Bob Marshall, outdoors editor for The Times-Picayune, takes Bobby Jindal to task for Jindal's demagoguery on BP's oil spill:
At a press conference supporting his wish to narrow Gulf passes with rock jetties in an attempt to keep oil out of interior marshes, Gov. Bobby Jindal said this: "No one can convince us that rocks in the water are more dangerous than oil. That is absolutely ridiculous. The only people who believe that are the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., who can't see the oil, smell the oil or touch the oil."
That's not even close to the truth, as Gov. Jindal surely knew. But I'm not surprised.
That misinformation is in keeping with the governor's response to this disaster, which has often been a mixture of diversion, fur coat attitude and panic -- all of which is doing terrible long-term damage to our chances of survival on this starving delta.
Marshall proceeds to systematically dismantle Jindal's response, arguing that Jindal, by combining dishonesty with a sense of panic ("screaming at cameras, raging at the federal government about this oil disaster"), has shown abysmal leadership throughout the spill.
Since the oil began spewing, Jindal has been trying to convince people the reason our wetlands are being poisoned and people are out of work is those damn feds. It's a diversion. If he screams loud enough, maybe people will forget that he was a big supporter of risky deepwater drilling.
He is making villains of those responding to the disaster, not those responsible for it.
Marshall argues that Jindal's response to the leak has actually weakened Lousiana's ability to address the long-term challenges it faces with its coastline, both because Jindal has ignored science in proposing counterproductive solutions like rocks and sand berms to contain the oil and because Jindal's manic response weakened the state's credibility in the eyes the people who will need to invest the billions it will take to rebuild Louisiana's coast.
I'd also add one thing: if people in Louisiana (and I'm a resident of the state) don't help enact policies that reduce global warming, all this talk about saving the coastline will be nothing more than hot air, literally. Trying to save Louisiana's coastline without addressing long-term climate is a fool's errand.