It just doesn’t seem to stop. Everyday there’s another horror, revelation, or uncovering of yet another lie, or misstatement of the truth if you want to be kind about it. I’m not so sure I do. Too many of BP’s actions, and inactions in other cases, have left me totally disgusted. The list just grows of what has gone wrong in the Gulf of Mexico for the last 68 days and counting – has it already been that long? The sheer volume of oil bellowing forth from that hole BP put into the ocean floor…I can’t wrap my head around it.
Yeah, a weekend yachting getaway is appropriate for BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward. And it sends such a lovely ‘we need oil’ message too. Couldn’t possibly want to try to be a little more environmentally aware, in light of what your company is responsible for in the Gulf, or should I say the planet, since it’s all inextricably linked. Talk about hubris and disconnect saying, “I’d like to get my life back.” No number of apologies later from him will erase the basic arrogance and sense of entitlement that seems to ooze along with the oil.
After all, BP chose to save money in the short term and didn’t drill relief wells as a precaution, something other countries like Canada actually require. They have even tried to get others to eliminate these protective regulations. “…shortly before the U.S. disaster, BP and other oil companies urged Canadian regulators to drop a requirement stipulating that companies operating in the Arctic had to drill relief wells in the same season as the primary well.” Just think of how different things would have been had BP already had relief wells dug and ready to go when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, setting these tragic, but certainly not unforeseeable events in motion.
Which of course leads us to another of BP’s apparent shenanigans. Another one of those Johnny-come-lately discoveries – that memo that recently surfaced which detailed worst case scenarios with outputs in the 100,000 barrels (4.2 million gallons/15.9 million liters) range. Even if circumstances aren’t identical, it seems clear that BP knew the potential volumes of oil that could be involved. Kind of makes their 1,000 barrels a day estimate seem pretty disingenuous and laughable. No wait, then it became 5,000, oops no wait, that’s not it either, it’s actually 12,000 barrels, oh no that’s not it, actually it’s…
The latest numbers from the U.S. Government and independent scientists peg the number in 60,000 barrels per day range. And of course there’s BP own worst-case-scenario memo at 100,000 barrels. Just what qualifies as a worst-case I wonder?
And now for the latest chapter in this sickening saga as a result of ‘burn boxes’ to try to burn off some of the oil before it reaches the shore. (Again, if only relief wells had existed…)The Guardian reported, “Endangered sea turtles and other marine creatures are being corralled into 500 square-mile “burn fields” [burn boxes] and burnt alive in operations intended to contain oil from BP’s ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration confirmed today [June 25th 2010].” This despite the fact that BP was under government orders to avoid the turtles. A spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has said, “My understanding is that protocols include looking for wildlife prior to igniting of oil…We take these things very seriously.” I hope they do, and that they enforce the penalties that exist. Harming or killing a sea turtle carries fines of up to $50,000, and can also involve prison time.
According to NaturalNews.com, “For several weeks now, rescue crews have been feverishly trying to save Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles, as well as four other endangered varieties, from being caught in the oil corral areas that are being intentionally burned by BP, but according to Mike Ellis, one of the boat captains involved in the project, BP has now blocked all such rescue efforts from taking place.”
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In the words of Ellis, “They ran us out of there and then they shut us down, they would not let us get back in there,” he explained in an interview with Catherine Craig, a conservation biologist. He’s interviewed in the video below about what he has personally witnessed in the Gulf.
Dr. Brian Stacy, a veterinarian with the NOAA, has said of the five endangered types of sea turtles, the Kemp’s Ridleys are the rarest, and yet they are the ones being found most often “dead or covered in oil.” And now they are being burned alive too. Given the numbers of turtles already killed, and the threat to the next generation of turtles given the damage to their shoreline nesting sites, conservationists are very worried about the long-term survival of these turtle species.
And this is but one of the animals paying the ultimate price for our too often reckless disregard for our planet. For many reasons our society remains very oil dependant, but until we demand and have in place sufficient and truly green alternatives, you’d think the least we could do is to try to get that oil in a less arrogant way. The Deepwater Horizon dug this well, the deepest one in history, just a short eight months before it went kerblooey, with none of those pesky back-up relief wells drilled that might have cut into profits. We sure didn’t have to wait long for one of those ‘we’ve got everything under control’ kind of disasters, you know, the kind nobody could have possibly ever imagined.
To Hayward and his, “I’d like to get my life back,” I’d like to say this: So would all the animals, literally.
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