President Obama says "BP will pay" for the oil spill. And they should. They ran the Deep Horizon oil rig, neglected using adequate safety measures, and watched it explode hours after an inspection team left. Yesterday BP announced it will pay $20 billion to make the Gulf better than ever.
Terrific. Good. Yay.
That ain't enough.
BP is directly responsible, sure, but at the end of the line is, well, us.
The world's growing thirst for oil will be sated by someone, somewhere, as long as there's profit to be had. BP's relief wells will generate money for them, which will probably go straight to the relief fund, because it's poetic that way. But until we get full of oil, this will happen again, somewhere, to somebody.
I hope Obama uses this disaster for political capital. Normally a queasy tactic (Bush+9/11=Iraq War), the president can use the spill for kicking the oil habit. It was one of his campaign planks, and now's the time to get it done.
3 comments:
Agreed...
"Did BP drag their feet on adequately repairing the damaged pipeline in order to get get 2 more relief wells they wouldn't otherwise have been able to acquire?"
Hmmm...Good question Paddles.
Drill Baby DRILL!
PuBLiC TrAnSpOrTaTiOn needs to step up!
+ bike lanes in every town on all the main thoroughfares. imagine if Six Forks had a bike lane (and people actually respected it)!?!??!??
i'd like to think that public transportation will happen, but i have my doubts. a bike lane on six forks would send a lot of bikers to the hospital. i know i can't stand them in chapel hill, much less in a bigger city. if cities want to encourage bikers they should make pedestrian only streets that are bike accessible.
as far as light rails/subways, it continually seems like a distant reality. by the time nc could actually pay and construct an effective (key word) light rail, the population here will be double, triple, etc what they originally set out to build for.
i don't see an end to oil any time in our lifetimes - too much of our way of life is built around it. that's probably really pessimistic, but we're going to have to rethink how/what food we, how we make toys, how we clean our dishes, etc along with how we transport ourselves. i don't see people willing to take responsiblity to drastically change their lifestyles without an incentive. i think it's going to have to come from the government...but how long will that take? esp with oil companies buying up congressman loyalty?
this spill is obviously a horrible disaster and to see the pictures makes you realize how bad our oil addiction is/how poisonous are current lifestyle is to every creature and ecosystem on the planet...but how many of us are honestly changing our day to day routine as a result?
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