Last July I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days on the Texas coast near Mustang Island. The weather was hot and humid and the Gulf of Mexico was beautifully inviting. Fish were jumping almost constantly out of the water and a variety of birds were happily taking advantage of the active fish! One could almost forget that tragedy had occurred 18 months prior in the form of a well explosion and subsequent spill of nearly 800,000 cubic meters of oil into the Gulf. As we strolled down the beach, however, there were telltale signs of oil blobs on the sand even after so much time and a great deal of supposed clean up.
The ecological impact of that oil disaster will be felt and experienced for years to come. The poisoned fish and wildlife, the leftover oil blobs, the change in the water, and countless other results will not go away with some clean-up efforts. Part of the problem was that when the Deepwater Horizon explosion first happened, BP had no idea how to stem the flow of oil from the well. It took an unreasonable amount of time to get the flow under control.
Some might say it is past history and let’s move on to more pressing issues in the news. While it is past history it is also present news because BP recently applied to the US government for permission to drill new oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently they want to sink four new wells about 300 km off the Louisiana coast.
Don’t you find that a bit cheeky? Have they resolved the issues that were so problematic in the last disaster? My concern about their application is the seeming lack of remorse and accountability. How can a company wreak such havoc on our precious earth and then want to do more of the same only a year and a half later?
If you were a car dealer and employed a 17 year old to wash the cars and then the 17 year old ended up stealing one of your cars and getting caught but ended up on probation, would you let the 17 year old come back to work?
If our government allows BP to begin drilling more for more wells in the Gulf, what does that tell us? Is our country so desperate for money that we will turn a blind eye to irresponsible companies? Are we so dependent on oil that we really don’t care about the environmental impact? We all know that money talks these days and that what appears to be a government is more of a puppet show with the wealthiest working the strings, but when did it become so blatant?
After watching others around the world protest their governments in the past year, I continue to wonder when we, here in the US, will finally decided enough is enough and take to the streets. What if the US government gives BP the green light? Would that be enough to send us running out into the streets? What will be the issue? Immigration? Education? Forced solitary confinement in prisons? Torture? Human Rights abuses? The state of Georgia executing a man who may very well have been innocent and at the very least was surrounded by reasonable doubt? What will it take?
We have been trying to teach our children that one is accountable for one’s actions and behavior. Our children and teenagers are living in the midst of a world where accountability is for some and not for others. They are watching more closely than we realize. What do we want to teach them?