Thoughts on BP from A.D.
June 4th, 2010 by Josh NeufeldI just want to go on record to say I’m as horrified and dismayed by the BP oil spill as anyone. I just haven’t had anything brilliant to say about it. Like everyone else, I’ve been a helpless witness to this unfolding disaster.
At first, I was led to believe that the current spill wasn’t anything like the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdex spill. Unlike that event, which dumped almost 11 million gallons of oil into the water extremely close to the shore, the BP leak was "only" releasing 40,000 gallons a day from over 40 miles from shore. The implication was that there would be much more dispersal of the lesser volumes of oil into much larger quantities of ocean water.
But now it’s coming out that initial reports of how much oil was being released into the war were vastly under-estimated. Now we’re seeing the oil coming ashore, and those heartbreaking, all-too-familiar images of oil-saturated birds and water-life are being broadcast to our television screens. Now the tragic truth is becoming clearer.
The ironies for the Gulf Coast are obvious. Just as the region (in some ways) is emerging from the disaster of Hurricane Katrina (and Rita), now this. There are already reports of tourists canceling trips to the region—and to New Orleans in particular—for fear of unsightly beaches and contaminated seafood.
There’s a larger question of how a disaster like this is a direct result of our country’s—our world’s—insatiable need for oil. That’s something we all need to think about it. In the meantime, below is a list of organizations which are working to alleviate the effects of the oil spill. Some have even changed or adapted their focus from post-Katrina relief to this new ongoing disaster. Please consider donating something to their efforts while we continue to hope that a solution to the leak is found. (I’ll be adding these links to the A.D. resource page shortly.)
It is hard to put into words how shocked I am that it took BP so long to make any substantial profess in stopping the leak. It makes you question what kind of people they have running the company. It is really hard to believe how a major cooperation like BP could be so incompetent. They have been doing this for over a 100 years! This just shows we give them too much credit. This is sad, so very sad.
The saddest part of the whole situation is that many people have lost their livelihood. BP will go on, this won’t slow them down that much. But what about the small local businesses? They won’t see much of the money BP has to pay.