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Friday, July 16, 2010

Sealing Our Doom
Posted by Jill | 5:27 AM
If Americans are so addicted to oil and since we as a society seem to have the attention span of a gnat, if the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster hasn't woken us up, nothing will.

American Idiocy has sealed our doom:
Most Americans oppose President Barack Obama’s ban on deepwater oil drilling in response to BP Plc’s Gulf of Mexico spill, even as they hold the company primarily responsible for the incident.

Almost three-fourths, or 73 percent, say a ban is unnecessary, calling the worst oil spill in U.S. history a “freak accident,” according to a Bloomberg National Poll. Barely more than a third say they support drilling less than they did a few months ago. The BP rig sank in April. The administration issued a new moratorium this week after a court rejected a six-month one imposed in May.

“A ban will destroy the economy in that area over nothing,” said poll respondent Ron Smallcomb, 64, a used-car dealer in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania. “This is crazy. If there’s a plane crash you don’t ground all the airlines and stop flying completely.”

Eight in 10 of those questioned in the July 9-12 poll say London-based BP should pay for all damage caused by the spill. Six in 10 say BP, not the federal government, should reimburse wages lost by oil workers laid off because of the moratorium, with 56 percent saying even the possibility of bankruptcy shouldn’t allow the company to escape paying.

Asked who was most to blame for the spill, 44 percent say BP, and 19 percent say lax federal regulations and oversight. One in five say no one is to blame.

I hope Mr. Smallcomb has children. And I hope that fifty years from now they curse his memory for the world he, and other short-sighted, stupid, willfully-ignorant people left them.

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4 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Actually, when a plane crashes, while they may not ground all flying, the specific plane model may indeed be taken out of service until the cause of the crash has been determined. At least, once the cause has been found, if it was a mechanical error or flaw in the design, all planes of the that model will be taken from service for modification. I guess, he's never watched those documentary stories like "Seconds from Disaster" or "Air Emergency" on National Geographic channel.
PurpleGirl
7/16/10, 7:46 AM  
Blogger Nan said...
I'm always astounded by how quickly the Republican talking points make it into popular circulation -- that airplane analogy was a theme of the right on last Sunday's talking heads shows, and it's now being parroted by the public.
7/16/10, 10:17 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
BP as a company is worth about $500 BILLION. They make a profit of about $25 BILLION yearly.
While I agree completely that they should be responsible for all cleanup costs, lets be honest -- they don't have the money to clean up the mess. I'm not sure the USGovt has the money to clean up the mess. I'm not sure the mess can be cleaned up. [Consider Alaska 21 years and counting after Exxon Valdez!]
If they were totally liquidated today and the money plced into a fund dedicated entirely to the cleanup, it would go broke. Reasonably quickly!
Their $20 billion fund is a joke!! Particularly at $4 billion a year! $20 billion is $20,000 for each of 1,000,000 people, or $40,000 for each of 500,000 people. You'd be hard pressed to tell me that 500,000 people along the Gulf coast haven't lost $40,000 -- or will lose $40,000 very quickly. And that doesn't even include the costs or actually paying people to clean, or buying booms, or renting scimmers and drill vessels!
Don't look at what people make or pay taxes on. Look at what it costs a fisherman to run his boat -- to pay the bank -- or to pay his mortgage. Although they'd be better off to just sell the thing for what they could get and settle for a lifetime annuity equal to their past years wages. They aren't ever going to fish commercially again in their lifetime down there. Better ultimately to just move to NorthDakota and work in a call center....
What's a pelican worth? What's 100,000 pelicans worth? What's a species of turtle worth? What's a tidal marsh worth? A tourist beach?
7/16/10, 5:57 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I had pretty much the same thought as PurpleGirl regarding the not very apt airline analogy. Also, when you find out that the drilling moratorium affects only 33 deep-water wells out of the 3400 currently producing wells in the gulf, it is hard to swallow the idea that we must not hit the "pause" button even long enough to find out exactly what went wrong on the Deep Horizon rig. Adding the salaries of the workers and support personnel of those 33 rigs to BP's tab is probably small beer, considering.
-tom-
7/16/10, 10:43 PM  
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