There is a lot to learn from the oil spill. Sadly its all just doom and gloom. If you read this I promise you now I'm not going to make your day any happier.
America as a country doesn't learn a lot from oil spills or anything to do with putting oil companies in their place. RL, I care about the environmental damage too, but my focus is directed more towards humans. To me its a strange juxtaposition of morality to spend money on endangered species when we have our own race to take care of. Don't get me wrong I think its wonderful there are hundreds of people rescuing animals from the oil spill and helping them out. There are many species we can't help though. Plus we put our own species in danger everyday. It's just hard to see the horrible crimes oil has committed against humans when you live in the US, or Europe.
I know BP is responsible for the US oil spill but I'm going to talk about Royal Dutch Shell for a little bit. Honestly if you dug around any of the big 6 oil companies you'd probably find just as horrible things as I'm going to mention. Shell gets 80% of the oil it sells worldwide from Nigeria; they started drilling there in 1958. As it stands now the company has spilled oil in the Nigeria over 3000 times. This has made the water completely unsanitary and has destroyed the Ongoli tribe's way of life. The hydrocarbon levels in the water are 360 times that of safety regulations in any industrial society. With the water source unusable they can't fish, farm, or provide for themselves. The entire tribe has been exploited and robbed of their land and many of them have been displaced somewhere else. To make it worse Shell actually flares 95% of the natural gas that comes out of the ground there, horribly polluting the air and causing acid rain; devastating the few people that still live there. In fact this makes Nigeria oil fields responsible for more global warming impact than all the other oil fields in the world combined.
Since Shell is an international company it isn't held in check by any country's laws to an effectual extent. Plus to keep the Nigerian government from doing anything about it Shell provides more than half of the government's funds and provides military funding to quiet any riots related to Shell oil drilling.
The company does get criticized by the UN and the US. Although it really hasn't accomplished much. The company is worth something around 350 billion dollars and the last time they were 'made' to pay reparations for their environmental damage it was just 12.5 million dollars. Not to say that it can't go a long way in a third world country, but the damage is catastrophic there and it is almost entirely the company's fault.
This is what our structure gives us. A corporation can legally be defined as an individual and particular persons inside it cannot be held accountable for the actions of the entire company. If (and I doubt anyone did, I didn't) you watched C-SPAN when representatives questioned BP on the causes and their actions for the oil spill you'd constantly hear them answer 'I don't know', or 'I don't have that information'. They can't answer any questions about how their companies can monitor pressure or even how much money their company is going to spend on the damages. Then what happens right now? They get a slap on the wrist and the nation wants the president to take the blame. How in the hell does that help anything? The companies prove time and time again their apathy for their messes and the governments of the world prove their inability to stop them from creating them. I know its a private business and all of that but sometimes lines have to be crossed. A government's role is to provide a safe living environment for its citizens. Yet at the same time our capitalistic society demands that we keep the government out of business to stimulate economic growth. So now we're at a crossroads. On one hand you can keep the government out of it and let oil companies run rampant and the whole world can suffer the consequences. Or you can allow the government to step in with piles of regulations on the business and reel them in. It's not a value many people in the US share and it would create more of that scary big government people are always afraid of. To me, if it can prevent things like this its worth it. Unfortunately prevention isn't transparent to the public, its only natural to first see disaster and then respond.
Of course with the situation now it is just ridiculous. The government has been throwing resources at BP's disposal to try to fix this mess. It's sad that Top Kill has failed, that just means its back to the drawing board. It's in the hands of the scientists and engineers that are working on it now. The situation doesn't get resolved until they find the solution. Thankfully the media doesn't focus on them because honestly it only gets done once its done. What good would it do to have the whole nation angry at already at scientists already at work.
Really this is why I'm interested in energy research. If we can come up with an effective and environmentally safe alternative then we can oust oil, coal, and natural gas of its gigantic, worldwide use. Whats sad is that science doesn't get a lot of attention from the public. You only ever hear the calls or pushes for alternative energy when a crisis like this happens. The truth is that scientists don't just drop their research when the public is quiet about it. Unless you publish in science you perish. Certainly you don't get heard otherwise so all the scientists in research labs all over the world silently go on through their work with no public knowledge, wondering when the solution will magically drop into their laps. I can assure you there are tons of avenues being looked at and possibilities in the works. I even talked about a few of my favorites in the other oil thread.
The solutions aren't easy, the research isn't cheap, the market for them once they get developed for a mass production application will not be well established at all. Honestly what do you think will happen once the miracle answer is found that can replace oil is implemented? It probably won't die out right, but it won't be mainstream. It has too many multi-billion dollar industries to fight before it can do anything. Because as this situation is a painful reminder, everything in the corporate world comes down to money.
