Set government agencies a-sniffing after terrorist threats nobody can define, and the results seem predictable: delay, confusion, the wrong people caught up in the dragnet, the real threats ignored. This September marks the third anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We’ve had ample opportunity to learn about the need for port security, the threats posed by imaginative terrorists, the country’s vital interest in energy self-sufficiency – but the bureaucracy bumbles on.
Twice in Portland this past summer the Coast Guard went after foreign-registered mega-yachts whose owners wanted them berthed at DiMillo’s; one turned out not to fall under the new rules at all, while the other was obliged to move to a federally approved site elsewhere in the harbor. Curiously, as our story notes, if a foreign-flagged vessel certified as a yacht or pleasure vessel with fewer than 12 passengers has an International Ship Security Certificate (a safety plan for the vessel), it may only dock at an approved facility. If it doesn’t have such a plan it can stay anywhere. Got that? Commented a spokeswoman for a marina in Boston, “we have to figure out what we have to do on our own.”
The answers to larger questions remain elusive too. As the Northeast pushes the limits of its energy sources, the only new form of supply on the horizon, LNG, seems all wrong: it’s yet another non-renewable source, it’s not domestic, much of it is from unstable parts of the world, it’s beginning to show signs of depletion, it’s a threat to coastal fisheries and communities. Granted, LNG is cleaner than some other options, but it’s an energy choice we should have made 10 years ago, not as known reserves are believed to have peaked.
Has our government made us more secure since Sept. 11, 2001? In terms of port security, the answer is no: we’ve written confusing regulations that catch mega-yachts, while just about anything can come into port in an uninspected container. In terms of energy, the answer is also no: we’re more dependent on foreign sources than ever; no one in authority has made the obvious connection between security and a strategy of conservation and renewables – reducing our need for energy in the first place. Meanwhile, as we said, the bureaucracy bumbles on.