. Yet, it does no good to agonize over the loss of that gorgeous openness of sea and sky. They seemed, as they have before, a testament to our pervasive apathy about nature, and our uncaring feelings about this place where the magic has been lost. And then I thought of the people who live there and wake up to that sight each morning. Have they accepted these dissonant images, born of progress, and just look inland to the mountains?

It is hard for me to comprehend why so many people have been willing to sacrifice such manifest beauty. Have they really done it just to keep the country’s machines running? It is never that simplistic, but I see the disease running wild out there, and it scares me. And I wonder that if the world turns one more time, will there be another glorious sunset on the line of that distant horizon, or will man have invented a way to take even the sunsets away, someday?

The proponents of offshore oil and gas exploration have spoken eloquently of our need to pull these energy sources up from the ocean floor. The arguments are provocative and difficult to ignore. Apparently, if we don’t drill soon we will not be able to grow and prosper or maintain a strong national defense and will move inexorably back into our caves. And it just might be true.

But they speak little of conservation or alternate energy sources as the answers to the problem, which they are. And they talk of the potential pollution dangers as being almost insignificant, but they are not.

I feel slightly manipulated by this righteous dialogue. Would I be called unpatriotic if I do not let them despoil the purity of the seascape out there? The sometimes twisted machine-age logic of the Department of the Interior, whether right or wrong, has gathered a large flock of believers.

As with so many other emotional issues, this one has an abundance of subjectivity, such as my comparing the profanity of these rigs with a 60-foot-high sign on Half Dome so the tourists can identify that huge piece of granite in Yosemite.

But it’s hard for me to be objective when I know that the rigs will someday appear offshore along southern Orange County and San Diego County. They will sprout one at a time and very slowly so that our senses can gradually adapt, and even begin to tolerate the small visual intrusions. Interior Secretary (Donald P.) Hodel has spoken of their relative size. He tells us that an offshore platform would have the apparent size of a dime held at arms length from the beach. Why is that not very reassuring to me?

Can there be any doubt when faced with this brand of sensitivity that the shape of our future will look much like Santa Barbara’s?

When the ocean is cluttered up and down our western border with the high-rise tools of the great industrial revolution, maybe we will feel comfortable about our permanent supply of gas and oil. But isn’t there an upcoming generation or two who might wonder about these legacies? Did no one ever take a stand back then against pollution, dead fish, tar on the beaches and the insult to the visual sensibilities? No matter, because by then they will have learned that nothing nature has given us is impregnable to man.

Our lust for the black gold and the insatiable craving for more and more energy will continue to shape our life style and our future. When the rigs begin to multiply, it will be a sure sign that we have slipped back somehow by following promises of safe and happy tomorrows that never materialized. Because we acquiesced or simply didn’t care enough, our values and priorities will be changed, and we’ll see those lofty apparitions just off the beach as the bright symbols of our salvation. And all of us will have conceded that nothing out there will ever be immune to our real or imagined needs.

By then I will have forgotten the sunsets. Were they really that pretty?