SOME of the outflow from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has reached our shores.
I don’t mean there’s tarred pelicans hobbling around on the beach down at Oriental Bay.  Rather, there are important lessons for New Zealand that must not be ignored, both about why it happened and the inspirational response of President Obama.
In April, 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig lost their lives when it exploded.  Then oil began haemorrhaging out of the seabed in such volumes and force that it became unstoppable.  And no wonder:  it’s the deepest oil well there’s ever been, going 10,000 metres into the seabed.  Since then the sea has become like a grease sump, precious wildlife have died in large numbers, and human beings who make their livings from the Gulf have been, well, engulfed. 
The oil slick floating on the surface is so large that it’s now the size of Kansas, which is only a bit smaller than New Zealand.  Apart from lethal chemicals it also contains some vivid warning signs for us here.
Perhaps in the past, these sorts of things have just been left to the individual States and companies to sort out.  I think Obama has seen something many have missed:  the tragedy of one is the tragedy of many.  And, more to the point, anything happening on the foreshore or seabed of a nation is not just a matter for local “owners” and developers.  The integrity and security of the coastline, surely, is a key and inalienable responsibility of any nation.
Since Obama has got involved, BP have agreed to put $20 billion (in our dough, that’s about $25 billion) in a fund to compensate the people affected by the spill.  Even so, the total cost of the ongoing damage to the Dixieland environment is racing away like one of those manic dollar-counters you see on petrol pumps when you’re filling up. What will be the final cost? $50 billion?  $100 billion? $200 billon?
I don’t want to be gross, but New Zealand’s gross domestic product is only about $120 billion a year. So imagine if that sort of oil spill occurred in our waters.  It could, given all the recent talk about “gold-plated” mining here, and the proposal to hand New Zealand’s foreshore and seabed “back” to individual Maori tribes.  The tribes, we are told, would have full rights to drill and mine.  If experienced companies like BP can come up with a catastrophe on the scale we can see on our TVs every night, then our home-grown Jed Clampetts (Maori and Pakeha) will be positively dangerous. We would not survive a major oil spew from our tectonic-plated seabed.  New Zealand would simply close down.
For that reason, I think the National-Maori Party government should pull the plug on any idea of removing the foreshore and seabed from public ownership.  The coast is surely part of our national estate.  We all own it.