Chutzpah

The new global chutzpah award should go to Sarah Palin.  (If there were such an award.  I will translate the Yiddish word “Chutzpah” as an “amazing, stunning amount of gall,” and await a correction).

I asked somewhat rhetorically in a recent blog if we would hear any hint of shame from Sarah Palin after her chanting “Drill Baby, Drill” as the oil gushes into the Gulf of Mexico. 

Of course, I knew we wouldn’t, but I imagined, wrongly, that she might lay low for awhile.  No chance.

In case you missed it, Sarah Palin has come out swinging.   The problem in her mind is not with oil or oil companies.  It is with “foreign” oil companies.  It is BRITISH Petroleum that is the problem.  Never mind that her husband Todd worked for BP for 18 years. Goodness knows, coming from Alaska she can claim that a nice home-grown USA oil company like Exxon would never hurt the environment. 

Second place in the Chutzpah category goes to the Harper-Prentice media gambit and the claim our regulations are the toughest in the world.

Problem is our regulations are a joke. The recently revised regulations are of a new type.  They move away from “prescriptive regulations” to a “goal-oriented approach.”  The difference is that the companies are able to propose what they want to do to reach a goal of, for instance, environmental protection, without having the kind of technology required dictated by regulation. As explained in the regulations for oil and gas in the Canada Gazette: “Modernizing the Regulations improves the existing regulatory framework to support the frontier and offshore oil and gas industry’s continued growth and contribution to Canada’s economy and competitiveness while maintaining the highest standards for safety, environmental protection and management of resources.”

The goal of the regulatory change was to increase development and remove regulation, just as the goal of exempting energy projects from the environmental assessment act was to speed up approvals. 

So, our regulations make no mention of “relief wells” or shut-off valves.  That would be “prescriptive.”  We don’t want to constrain the creativity of oil companies.  We want to let them be “goal-oriented” and tell government how they propose to meet big picture objectives safety and a clean environment.

A goal-oriented approach works for a corporate Mission Statement.  It really has no place in a set of safety regulations.  Toughest in the world?   Don’t make me laugh.