I love dolphins, pelicans, and shrimp as much as anyone else, maybe more, but I cannot bring myself to the level of outrage others have attained due to the BP situation in the Gulf of Mexico.
Is it unfortunate? Yes, of course it is. Is it a regrettable environmental situation? Of course. Does British Petroleum need to revise their safety procedures and update their contingency plan(s) for their drilling platforms? Absolutely.
Is it the end of the world and a destroyer of our ecosystem. No.
Admittedly, I haven’t digested too much information regarding this situation. I think a great deal of the coverage has been hype and has been skewed by an underfed, overzealous media. My simple response when accosted by a ecomaniac or generic office newsy is that I don’t particularly blame BP for the situation, and I refuse to throw them under the bus when it comes to recovery efforts. I don’t think BP is an apathetic party to this, and I firmly believe they’re doing all they possibly can to ameliorate this situation.
I think this because BP is, quite literally, losing billions of dollars in oil and patronage as a result of this accident.
The ridiculous politics of this situation aside (all big business is corrupt and governed by shady back room dealings; get over it), the capitalist in me knows that an oil spill is bad business, and bad business equals lost profits. Lost profits equals lost jobs, smaller paychecks, and unhappy shareholders. Unhappy shareholders want nothing more than the CEO’s head on a stick if they’re losing money. The public backlash against BP and the media slander of BP is nothing compared to the wrath of these aforementioned shareholders.
BP will contain this mess as best as possible because of these reasons. Slinging mud at their signs or creating facebook petitions against them is just a foolish backlash by people who consider themselves to be aware, yet offer knee-jerk reactions to whatever the local news happens to feature.
I sincerely hope BP and whatever agencies they’ve contracted with are successful in this clean-up, and their success comes quickly, but this isn’t the end of the world. Nature is resilient and the wildlife will survive. BP needs to bring some supertankers to the region with the capacity to suck/filter the area and commit to an enduring process of cleaning up the affected areas. Also, BP should pay out for lost income to those directly effected by this incident. Hopefully the financial hit BP has/will take will be a catalyst for the entire industry to have more rigid safety guidelines and more effective plans ready for a situation such as this.
Unfortunately disasters and necessity are the main informers of invention, so this will end up being something that saves more lives and wildlife than it will ultimately destroys. If we didn’t suffer through several devastating airline crashes we wouldn’t have the safety precautions in place now that make flying the safest form of transportation possible. If NASA hadn’t suffered through Apollo setbacks, the Challenger explosion, and Columbia’s faulty tiles, the space program would not be as safe as it is today. Not to be callous, but if you want an omelette, you have to break some eggs. Unfortuantely some of those eggs are larger than others.
We should calm down and let capitalism fix its own mistakes. We should learn from these disasters and remember the causes, lest we repeat them and cause more damage.
