Since April 20, the oil well in the Gulf of Mexico has been leaking millions of barrels of oil. At first the press and BP where playing down the incident, words such as ''could'', ''may'', ''appears to be'' were used to play down this catastrophe. We were told that dispersant were used, they still are and are highly toxic and dangerous to man and wildlife. BP CEO said It is a big area and this is not so serious, it can be contained. BP had originally said that they had the technology to deal with any disaster, they now admit they do not and never had any plans. BP does not know what to do, they are trying different ideas. One using an atomic weapon to seal the leak, brilliant! There is expectation that the White House and the President should deal with this crisis. They are not chemical engineer and what they can do, they have done, investigate and bring criminal charges against BP and its incompetent management. Of course all this could have been avoided had ideas like deregulation of industries and risk management never taken hold of society. It all started with a B movie actor who understood little of governance and probably knew more about chimpanzees, good ole Ronald Reagan, nice guy but not the right guy for the job and then the 2 Bushes and all the neo-conservative claptrap and white fundamentalist Christians values. What a horror show this has been.
On top of the current cover-up BP has engineered to minimize impact, per example hiding the true damage to the Gulf of Mexico and to its wildlife, already all kinds of species of fish, dolphin, turtles and birds are washing up dead on beaches. BP is doing all it can to keep the press at bay as far away as possible, while showing off robotics under water.
I predict that from this disaster BP will be bankrupted and disappear as a company, it has already lost one third of its value as a company in just a few days. BP will cover part of the expense of the clean-up but in the end will not be able to pay it all and given it will take years, BP will beg off claiming insufficient funds, etc.. BP management will quit and get huge cash bonuses which will anger the public but then so is life. In the end despite criminal investigations no one will be held responsible and the tax payer will cover the cost of it all financial and otherwise. The disaster will soil and ruin all of the Gulf of Mexico and wildlife will die and disappear, it will be the first major environmental disaster on such a terrible scale that we will be unable to cope with it. Livelihoods of all who live near the coast in the so many States and Mexico will be changed forever. Gone seafood, gone property values, gone jobs and communities, all gone. The clean-up if one is ever possible will take decades and the wildlife will not come back since it is dying at this very moment, that too is gone. It is not over yet, so there is much more horror to come from this disaster, stay tune. I am just waiting for the oil to arrive in the Florida Keys and really spoil the area.
All this for oil so we can drive a car and use it as a vanity item, humans are truly foolish.
The whole thing is actually making me physically ill from depression.
ReplyDeleteNow I hear that the presence of people and equipment involved in cleaning up the marshland will cause nearly as much environmental damage as the spill itself..
There isn't a single bit of encouraging news to be had.
Despite this horrible disaster, it does pave the way for major changes going forward and I am grateful for that!
ReplyDeleteHave you seen this about Kevin Costner?
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/kevin-costner-machine-bp-oil-clean/story?id=10689928