Obama's Oil Spill Speech

I didn't watch Obama's speech because the little cousins were putting on their Olympics in the pool (complete with the audience of aunts and uncles singing "The Star Spangled Banner" and "God Bless America," where my dad confused "From the mountains, to the prairies / To the oceans, white with foam" with "To the oceans, white with snow."

Upon reading the transcript of his speech, I'm surprised by the way in which he sets up the response to the oil spill as a war on oil. After giving Bush so much grief for declaring a "War on Terror," which is, admittedly, a little vague, this just boarders on absurd--we're going to fight the oil?! The oil is after us? I get that it's rhetoric, but is this the only rhetoric that we know?

Obama says, "Abroad, our brave men and women in uniform are taking the fight to al Qaeda wherever it exists. And tonight, I've returned from a trip to the Gulf Coast to speak with you about the battle we're waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores and our citizens." He lays out a "battle plan" to fight the "siege" of oil. "We see an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude." Goodness gracious, before we know it, oil is going to be evil incarnate.

I'm all for developing alternative sources of energy, but (Berry is on my mind at the moment) it doesn't seem to me that the problem is just that we're using up oil--it is in general the urge to get everything we can out of the earth. That is to say, the way in which we use oil is tied to materialism and our desire for unlimited consumption.

The other thing that strikes me about the oil spill is our own capacity to create catastrophes for ourselves that are greater than most natural catastrophes.