Whose fault is the oil spill, really? BP is the operator and the developer of the Macondo Prospect, but Transocean owns the Deepwater Horizon drill platform, which, in turn, Hyundai built in South Korea. The Minerals Management Service (MMS) approved the project itself and originally required the blowout preventer but backed out when drilling companies questioned the need for it due to cost.
Politically, this event tested the convictions of the conservatives, who all howled on about how regulations were destroying businesses and the government needs to stay out of the way, only to demand that the President take over the company after the event occurred to score political points. Then there are the libertarians who claim that the federal government needs to be small enough to drown in a bathtub, only to wonder where the government is when events like this happen. Then there are the liberals in congress who do not have the backbone to stand up for their beliefs to force these things. The oil lobby in Congress (which gives money to BOTH parties) probably had an influence on regulatory policy that contributed to this event.
Speaking of policymakers, what about the fundraisers who influenced voters to vote for these policy makers through misleading ads and misconstruing of the facts? What about the mainstream media(MSM) figures whose slogans include “Drill, Baby, Drill”, “Every Attack on Obama is Racism”, or some other useless platitude spewed because people are unable to think about these issues through their complexities?
Now we are getting somewhere, people. Make no mistake – I am not saying this out of anger or resentment. This is truly an environmental disaster, which will lead to an extinction of life and a way of life. The Gulf Coast fishing industry is dead. This is going to have an effect on the economy in ways most people are not even fathoming yet. Who knows what will happen if the oil keeps going? So, whom do we blame? Do we blame BP, Transocean, Hyundai, South Korea? Do we blame the lobbyists, the fundraisers, the MMS or the MSM? Do we blame Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, libertarians, liberals? The blame rests on you.
All of us are implicit in this – all of us have the blood of animals, the blood of the victims of the accident itself, and the blood of the people who have no livelihoods on our hands. This is our world. We all helped create this world – we wanted a world of cheap gas without having to worry from where it came. We wanted a world where we can live out in the middle of nowhere so we can drive a Hummer or SUV a half an hour just to go to the grocery store. We wanted a world with constant air conditioning. We didn’t want to pay anything to help establish alternative energy that could reach the general market. We didn’t want to have to go through years of a few cents in extra taxes so that in the future we could live on renewable energy.
This is our price.
Now, we have a choice to make. Do we accept this as the way things are? Do we shake our fists at the television screen for two weeks until the MSM decides to run that story on Lindsey Lohan again? Do we yell at whomever Glen Beck or Arianna Huffington tell us to yell at until we find something else to yell at next? Do we once again, when we are so close to waking up after witnessing yet another disaster of Frankensteinian proportion, fall asleep under the watchful care of our leaders and our media figures, lulling us to sleep with the platitudes of “don’t worry, we’ll fix all of this. Watch this program about the ocean. Watch the sparkles.”
Or do we actually decide that this is not the world we wanted? Granted, any changes we want to make right now can only be cosmetic – we are in a hole that we have dug for ourselves – a 5,000-foot hole. We have created our entire world within that hole. In order to get out of that hole, we have to change everything about ourselves. We have to change not only our driving practices, but why do we build things where we do. We have to change not only our energy consumption, but why do we consume how we consume. Do we really need to live a half-hour away from a market, knowing that we need to go there every week? Do we really need the air conditioning on all of the time? Why did we decide to live in the middle of deserts, knowing that we would use air-conditioning all of the time?
We have to change ourselves, we have to change what we think of community, what we think of housing, what we think of energy, but it cannot happen overnight. We have to think not of ourselves anymore – we are not worth it – and instead think of the children who are not even born yet. We had our chance to create a world where everything is beautiful, and we missed it. Look around you and see the world we have created together. Do we want to give this to our children, or our children’s children?
Maybe I’m an idealist, but I believe in the power of people. I believe that people want to make the world a better place. I believe that we have the ingenuity and the morality to do it. I also believe that we have the courage to do it.
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