We have read in our newspapers of the human and environmental tragedy as hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil pour into the ocean making it a toxic wasteland as well as the coastal devastation of the Louisiana wetlands.
We have whingeing remarks of the President Barack Obama acting tough and pathetic explanations of BP (British Petroleum) to try to cap this massive oil spill.
There is a certain cosmic irony about these sad events. America uses 25% of the total supply of the world’s oil. It consumes it with a ferocious determination. There is no such thing as austerity in the USA despite its debts. It is as if nature is saying
“You want oil. You can have it. Loads of it. Here is the oil to kill off some of your seas, your fish, your birds, your wildlife and undermine your local communities on the shoreline. You want it. You got it.”
Half of Americans still resist legislation for sustainability. We hear nothing but toothless statements from President Barack Obama.
America is not serious at all about cutting consumption. There is no indication of it.
The US government has made no real efforts to regulate and control the rampant desire of the oil barons in their determination to secure more oil that earns them mega profits running in the billions of $$$ per year.
- If the White House felt any deep concerns about oil spills, it would have long since acted to stop the oil spills in the Niger Delta caused by Exxon and Shell. Those spills amount to more oil lost per year than in the Gulf of Mexico. Forty per cent of oil for US consumers comes from the Delta.
- We also read of corruption as well as light regulation of US deep-sea oil rigs.
- We recall in the Exxon Valdez oil spill with estimates around 20-30 billion gallons of oil spilt in US waters in an area of salmon, otters and much wildlife in Alaska.
- We recall the Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea with the loss of 167 lives.
- We recall the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, the world’s worst industrial catastrophe at the Union Carbide plant, a US owned multi-national. Indian government agencies estimated the death toll around 15,000 people and 558, 125 injured. Toxic chemicals continue to leak believing to pollute the groundwater.
- Union Carbide fought in the courts for years against offering compensation. Fifteen years after the tragedy Union Carbide gave a miserable $470 million in compensation. The US government did not hold Union Carbide accountable nor force them to pay compensation to the people of Bhopal. The US government continues to stay silent on the matter. Warren Carbide, the chairman of Union Carbide, is listed as an absconder by the Indian courts.
- We read that various oil companies have been named as complicit in war crimes in their desire for oil and financial support (read corruption) for the most odious of regimes. Western governments continue to bury their head in the sand.
There are two lessons to learn from all this.
1. The obsessive search for deep water oil must stop, as it is clear to everybody that the oil companies do not know what to do when something’s goes wrong. Haven’t they heard of Murphy’s Law? What can go wrong will go wrong.
2. We shift the priority from the feeding of desire, addiction to manufactured goods and cut our emissions to create the opportunity for a different way of life.
Our political masters continue to let us down. They are articulate dinosaurs and sometimes barely articulate. We, citizens, must work together to forge a different worldview.