By Curtis Sagmeister
With twenty thousand barrels of oil per day spewing into the Gulf of Mexico the environmental catastrophe is already taking on a physical and real picture. Oil is washing up on the beaches of three states. Brown pelicans wear slick black coats. Blue crab, shrimp, oysters and red snapper are already showing toxic signs of being poisoned by the invading glob. More is sure to come.
A way of life has been plummeted into chaos threatening to eliminate tens of thousands of jobs with recovery being a distant optimistic forecast. The reality is more probable to see economic calamity for the aquaculture, tourism, and resource industries, as well as those who rely on those industries for their income.
As outrage plumes as thick and quick as the leaking oil itself, British Petroleum (BP) continues failing at stopping the worst oil spill in North American history. Seems BP's redundant safety measures and emergency response procedures did not include the one environmental concern topping most people's minds, that is, an oil spill. With the majority of the oil slick yet to arrive on land, BP has been slow to respond and contain the erupting oil.
Fingers begin to be pointed in all directions. In Senate hearings, BP pushed blame onto Transocean, the company earning half a million dollars per day to drill for oil on behalf of British Petroleum. In turn, Transocean is quick to lay responsibility at the feet of BP. And then there is the United States government, which is responsible for overseeing offshore drilling. Everyone points the finger at regulators whose job it is to ensure environmental and public safety.
White House officials claim BP will be held accountable for this unprecedented disaster. What that means to politicians and what that means to the citizens are likely two very different polar opposites. Along with the emerging outrage around the country, and in particular from those areas directly affected by the oil spill, are very vocal calls for prison sentences for the corporate elite of British Petroleum.
It is extremely rare anywhere in the world where corporate officers have received prison sentences for the decisions made in the course of normal business practices. What ends up happening instead in the few cases where a corporation has been found guilty of some action, is a financial penalty has been negotiated. These are, after all, the corporate elite with access to the best legal minds in the country and the private cell phone numbers of high ranking politicians. We cannot expect them to be wearing orange jumpsuits, can we?
Speaking of finances, BP has indeed suffered already. BP stock price has taken an almost 75 billion dollar drop in valuation. The direct cost so far with the Gulf of Mexico fiasco is floating close to one and a half billion dollars, and the cleanup has barely started. And you can bet your last drop of gasoline that the civil lawsuits that will be filed by affected parties will set another sad record in financial compensation as actual and punitive damages.
But that is just money. BP will recover. Wall Street will swallow up the undervalued British Petroleum shares faster than the explosive ignition that killed the eleven workers aboard the drilling platform and sell them off with appropriate timing to realize obscene profits.
More worrisome is the wildlife who struggle to survive while being smothered by the expanding glob. More troubling is the ecosystem devastation sure to have negative impacts on the people and their way of life for generations to come. And more challenging is the determining how we are going to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
And that's my take.
AND THAT'S MY TAKE... (HANDCUFFS FOR BRITISH PETROLEUM?)
© 2010 by Curtis Sagmeister. All Rights Reserved
About the Author Curtis Sagmeister is self-described as a Photographer, Author, Poet, Songwriter, Student of Human Behavior, Community Activist, Social Commentator, Environmental Steward and Wage Slave. A number of his creative works have been published throughout the world and he recently launched his website at http://www.sagmeister.ca and a blog accessible from his website.
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Excellent piece - one of the best I have read on the "oil crisis" (a bit of a euphemism at this point!)
ReplyDeleteI have a couple of questions - 1) are you aware of the destruction that has been going on in the Niger delta ever since pipelines there were built? There was a great piece on this in The Guardian a couple of weeks back - communities destroyed by constant oil leaks, and Shell Oil taking six months to reply to their immediate calls for help that their lakes have become oil slicks!, 2) Do you have any information on the effect the continuing disaster is having on seismology? Recently, a small earthquake registered on ALL seismographs in the world, and I have an (kind of educated, although I'm a sociologist, not a geologist!) inkling about this. This information was not given any attention in the mainstream media - big surprise! However, my partner and I felt the quake where we live, in Vancouver Canada - where we're 200 years overdue for a major quake/tsunami combo according to the fossil record, and the written records that were created on the other side of the Pacific, in Japan.
I would love to discuss this more.
Cheers!
scars :wink: