BP's behavior in the Gulf is appalling. But our thirst for oil is the real issue

[marmar]

from the Guardian/Observer UK:



BP's behaviour in the Gulf is appalling. But our thirst for oil is the real issue
Science will solve this crisis, but the real cause is America's demands and our refusal to pay oil's true price

Ian R MacDonald
The Observer, Sunday 30 May 2010

As this piece is written, act one of the Gulf of Mexico tragedy continues, agonisingly, to unfold. We, the people of the region, keep hoping to leave behind the terrifying explosions and ghastly loss of human life, the dread invoked by black jets billowing endlessly from below and the floating oil spreading over an ever-growing area.

We want to move on to act two, which will feature many dirty shovels, corpses of birds and people crying over the loss of a landscape they love. Act three has yet to be written; it will employ an enormous cast of lawyers and last for decades, but in that time there will be some healing, we hope. That's what we need to happen as soon as possible, but we can't seem to get the damned thing plugged up.

I am told that Britons like to measure areas by comparison to the size of Wales. The oil spill stretching across the Gulf is now far bigger than Wales; it's about the size of Scotland and growing by more than 1,500 square kilometres (580 square miles) a day. It was my observation, in satellite images of this inexorable spread, that led me to conclude in early May that the rate of release being cited by BP and repeated by our coastguard – 1,000 barrels a day – was preposterous.

....(snip)....

Casting BP executives as cardboard cut-out villains does not get us very far though. Whatever the courts may find about BP's culpability the real cause is our demand for oil and our refusal to pay its true price. Right now, everyone in America wants to do something to fight the spill. However, if you suggest that perhaps we should double the price of fuel and use the revenue to rebuild our transportation network, the general response is suspicious silence.

Facile comparisons do not do justice to this still unfolding drama. If the climate scientists are even partly right, this could be a dress rehearsal for greater crises: humans instigating vast change we then struggle to control. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/30/bp-oil-spill-gulf-mexico

[DrDan]

1. I think it could be argued that the issue is lack of regulation coupled with a thirst for oil

[w4rma]

3. I was just about to say that. Our allowing big business to run roughshod and unregulated over us

is also a huge problem.

[Stuart G]

2. Jimmy Carter addressed this problem in the late 70s, and

he was right, and the assholes, like Reagan, 2 Bushes, Cheney ...and the rest were wrong.

[Scuba]

4. Quit blaming the victims !!! ...

Besides politicking for better government and regulations, what do you think those of us who burn gas should be doing?

Moving near where we work? Unfortunately, the current employment culture in America means you'll likely be in a new job every few years. Are we supposed to move every time?

Bicycle to work? Same problem. Many of us commute thousands of miles to work, not because we want to, but because we have to. At one poing in my career I had to fly 1,200 miles back and forth each week for two years, consuming vast quantities of jet fuel that wouldn't have been used had my seat on the plane been empty, like the one next to me sometimes was.

Change careers? Pretty hard to do without burning down everything you've worked for and starting over.

Change lifestyle? Do we live better than the average European? Some of us, a little, in terms of home and PERHAPS fuel-consumption history. But the graphs showing how Amerians use more than their fair share of fuels don't show splits between military, corporate and private gasoline consumption. (Can anyone provide this breakdown? Thanks.) I suspect the average consumer may look pretty innocent with that data at hand.

Retire? Hah. I'm not in the top 20% of Americans who own 93% of American wealth. Like most of us, I have just been scraping by, saving for retirement, and then seeing it vanish when the casino my 401K's played in turned out to be fixed.

Meanwhile, note this taken from http://www.observer.com/2009/o2/yacht-update regarding Paul Allen's fishing boat. "The yacht, which houses a crew of 60, two helicopters, seven boats, a submarine, and a remote controlled vehicle that crawls the ocean floor, costs the billionaire $20 million a year (or $384,000 a week) to keep up. Maybe he can cut his fuel consumption. Maybe he could scrape by with just one of his two helicoptors.


Anyway, I want to help. Please suggest some alternatives on how I can change the world by not buying $30 bucks worth of gas a week. Thanks

[Jamastiene]

5. Make smart, albeit out of the mainstream, voting decisions in the primaries.

I'm in the middle here.

I don't want to blame all consumers for thinking our government would regulate the hell out of environmental polluters if only we voted for the Democrats. We knew the Republicans would never regulate.

On the other hand, there is no way in hell I could ever defend BP's lackadaisical attitude about millions of gallons of oil killing everything in its path. Even the worst horror movies I have ever seen do not come close to this reality. It makes The Day After movie look like a made-up, never-gonna-happen lighthearted comedy in retrospect. Un-FUCKING-believable.

So, the only thing I think we can legally and logically do is look damn close during any local, state, and federal (every level of government) primaries and make damn sure the strongest environmentalist Democratic and/or Green (for those Green voters on the site) candidates win the primaries, not just at the national level, but at all state and local levels as well. Until we start making damn sure the more unpopular, but better on the environment, candidates win the primaries, this shit will continue to happen.

That's the only answer I can give. I have no clue how else we can take our government and our planet back from unfettered unprecedented greed of the oil companies and other polluters.

Not everyone has the option to bicycle and/or walk our way out of this. I understand that. For those who can, I say bravo and more power to them. I'm proud of them for being in a position to be able to do that and doing it. I love them for it, but for those of us who cannot, I'm not sure what we CAN do. I guess when we absolutely don't need to travel, don't.

And to think, many of us thought making daily decisions to cut energy consumption (like changing all Edison bulbs to CFL bulbs, turning the lights out when not in use, sweating in the summer with the A/C on 75 when it's 105 outside, etc.) would help. Al Gore is really right. We need to do MORE.

[Scuba]

6. Agreed, but I'm scared because...

...Last fall, ES&S quietly purchased Diebold, giving them 80% of market for electronic voting machings. And it's not just the un-auditable vote-counting; they now also own polling place check-in software (electronic pollbooks), voter registration software and vote-by-mail authentication software.

http://www.benalexandra.com/cool_stuff/diebold_ess.htm

This link has very scary information, all with appropriate citations, regarding what could easily be a mass-manipulation of our elections.

They've already been caught registering voters who thought they were just signing petitions. Getting total registered voter numbers higher gives them more room to fudge numbers.

When you buy a pack of gum, you get a receipt. Why is there no receipt/audit trail on our votes? I can only think of one reason.

[proudohioan]

7. Quit blaming the victim? THANK YOU!!!

Personally, I am SO SICK of this 'blame the victim' mentality' that I'm about to scream!

I am TIRED of shouldering the responsibility for the greed and failures of corporate America! Yet we keep hearing over and over again that "we Americans are ALL to blame for the ____ (insert particular crisis here) and we must all take appropriate measures..." and so on and so on!

Who exactly was pushing all of this corporate BS on us? Certainly wasn't Madison Avenue....

[chill_wind]

8. Our military thirst and consumption being the first- and most ignored--issue

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8450210&mesg_id=8450210

Until we get that...