Off shore spill lesson 1: create a UN Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, ratify LOST

The focus on whether or not this particular spill should have an impact on a few dozen off shore oil rigs in North America really points out how we are not facing the real impact of the problem. For example Brazil is going through a major expansion of offshore drilling (it is so aggressive as to make the location of new platforms off the US coast unlikely simply due to the inavailability of oil platforms, now facing years of delay in delivery).

The US should immediately ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty and bring the community of nations together to work together to establish a world wide standard to the problem of how we use our oceans and atmosphere.

For example one single oil field Brazil is projected to build 300 platforms:





That is from a single development. Hundreds of areas have been identified for exploration.






Crude oil in the Oceans is completely fungible. Pollution in the atmosphere is completely fungible.

For these reasons it is no longer possible to establish national protocols for how we use the Oceans and the Atmosphere on a national basis.

The only solution to establish criteria, monitoring and accountability is to establish a UN agency (styled like UNESCO, UNHCR, UNICEF, et al., they are not really UN agencies but Intergovernmental Committees using the UN rubric) that works to establish a universal code with a tax for producers that would fund a world wide monitoring agency and a world wide disaster response capability.

The nation state system is simply not going to be adequate to establishing the kind of universal criteria that is now needed. The same applies for the atmosphere.

Currently UNESCO has a small intergovernmental committee called the Intergovernmental Oceanic Commission but what is needed is a full blown United Nations Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency to

1) Establish universal standards for drilling, and other commercial uses of the Oceans and the Atmosphere.

2) Create a license fee that establishes a producers fund that will pay for the work of UNOAA.

3) Establish world wide monitoring capability (paid for by the fund)

4) Create and manage a world wide disaster response capability (paid for by the fund).

The link to the quaint but ineffective Intergovernmental Oceanic Commission is here:

http://www.ioc-unesco.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=14&Itemid=112


The neocon response:

The US has not even ratified the UN Law of the Sea Treaty which was opened for signature 28 years ago.






In 2004 Bush and establishment Republicans like Senator Lugar tried to push the bill through:

here is how a neocon put it:




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_non-ratification_of_the_UNCLOS

What prevented it from going ahead? This statement from the high priestess of the neocon movement probably killed it:




With a Democratic controlled Senate Chairman Biden passed the bill to the floor of the Senate:

And on "October 31, 2007, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 17-4 to send the treaty to the full U.S. Senate for a vote.<4>" Norm Coleman was one of the leaders in opposing the treaty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_non-ratification_of_the_UNCLOS


SOS Clinton has made ratification of the treaty (which Bush also supported) a priority.

More than 150 nations have joined it and other nations have indicated that they will join when the US ratifies it:




Another example of how the radical right in the US continues to have a disasterous impact on the quality of life not just in the US but outside of our borders and threatens our basic ability to coordinate and cooperate with other nations to solve real problems.

an unrec without a comment?

Against the Oceans?

Against multilateral cooperation to solve international problems?

Well the anonymous unreccer is unlikely to reveal what it is that they found to be so objectionable in the OP.

I hate the unrec squad for pulling this hit and run.

Putzes.