Apparently BP has used something called a "top kill" to get the oil spill under control. I hope it's true but, unfortunately, it's just too late. The damage is done. It's more than done.
If you were one of the many creatures who live in the Gulf, it's as if BP covered your home and everything in it in oil...
A part of me is sympathetic to BP for the beating they're taking. They are, after all, just a company trying to make money in a dangerous game where an accident can have dire consequences. And accidents do happen.
But, on the other hand...
Sympathy has to be reserved for those who can look back and honestly say "I did everything I possibly could to have avoided this disaster." And, in this case at least, I don't think BP did that. Since oil-rig blow-outs are so rare, it all comes down to how much money you spend on safety to fight a problem which will probably never happen. Do you spend $500,000 on an acoustic kill switch which may help in the event of a catastrophe? Or do you do what BP did and decide that the cost was too much for the potential benefits?
Well, when your actions can FUCK UP THE PLANET, I'm sorry, but you have no choice but to SPEND THE FUCKING MONEY!
As we are seeing right now, the alternative is just too horrible.
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Excellent post. My thoughts are wondering why they simply didn’t just turn off the derek. Shut it down. Didn’t Halliburton build a shut off part to this whole thing? Seems logical. Oh wait…
So very very fucked up. I took the day off yesterday and watched a whole boatload of MSNBC and some of the footage showing the oil covered wildlife was just heartbreaking.
On a related, but somewhat lighter note, at least the tweets by @BPGlobalPR are funny.
it literally hurts my heart to see the oil catastrophe.
Amen. Especially given how much profit they make each year, $500,000 is pocket change. Which makes what happened even worse.
Not only that, and especially because you can’t rely on a corporation to have a conscience, but you would think they would have thought about the potential bottom line loss it all means in dollars.
They’ve got barrels and barrels of resource floating away they can never make any money on. The money they spent developing the well is gone. The cost of the cleanup + the compensation to people whose lives and businesses they’ve ruined. Not to mention the people who will stop buying gas from them.
Safety is like, you know, INSURANCE? Looks like for the sake of getting more oil out in a shorter period of time they blew more than just a well.
While I totally agree with your point, I do wonder how much crap fucking up the planet happens all the time out of your sight.
In a way we may have been lucky that _this_ situation is happening in the U.S. where enough attention may be devoted to the damages it is causing, hopefully triggering enough damage to the company causing it. How many other similar situations are there that we just don’t learn about?
Oh, don’t worry. BP will find a way to make the American taxpayers foot the bill for this.
The news has been really hard to watch (course, when is it not?) lately. And seeing that live camera with the oil still blooming out from the ocean bottom is heartwrenching. The Gulf coast is gonna be screwed for quite a while.
PS: I understand Dawn dishwashing liquid will help clean Lil Dave up.
I’m very saddened by this. The Gulf is, well, home… however long it has been since I lived there. It makes me extremely sad to hear/read the news. I’ll be home in July. Hopefully things will have improved by then.
a perfectly brilliant way of putting it. What is frightening about this is that after all the growth and evolution of safety concepts, we are still faced with the bonehead executive decision(s) that results in disaster. There is no reason to continue with the illusion of safety, as decision makers can “free will” themselves into ignoring what, to many seems to be common sense! I mean should we scrap safety meetings, regulations altogether, calling it wasted time because down the street some idiot executive is waging a battle over whether he needs safety equipment or to save a few cents to keep his bonus package.
It’s silly to think people are angry over America “becoming a socialist state.” Of course its not but when people can’t regulate better judgment over profit don’t you think someone should step in to set things right? I do. BP operations in America should be seized and sold for clean up as well as executives assets that made the decision. If you litter on the street you get huge fines, so should these guys. May be the rest would see the costs of skirting regulations is not worth it.
And now BP is supposedly destroying evidence to prevent lawsuits from people cleaning up their shit.
You would think doing the right responsible thing would be automatic for people when the consequences of not doing so are huge. But then you would think wrong because over and over I see it proven that a lot of people do whatever the hell they want and leave the clean up to others. Sad, really sad. Thank goodness for the good people in life that give me hope for the world despite all of this.