The Pelican has taken a ride through a time and has been transported back onto a clean, but very warped beach. Gone are the dark and sticky gobs of oil that festooned his long bill and elegant feathers.
He couldn’t believe it when his fellow birds had elected him to be “the one”. He had never gotten along well with the cormorants and the shorebirds were beneath him even as to let them pick off bits of oil from his greasy oil soaked exterior. They had collectively forced him up to the giant whirlpool in the delta and pushed him into its giant roiling maw where he could enter the watery chasms of time and re-enter at a point before the fateful Gulf oil spill. Now, clean and presentable and with his flying skills at their peak, he was ready to fulfill his destiny and turn back the hands of time so that the spill would not occur.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could reverse the arrow of time, to put the oil spill genie back in the bottle? Wouldn’t it be great if we could revert to the last saved game state when some disaster occurs and change our choices for the better?. Unfortunately we cannot do that, We must make better decisions in the here and now. We must help anticipate and mitigate the risks we face as individuals, organizations, governments and society as a whole.
There has been a great deal of discussion in the media regarding BP and the oil spill. National Geographic has an excellent article on the Gulf oil spill that spells out many issues surrounding this disaster. The BP oil spill is one example of many where risk management issues played a role.
More on risk in the next article.
....Marilyn Dunstan
