Gaslighting has become one of the main staples of the current US Executive Administration. If you lie enough, people who begin to believe it start questions their own sanity
Regulatory variation on the gaslighting theme.
Category: Policy
Field Report from OCEANOISE 2026 Day 3
It was on the third day of the OCEANOISE conference that things started to gel. The themes and loose ends of the previous days began convening on the session topics – which were “Riverine and Coastal,” “Management and Policy,” and “Seismic.” Like water, all of the so many different ideas and flavors began flowing together.
Bright News from the Blue | What We Choose to Pay Attention to
Pages from the Ocean’s Story Much of what we know about the ocean begins with a signal. A whale’s call moving through dark water. A life form thriving where sunlight never reaches. A legal protection that holds — because people…
What’s next?
We have not yet seen how the current administration has synthesized any of the EIS comments we submitted this year, but given their proclivity to pushing the envelope to see what they can get away with, my suspicions are that they will ignore all public input and just see what we’ll do about it.
Regulatory disruption
It is not a surprise, but rather shocking how the current administration is eviscerating our national regulatory agencies, and doing it in what may appear to lay audiences as “sensible.”
Seabed mining is sneaking up on us
If BOEM grants Impossible Metals a permit to harvest the nodules, it may serve as an invitation to other nations to open the gates to mining operations in the international Clarion-Clipperton Zone, where the ISA is managing the seabed deliberations.
Rescinding the word “Harm” from the Endangered Species Act
By way of this semantic legerdemain they would open up the floodgates for extractive and construction industries to run roughshod over their operation areas without regulatory oversight or legal consequences.
Fan Dance of the Oilmen
The industry is in their element when prices are around $100/bbl. When it falls to $50/bbl. they close up shop. So having lease sales in a sinking market may not yield the promises of “Drill, Baby, Drill.”
How to communicate with a threatened agency?
We’ve arrived at an odd inflection point that has arisen now that National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is on the DOGE chopping block.
What comes next?
s I’ve previously indicated, I’ve been sparing my nerves by not reacting seriously until I “see the whites of their eyes,” – and I have to take in with amusement some of the conflicts and narratives that are being revealed.