There are so many sad things about this, I don’t know where to begin.
I think the first place to look is the gas pump. Not the prices on the pump but the dial that show you the price and how many gallons you paid for. Let’s start at the last space at the left of the decimal point, the penny. In my simple mind, the space at the right of the decimal point is one tenth, the second space is one hundreth and the third is one thousandth. When we look at the gallon space we see that there are three spaces to the right of the decimal point there too. I can’t think of an everyday example where an everyday product is sold that is broken down to the thousandth of a unit or where a company keeps tab on a thousandth of a cent.Please correct me if I’m wrong.
That’s just at the gas pump. This industry also does plastics and agricultural products. Not to mention the FDA has approved of some petroleum products for human consumption. These guys are big and they have destroyed the Gulf of Mexico and they are working on the East coast of the country, open ocean and who knows what else. It’s sad that nature will take another devastating hit from humanity. It’s sad that humanity will take the same hit. It’s sad that BP will get away with minimal costs of clean up or anything else. I imagine their lawyers are already preparing stall tactics that will take the process through years of court dates and again it will be left to the every day person to do what they can in the increments of spare time of trying to make a living.
Did anyone really think something like this wouldn’t happen? It’s probably a good thing for the rest of the Atlantic basin that it happened in the Gulf and not off the coast of Florida (proposed drilling sites) or Virginia (more proposed drilling sites). If that were the case, all of the East coast of The United States, Canada, Greenland, Iceland and anything else in route to the British Isles would have oil on it by now. I wouldn’t be surprised if BP said they needed a bail out. You know they would get it.
I remember Florida in the early ’60s. It was the end of the world. You could move there and get away from civilization. The water was crystal blue and teaming with life. Even up to the ’80s the reefs off of Ft. Lauderdale were colorful and full of life but after 20 years they became lumps of algae covered rocks and I can assure you it wasn’t an act of nature. Urban growth has a way of always reaching the ocean.
The Gulf oil spill is much different in that it provides generations worth of surprises for our future. I’m curious if the Gulf oil spill could be considered a weapon of mass destruction. BPWMD. If any every day person did something that caused horrid environmental damage, leaked millions of gallons of flammable fluids out into the public and caused thousands of people to lose their livelihoods we could be charged with an act of terrorism. Mark my words, these guys will get a slap on the wrist at best. The government will talk tough, the hippie kids will go wipe oil off birds and the CEOs will fly to DC in their private jets for lip service to congress who will be getting gifts from them.
We let these guys do this and what’s really sad is we as a people won’t do shit about it.
It really is time that every American do what ever they can to cut petroleum use however they can. Fuck the government’s ability to look out for us and fuck the big business mentality that everything and everyone is a commodity to be exploited at their whim. We need to take our country back, now.
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