Review: 'Not One Drop' by Riki Ott

by Frank Kaminski
frank.kaminski@gmail.com

Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
By Riki Ott
327 pp. Chelsea Green Publishing – Nov. 2008. $21.95.

Riki Ott’s book Not One Drop is a history of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, told from the perspective of those most affected by it. Cutting through the cloak of willful deception, public relations campaigns and skewed, corporate-sponsored science, it finally exposes the truth about Exxon Valdez's devastating effects on the city of Cordova, Alaska, the fishing community where the spill struck.

On a broader level, the book also makes yet another compelling case for weaning off fossil fuels. In making this case, Ott does more than simply invoke the threat of future catastrophic oil spills. She also, refreshingly, points to the growing consensuses about both climate change and the peaking of world oil production (issues that aren’t often discussed together). Further, she highlights new studies suggesting that insidious carbon emissions from our tailpipes and power plants have long been contributing to a broad range of health problems. In short, her argument for getting off oil is a powerful one of unusual scope, even if it is rightly subordinated to the story of Cordova.

Ott is a marine biologist by training, and her dream had always been to write books about science intended for the general population. The route that ultimately led her to that destination couldn’t have been less likely.

A freshly minted Ph.D. in the summer of 1985, she needed to take a break from her academic work, and so she spent the entire summer crewing on a salmon fishing boat up in Alaska—a place she’d always wanted to visit. She immediately fell in love with Cordova, its culture and people, and also with the wilds of pristine Prince William Sound. What began as a summer adventure evolved into an ardent, abiding commitment to this astonishing place.

Ott quickly became a prominent Cordova “fisherma’am” and an advocate for fishermen’s issues. Because commercial fishing and big oil are so deeply intertwined in Alaskan politics, Ott’s involvement in fishing politics inevitably led her to an investigation of shady practices by the major oil companies operating out of the Sound. For instance, she helped uncover how, even long before Exxon Valdez, oil companies had been deliberately polluting waterways through a loophole in the Clean Water Act. In the years that followed, Ott became “the Erin Brockovich of the Exxon Valdez disaster,” to quote Fran Korten of YES! magazine.* And indeed, the comparison is quite apt. Although her research, advising, testimony at hearings and drafting of legislation may have been done on a completely voluntary basis, she nonetheless was truly a force with which to be reckoned.

In telling us her story, Ott revels in the way she made herself a thorn in oilmen’s sides simply by bringing out the facts. Her war stories are unfailingly riveting and often very funny. Unable to buy or intimidate this determined, pugnacious, resourceful, lone woman, oilmen quickly realized that they had no idea just what to do with her. Their desperation led to measures as drastic as hiring off-duty cops to stand guard at an Exxon shareholder meeting at which she was present, and duping her into an arrest and a day in jail.

On a more solemn note, the two-decades-long saga of environmental devastation, ruined livelihoods, broken marriages, stunted lives, failing health and vicious litigation stemming from the Exxon Valdez spill is both heartbreaking and infuriating. Ott’s premise is that most people have been kept ignorant of this story. In the book’s introduction, she writes, “There is an unfulfilled need among spill survivors to have other people understand what happened to us…This story is an attempt to fill that need.”

In demonstrating how Exxon misled the public, she cites a formidable array of reports, journal articles, books, newspaper stories and firsthand accounts. She shows how the corporation soft-pedaled the extent of the spill and claimed that it was all cleaned up when it wasn’t. How it submitted beaches to a brutal steam cleaning, even when it knew full well that this technique scalded beach life and sickened cleanup workers. How it denied citizens’ groups access to cleanup sites—and how, when these groups finally were allowed to see beaches for themselves, they were appalled by Exxon’s deceptive public relations. How it hired scientists to conclude that life was once again thriving in the Sound (using statistical sleight of hand like pooling data and taking biased samples), while simultaneously attempting to suppress all other scientific evidence gathered during lawsuits that arose from the spill.

But worst of all, Ott chronicles how Exxon promised to make the people of Cordova “whole” again, but then proceeded to fight the $5 billion punitive award in court for nearly 20 years, until the amount had been slashed to a measly $507 million. In that time, more than 6,000 claimants had died without any closure, and untold numbers had reached the brink of bankruptcy, foreclosures and abject financial servitude because the damage done to their way of life by the collapse of the Sound’s fisheries was never repaid.

Moreover, the very social fabric of the community had come undone as Cordova devolved into what sociologists refer to as a “corrosive community,” one too divided by fighting and strife to engage in collective decision-making. Cases of diagnosed anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder surged, along with domestic violence and alcohol abuse. There was even one high-profile case of suicide, in which the suicide note specifically mentioned the trauma of dealing with Exxon as a motivating factor. The litigation process only acted as a “secondary disaster,” preventing people from moving on with their lives. Perhaps most tellingly, sociologists came to consider Cordova a case study on how to help communities in general to work through disaster.
Ott stresses that while Cordovans are definitely on the road to recovery, Exxon Valdez is still very alive for them. Exxon seemed to go out of its way to leave the tragedy unresolved, through two decades of legal stalling and a refusal to accept liability for a punitive award that would truly make Cordovans whole. Thus, Ott’s unflinching exposé could hardly be a more honorable attempt to give these people the closure that they so desperately need.

But Not One Drop is far more than simply an attempt to bring closure to Cordovans by communicating the extent of their loss to others. It is also an attempt to spell out the lessons learned from this disaster, so that it won’t be repeated. Ott concludes that our legal system no longer works in cases like that of Exxon Valdez, since it allows corporations to exercise constitutional rights that were originally intended for people. In the book’s final chapters, she goes into great detail about the kinds of reforms that will be necessary in order to prevent this abuse of the legal system from continuing into the future.

Not One Drop is a heroic book. It is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the calamitous consequences of our society’s addiction to oil, or of corporations’ ability to avert punishment by claiming “corporate personhood.”

Colin Campbell predicts financial crisist due to Peak Oil (year 2005)

Book Review: ‘Rhetoric for Radicals' by Jason Del Gandio

by Frank Kaminski (Peak Oil Advocate)
frank.kaminski@gmail.com

Rhetoric for Radicals: A Handbook for Twenty-First Century Activists
By Jason Del Gandio
235 pp. New Society Publishers – Nov. 2008. $17.95.

Radical activists are in the midst of a crisis. They have important messages to share, but they don’t do nearly a good enough job of communicating those messages to the general public. And their messages and actions too easily fall victim to the distortions of skewed, corporate mass media and the remonstrations of political pundits. In short, radical activists find themselves in a rhetorical crisis—one that urgently needs to be addressed if they are to have any chance of changing the world.

That’s the assessment of Jason Del Gandio, himself a longtime radical activist and professor of rhetoric and communication at Philadelphia’s Temple University. In his book Rhetoric for Radicals, Del Gandio entreats his fellow radicals to recognize the importance of effective communication, and then proceeds to outline the basics of writing, public speaking, body rhetoric and other rhetorical mainstays.


Rhetoric for Radicals is intended for college-aged activists and organizers, and for the most part it’s written in a relaxed, approachable style. It does get a bit cerebral and academic in places—in demonstrating how the book builds on the previous literature—but this material is kept to a minimum. On the whole, Rhetoric for Radicals is an invaluable, comprehensive how-to book that will greatly benefit beginning and seasoned rhetors alike.

Del Gandio begins the book with a “call to rhetorical action,” followed by a debunking of some commonly held misconceptions about the role of rhetoric in radical social change. Among these misconceptions are that “a big heart alone can change the world” and that “rehearsal and craft make our communication less authentic.” After this initial setup, Del Gandio moves to the heart of the book: sets of rules and strategies to follow when crafting a piece of rhetoric—be it a persuasive newspaper column, a story, a speech or a street theater vignette.

The first of these “labors of the multitude” to be tackled is public speaking. Del Gandio acknowledges the courage that it takes to speak in front of a group, and lays out practical tips on how to deal with this, as well as on how to become a better speaker and hold people’s attention. Of primary importance are speaking with immediacy and crafting your content for the ear rather than for the eye. For example, you must keep your speech light on numbers and facts, and cover only as many points as necessary. Del Gandio also provides some words-to-minutes conversion guidelines (one spoken minute equals a short paragraph; 10 spoken minutes, a three-page, single-spaced document) and many detailed pointers on delivery.

The book’s next section focuses on writing. Del Gandio excellently spells out the steps involved in the writing process, and affirms the conventional wisdom among writers that reading widely and prodigiously is one of the best ways to improve one’s writing. He also suggests carrying around a pen and scratch pad for those moments when inspiration unexpectedly strikes. And he takes readers step-by-step through the processes of creating a “rhetorical package”—an organizing device that forces you to think about your message, audience and goals—crafting a narrative story and fashioning an argument out of claims and evidence.

Given how pervasive propaganda is today, it’s appropriate that Del Gandio’s next chapter focuses on the manipulative power of language and how to see propaganda for what it is. Central to appreciating the power of language, Del Gandio argues, is understanding that it doesn’t just describe reality, it creates reality. Our thoughts, perceptions and experiences—and even our realities—are all shaped by language.

Del Gandio defines language and then details the steps involved in using clear, understandable, politically correct and, above all, exciting language. As for how to detect propaganda, Del Gandio describes several propaganda techniques that can often serve as tip-offs, including repetition, association, card-stacking and omission of critical details. Lastly, he notes that words, just like living things, have limited life spans. Among the old words that have largely lost their effectiveness are “Communism,” “socialism” and “anarchism.” In contrast, some examples of new words that are quickly gaining ground include “freeganism,” “participatory democracy” and “global justice.”

In spite of the great power of words to change our consciousnesses and realities, Del Gandio is quick to point out that they are not the sole purveyors of rhetoric by a long shot. There’s also “body rhetoric,” whereby our bodies communicate messages and arguments or embody our ideals, without the benefit of words. Del Gandio shows how this is constantly done through deeds like using a bike rather than a car or supporting responsible companies; activities such as rallies and protests; aspects of one’s physical appearance like tattoos or hairstyles; and works of art such as street theater. He then takes readers step-by-step through the process of creating a body argument, and explores the human “vibe” as a form of embodied rhetoric.

Rhetoric for Radicals concludes on a hopeful note, with the wish that its activist readership will internalize the book’s rhetorical tools and tactics, and will be that much better equipped to become “the rhetors of the past who created the future.” And indeed, there can be but little doubt that this thorough, well-organized, accessible—and even personal—little handbook is the best instrument imaginable for fulfilling this purpose.

Where our "alternative energy" technology is today.

Check out this video and see where our alternative technology is today, at least off the shelf technology. It's pretty high-tech stuff.

Notice that all the energy produced by the solar panels and wind turbine are not enough to power the truck and camper! As a matter of fact, the energy produced is not even enough to power just the truck.

Now, of course this is likely a diesel truck (or maybe gasoline), and so the truck cannot be moved by electricity because it's not an electric truck. But rest assured that the electricity being produced by that RV is not enough energy to move the truck by any significant distance. Not to mention that if you were to make it an electric truck with today's technology you'd be adding a lot of very heavy (and expensive) batteries that would add to the total weight; thus requiring even more energy to move the truck than it currently requires.

Lastly, I'd like to mention that all this high-tech equipment (solar panels and wind turbines) can only be manufactured right now through the burning of fossil fuels. I.e., his equipment might provide enough energy for his needs (but not enought to move the truck) and in an era of say, oil scarcity, this might be a great thing. However, eventually his "alternative fuel" equipment will have to be replaced (due to wear or damage), and if that happens in an age where oil is scarce... he might not be able to replace it.

I hope this illustrates where our technology is today and the incredible energy density of liquid fuels. Of course there's hope... we are still trying to develop technology that will "produce" energy that is not dependent on fossil fuels.

So far, however, all this technology that people are hoping will solve the energy crunch that we're facing is all built on fossil fuels. In other words, no oil means not enough energy and not enough materials to build all this equipment!