William K. Reilly, Exxon Valdez, ConnocoPhillips and BP

Dear Friends,

I apologize for being absent for awhile.  I am actually overwhelmed by President Obama's failure to use the BP oil spill to engage the American public in a dialogue about energy and why we must change our ways and how we can do that.  Instead, he is making pronouncements that mean nothing and do nothing toward stopping the oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico and destroying the gulf coast - the people, the economy and the ecosystem.  It is time for serious discussions about alternatives, and President Obama is looking for Republican support before he takes any steps.  That is not why I supported him.

So here are some fact about William K. Reilly who is the co-chair of President Obama's commission to investigate the oil spill.  Mr. Reilly is obviously the Republican co-chair since apparently, it is a requirement to have a Democrat and a Republican as co-chairs if you want to appoint a commission to investigate something.  Mr. Reilly was the head of the EPA from 1989 to 1993.  He was also the head of The World Wildlife Fund from 1985 to 1989 and is currently the chair of the board of that organization.  He seems to have had a continuing interest in the environment. 

But a little known or perhaps overlooked fact is that Mr. Reilly currently sits on the Board of Directors of ConocoPhillips among other boards.  According to the 2010 proxy statement for ConocoPhillips, non-employee directors like Mr. Reilly get $120,000 of stock annually, plus $100,000 cash annually, plus certain meeting fees and perks.  The proxy showed that last year Mr. Reilly received stock, cash and perks worth $246,515 from ConocoPhillips.  Not a bad gig for attending a few meetings a year.  Just so you don't worry about Mr. Reilly not having enough income.  Mr. Reilly is also on the Board of Directors of DuPont.  According to DuPont's latest proxy statement, Mr. Reilly received a total of $279,526 in cash, stock and perks for being on that board.  So he gets over $500,000 from two huge corporations that have a significant interest in how oil and chemicals are handled in the United States.


Mr. Reilly was the head of the EPA at the time of the Exxon Valdez oil spill that still has not been completely cleaned up.  See here if you don't believe me.  It is instructive to read the executive summary of the report issued by Mr. Reilly as the head of the EPA and the Secretary of Transportation at the time, Samuel Skinner (here).  I have reprinted below one of the findings that I am sure Mr. Reilly will espouse once again when the report on the gulf catastrophe is submitted to President Obama.

Some oil spills may be inevitable. Oil is a vital resource that is inherently dangerous to use and transport. We therefore must balance environmental risks with the nation's energy requirements. The nation must recognize that there is no fail-safe prevention, preparedness, or response system. Technology and human organization can reduce the chance of accidents and mitigate their effects, but may not stop them from happening. This awareness makes it imperative that we work harder to establish environmental safeguards that reduce the risks associated with oil production and transportation. The infrequency of major oil spills in recent years contributed to the complacency that exacerbated the effect of the Exxon Valdez spill.

If you are balancing the environmental risks of oil spills against our country's use of oil and you live off the largess of big chemical corporations, can we really trust you to conduct such a critical balancing act?

I do not blame Mr. Reilly.  He is getting rich from the corporations and to assuage his conscience he stands up for the environment from time to time.  Mr. Reilly is not the President of the United States.  He is a private citizen exercising his rights, but why would President Obama pick him to be the co-chair of a commission to investigate a huge oil spill diaster?

Yesterday Bob Herbert started his column in The New York Times with the following:

If a bank is too big to fail, it’s way too big to exist. If an oil well is too far beneath the sea to be plugged when something goes wrong, it’s too deep to be drilled in the first place.
When are we going to stop behaving so stupidly? We nearly wrecked the economy and we’re all but buried in debt. But we can’t break up the biggest banks, and we can’t raise taxes. Now we’re fouling the magnificent Gulf of Mexico and ruining entire communities along the southern Louisiana Coast.
And, by the way, we’re still fighting a futile war in Afghanistan that we’ve been fighting with nonstop futility for nearly a decade. (I’m sure the troops saddled with this thankless task were thrilled to see fans and teams demonstrating their undying support for their efforts by wearing fancy baseball caps on Memorial Day.)

When will President Obama stop behaving the way all presidents and politicians behave and start engaging the citizens of our country in a discussion that is fact based and relies on common sense and logic instead of stupid sound bites and attempts to get some Republicans to agree with something that he says.  The American people are capable of understanding problems, issues and complexities, but it requires leadership and constant vigilance to keep the fringes from becoming mainstream.  It also requires calling people liars when they lie and teaching them when they don't know.  President Obama can be that kind of leader, but he certainly has not been so far.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal