Let's all talk about death

As a rule, I don't make serious posts. It's my genuine belief that almost nothing is sacred and immune from humour, even of the blackest kind. Anything that does become reverend needs to be tested and challenged, the alternative being the far too easy sell of trite statements such as you're either for us or against us made by the American administration, or Israeli accusations of anti-semitism at anyone who criticizes their policy in Gaza. Today though I am particularly pissed off, and for once I don't intend to make a flippant gag or employ some black sarcasm over it.

Today is the anniversary of the 7th July London bombings, a terrible act in which 52 people were murdered. The entire nation has, it seems, been 'united in mourning', with remembrance services in the capital and a nationwide two minutes silence (the 50 million or so who died in the two world wars only get one minute, in the few workplaces in Britain that still observes the Armistice). To be honest, the terrorists must have been pretty incompetent to have only killed 52 - judging by the number of people who claim to have barely missed death because of a bike puncture/lie-in/nail appointment etc they could have practically decimated London. This all seems incredibly, and inappropriately, histrionic.

My aim is not to question the tragedy of last summer's events nor to belittle the loss of those who were genuinely bereaved. I would just question whether or not this enormous media grief-fest is not at best self-indulgent, and at worst merely showing terrorists that they really were successful in scaring the living shit out of Londoners. British people are very proud of their stoic courage through times of crisis, the Blitz is the classic and oft-quoted example, but the very same courage seems to have eluded my generation.

Let's consider another anniversary. At 2157 BST on July 6th 1988, not knowing that a vital safety valve had not been reinstalled after maintenance, the on-duty custodian of the Piper Alpha switched on a compressor to maintain production. In the ensuing fireball, 167 men lost their lives. Death did not come easy for most of those men - they were burnt alive waiting for a rescue that could not reach them. The distinction that most people would draw is that Piper Alpha was an industrial accident, whereas the London bombings were a deliberate act of violence. Were the operators of Piper Alpha (Occidental) any less culpable though?

The platform itself was flawed in design, since modifications for it to extract gas as well as oil (it's original purpose) had cheaply sidestepped the original features. The basic concept of keeping personnel areas from dangerous operational areas was broken. Most significantly, the control room, the only place from which an evacuation could be organised, had been placed next to the gas compression, and so was one of the first modules to be destroyed. Additionally, working practices were sloppy, to say the least, as they were on all such installations. The most horrific example of the oil industry's paradigm of 'barrels first, costs second, lives third' occured in the aftermath of the initial explosion. Theoretically, the fire should have burnt itself out, and have been sufficiently reduced in size to allow rescue of most of the crew. However, the Piper Alpha platform was connected to two other pumping units. The Offshore Installation Managers (OIMs) of these platforms were so indoctrinated by the concept that they refused to shut down pumping (which would incur enormous cost) without authorisation from the shore, authorisation that could not be obtained at that time of night. Despite radio silence from Piper Alpha and a visible fire where the installation was supposed to be, they kept on supplying the burning platform with oil and gas in order to save their jobs. That decision made rescue impossible, and resulted in a fireball that was visible over one hundred kilometres away.

Both terrible anniversaries, no question about that, but which do you think the nation is going to remember most? Evil terrorists, or evil industrialists? Well, if one was in government and had a controversial and possibly unconstitutional bill to push through, for the sake of argument we'll say, oh, I don't know, let's say extending the period of detention without charge for terrorism suspects to 90 days, then it might be argued that there's a certain amount of political capital to be gained from remembering actions of those evil terrorists. On the other hand, one could remember the tragic evidence of the energy industry's greedy disregard for life. An industry that is so powerful that it has a direct line to the White House. An industry that is so powerful that national economies are reliant on the price of it's product. An industry that is so powerful that senators have tried to discredit an entire scientific discipline, because it produces overwhelming evidence that carbon emissions are significantly and detrimentally changing our planet.

If we are to use this day as a sobering reminder of the forces of evil, as a reminder that at times we need to find the courage to face powerful and hateful enemies, then I believe we also must remember that terrorists are not the only, or even the most powerful, enemy we face in this world. Every time we baulk at the cost of climate change mitigation, every time we demand lower fuel prices and the right to run a vehicle, no matter how large, we are defending the profits of an industry whose managers are trained to keep pumping gas onto burning platforms on which their own workmates are trapped.

Postscript
Things did change of course in the aftermath of Piper Alpha. Regulations were tightened and the industry accepted most of the Cullen Enquiry's recommendations. Apparently they didn't change that much though.