Humberto Fontova
Saturday, June 8, 2002

Hey, wait a minute! We shouldn't let a little clique of well-heeled, politically connected Florida voters hijack our national policy, right?

This shameless pandering by Republican politicians to a fringe group of highly emotional Florida voters is a national scandal by now, right?

It's high time these hotheads in Florida got with the national program. They need to shed their parochial obsessions and start assessing the national interest soberly and in light of current developments, not stale policies enacted in the heat of hysteria almost half a century ago. Enough of this tail-wagging-the-dog stuff, right?

Pink pundits and Democrats recite this like a mantra, right?

Seems I saw bald-faced pandering by the Bush brothers to a handful of wealthy Florida hysterics at the expense of the national interest just last week. But this time the Beltway media lapped it up.

These people put a parochial concern (their beaches) over their nation's energy needs and security. Worse, they're hopelessly mired in the past, stubbornly ignoring that the drilling technology that gave us the Santa Barbara oil spill compares to today's like the Kitty Hawk compares to a jumbo jet.

Market forces, not meddlesome bureaucrats, account for cleaner, safer oil drilling. A deep-water drilling rig might cost $1 billion. This thing has to produce oil daily – hourly! – to recoup such a gargantuan investment. A blowout and spill would shut them down for weeks. No oil company could stay in business that way.

But those Floridians remain blinded by emotion and deaf to wake-up calls. Last year's California blackouts failed to jangle them awake. They slammed the receiver and rolled over. The Ayatollah, Khadafy and Saddam called earlier, to no avail.

Osama called, too. Slam! went the receiver. Who cares if the sheikdom that spawned bin Laden and 15 of the 9-11 suicide hijackers supplies so much of our energy?

"We need oil rigs off the Florida beaches about as much as we need crack houses next to our churches!" declared Florida Republican Ric Keller, who represents Orlando in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Bush brothers agreed.

But this time they got cheers, whoops and high-fives from the same Beltway media who had scolded them viciously the previous week for (what they claimed was) blind pandering to baseless fears when the president addressed Cuban-Americans.

"A worthy sequel!" gushed the New York Times about the decision to buy back the oil leases and block oil drilling in the Destin Dome off the Florida panhandle. "One can only hope that the Florida proposals represent the beginning of a more diligent effort to balance the country's energy needs with its environmental imperatives."

"It's enough to make a person wish President Bush's other brothers were in politics, too!" cheered the Washington Post.

Actually, I yield to fanciful rhetoric and overblown imagery here. "Hysterics" is the wrong term for the gracious people of the Florida panhandle. Fact is, there's nothing hysterical about longing to preserve the most gorgeous stretch of beach on the North American continent.

As child, adolescent and man I spent a good chunk of every summer on it. My parents started making the five-hour drive from New Orleans to the Miracle Strip beaches in 1962.

It was well worth it. These beaches rivaled Varadero, the gorgeous beach east of Havana where millions of Cubans cavorted every weekend – at least during Cuba's stint as a racist-fascist U.S. satrapy terrorized by crooks and gangsters. The Cuban masses seethed and boiled under these daily degradations, the New York Times assures us. Finally the lid exploded.

Fidel and his vanguard of the downtrodden rose in righteous fury. They were inflamed by a patriotic fervor, Ted Turner assures us. They promptly scotched the treasonous vermin responsible for their nation's shameful estate, stamped out their wickedness and proclaimed Cuba "the first free country in the Americas."

But Rome wasn't built overnight and the process of social justice and national liberation is often a long and arduous one. Alas, after 40 years of progress, Varadero beach is now barricaded against Cubans by armed police and reserved for rich foreigners, their local footservants and prostitutes.

Jimmy Carter and Barbara Boxer are welcome. Cuban citizens are not.

Varadero is unquestionably the most beautiful beach in the world. You're better off wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt to a Gloria Estefan concert than disputing this around Cuban-Americans.

Drive the coastal highway from Pensacola to Panama City, Fla., and you'll see the identical thing. Better yet, spend several weeks each summer (as I do) lying on the sugary sand or immersed in its emerald waters. Take in the gorgeous sunsets while strolling the shoreline with a frosty margarita – it's close to heaven.

Plop into a beach chair, pop a cold one and lean back. The gentle lapping of waves serves as a soothing lullaby. Those beautiful white dunes rise behind you. The sea oats wave softly in the breeze. The sun-dappled swells roll and heave gently as they surge over the sandbar. They finally break into white foam and envelop your sunburnt legs in a cool caress.

Turn and look down the shoreline now. Ah, more of that gentle bouncing and heaving, but sun-bronzed this time and adorned with little tattoos. Time for the binoculars.

Thank you, Monica Lewinsky. Aren't you seeing more thong bikinis on the beach nowadays? – "AOOWW!!

"... Hi, Honey! Just checking for sharks, like a good dad! The kids are fine. Go back to your reading by the pool. Relax. I've got everything under control down here."

Point is, I love the place, especially the chronically charming and friendly residents. We Louisianans cram those Panhandle beaches from spring break to Labor Day.

I've contributed as much as anyone to these pressure groups that lobbied Bush to ban drilling: condo rentals for weeks at a time, jet-skis, restaurant meals – and let's not even get into the booze bills during those disco-era spring breaks. (Memo to MTV: You guys didn't invent fun, believe me.)

Those blue-green waters and sugary sands covered in black malodorous goo evoke a horrific nightmare.

But here's the crazy part: Last week's decision actually makes the nightmare more likely. Forget that we're now more dependent on people like Prince Abdullah and Chavez for energy. Assuming they deign to sell to us, we'll need increasingly more and we'll need to keep transporting it stateside – typically to refineries in Louisiana and Texas.

This path takes those tankers smack in front of Florida's panhandle beaches. Recall the Valdez, the Cadiz, the Argo Merchant. These were all tanker spills. The production of oil is relatively clean and safe. The transportation is the most dangerous part.

Even crazier, there's a move in Florida for energy plants to start burning clean natural gas instead of dirty coal. Excellent idea. According to the Orlando Sentinel, "The coal-burning Crist plant in Pensacola itself is one of the nation's filthiest in the U.S. Public Interest Research Group says the plant spews excessive mercury and chemicals that cause smog, acid rain and lung damage."

Fine, so where's that natural gas to come from? Three trillion cubic feet sit right off the coast in the Destin Dome. And of course the very same Public Interest Research Group lobbied energetically to ban its extraction!

My one complaint about Florida is the fishing. Compared to Louisiana's, Florida's fishing is pathetic, despite those (taxpayer-provided) offshore junkyards they call "artificial reefs." None come close – as a fish magnet and factory – to the (tax-revenue-generating) artificial reefs banned from Florida's coastal waters last week.

Go ahead and scoff. The Travel Channel did, too. They got hold of a book titled "The Helldiver's Rodeo" that called Louisiana's coastal waters "the most prolific marine habitat in the world because, not in spite, of offshore oil platforms.

They found the book "fascinating and highly entertaining" and came down to film a show about it, but still scoffed at the claims. These were Californians, after all, fashionably green in their environmental views.

They scoffed as we rode in from the airport. They scoffed over raw oysters, grilled redfish and seafood gumbo that night. More scoffing through the Hurricanes at Pat O'Brien's. They scoffed even while suiting up in dive gear and checking the cameras as we tied up to an oilrig 20 miles in the Gulf.

But they came out of the water bug-eyed. "Unreal! Amazing! Incredible!" And that most California of terms: "AWESOME!"

The Travel Channel ran the show last week. It was titled "Destination Danger" and featured the undersea panorama around an offshore oil platform. Schools of fish filled the screen constantly. They parted slightly to make way for the divers.

Huge amberjack lunged powerfully when speared. They writhed violently as the diver wrestled them to the surface. Schools of fish filled the water column from top to bottom – from 6-inch blennies to 12-foot sharks. Fish by the thousands. Fish by the ton.

The cameras were going crazy. Do I focus on the shoals of barracuda? Or that cloud of jacks? On the immense schools of snapper below, or on the fleet of tarpon above? How 'bout this – WHOOOAA – hammerhead!

We had some close-ups, too, of coral and sponges, the very things disappearing off Florida's pampered reefs. Off Louisiana, they sprout in colorful profusion from the huge steel beams – acres of them. You'd never guess this was part of that unsightly structure above.

Louisiana, with 3,200 offshore oil platforms off its coast, produces one-third of America's commercial fisheries. And these reefs don't cost the taxpayers a thing – in fact, they offset the state tax burden by millions of dollars a year.

(BTW, I don't work for an oil company. I just love fishing, scuba diving, seafood and facts.)

Yet Mark Ferrulo, a Florida "environmental activist" who hailed last week's decision by Bush, used the very example of Louisiana for his anti-offshore drilling campaign, calling Louisiana's coast "the nation's toilet."

Florida's fishing fleet must love fishing in toilets, then, and her restaurants serving what's in them. Most of the red snapper you eat in Florida restaurants are caught around Louisiana's oil platforms. We see the Florida-registered boats tied up to them constantly. Sometimes we can barely squeeze in.

Yet despite half a century of proof to the contrary in Louisiana and Texas, EPA officials warned that drilling rigs would "harm essential fish habitat and damage the fragile sea bottom in the Destin Dome."

Didn't NewsMax report that this same EPA slipped the "humans are responsible for global warming" quackery to the media while President Bush wasn't looking? (See: Bush Scoffs at Own Administration's Report on 'Global Warming') Makes you wonder if the same clique wasn't involved in this report about damaging "fragile sea bottom."

Here are a couple of details the EPA (much less the Beltway media) will never tell you:

• Urban runoff and treated sewage dump 12 TIMES the amount of petroleum into the Gulf that the 5,000 oil production platforms do.

• Oil seeping naturally through the ocean floor into the Gulf, where it dissipates over time, accounts for 7 TIMES the amount spilled by rigs and pipelines in any given year.

These have been pumping away for the past 40 years. Yet according to G.P. Schmahl, a Federal biologist who worked for decades in both places, "The Flower Gardens are much healthier, more pristine than anything in the Florida Keys. It was a surprise to me," he admits. "And I think it's a surprise to most people."

"A key measure of the health of a reef is the amount of area taken up by coral," according to a report by Steve Gittings, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's science coordinator for marine sanctuaries. "Louisiana's Flower Garden boasts nearly 50 percent coral cover. … [I]n the Florida Keys ... it can run as little as 5 percent."

We might have worked toward a cheaper, more reliable energy supply, toward superb fishing and diving, toward a cheaper tab for broiled red snapper with crabmeat topping, toward less danger from oil spills.

Last week we got the opposite, my friends.

Humberto Fontova holds an M.A. in history from Tulane University. He is the author of "Helldiver's Rodeo," described as "Highly entertaining!" by Publisher's Weekly, "Terrific!" by Salon.com and "Just what the doctor ordered!" by Ted Nugent.

You may reach Mr. Fontova by e-mail at hfontova@earthlink.net.

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