The oil stains on the wall
The warning signs should have been there regarding BP.Most Americans would likely assume that the major oil companies: BP, ExxonMobil, Conoco-Phillips, Sunoco, and Citgo have at least somewhat similar safety and environmental health records. Not true. During the last 3 years, BP has tallied 760 "egregious, willful" safety violations, according to OSHA statistics publicized by the Center for Public Integrity, compared with eight each for Sunoco and Conoco-Phillips, two for Citgo, and one for Exxon. That's a 97% share of the poisonous pie for BP.
Should there even be a debate at this point about whether or not a criminal investigation is warranted then following the Gulf catastrophe? That's a minimum. One might argue that we have an example here of simply one renegade company because of the statistical skew, but I say the numbers further support the argument for nationalization of the entire industry. There's little incentive for other companies to follow the law when such unbalanced statistics can be racked up without the slightest public scrutiny or P.R. damage to the offending scofflaw (up until the point of the spill).
We've been the victims of systemic destruction to our ecosystem and economy by a serial environmental criminal, while there's been little or no oversight of the industry and a toothless enforcement of penalties. It's inconceivable to me that this would be the case if a government agency was charged to extract and refine our oil, a naturally-occurring and should-be-public resource. There could and would still be spills-- the concept of "clean oil" is as large a myth as "clean coal," but in the instances of disaster, there would be public hearings, firings-- accountability, and most importantly, the elimination of the profit motive that is 100% responsible for the corner-cutting and/or outright disregard for safety and environmental standards that resulted in this deadly crisis.
The American people can't have BP CEO Tony Hayward fired, despite his crimes of domestic terrorism against us. Hell, thanks to our Supreme Court earlier this year, we can't even limit the amount of money he can use to bribe our Congress and the White House into further relaxing the company's operating restrictions and strengthening his right to steal. The powerlessness we've all been feeling over the last month in relationship to this spill is born of this broken, laissez-faire system of economic destruction-- from Milton Friedman's classroom direct to the shoreline in your backyard.
---
As of last weekend, 22% of Americans (according to Rasmussen) still have a "favorable" view of BP. I want to know who these 22% are. They can't all be in Congress. They are what we have to call "the true believers," though in what they believe, I have no clue. Maybe it's "bad shit happening more directly to other people, not me." Maybe everybody that gives a hoot about the natural world was out of the house enjoying it over the Memorial Day weekend and unable to pick up the pollster's call. And just maybe it's the same 22% of Americans that still supports Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and torture, and for whom "BP" always first means "Blame Progressives." As Studs Terkel used to say about the McCarthyists, "Suppose the communist comes out against cancer, they'd have to come out for it." So it goes.
posted by CM @ 3:52 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home