Oil spill disaster: The guilty parties

[IndianaGreen]

Oil spill disaster: The guilty parties

The blowout of Deepwater Horizon involved more than one organisation. There were other companies, and a regulator. And behind them, ourselves and our insatiable cars.

By David Randall and David Usborne

Sunday, 13 June 2010

You would not think it possible for a major environmental disaster to take on the tone of a football match, but such is the case this weekend with the Gulf oil spill. The real issues – of what caused it, the impotence of technology to staunch it, and where the responsibility really lies – are being obscured by the waving of cheap national flags, the chanting of taunts and the ritual pointing of ignorant fingers.

This, it is sadly necessary to point out, is not some weekend grudge match. It is the pollution of hundreds of square miles of ocean, the soiling of beaches in state upon state, and the death of creatures uncountable. And, with each passing week, as efforts to stop the escaping oil and gas have failed until recent days to do much more than apply a hand towel to a rushing stream, estimates of the scale of the disaster have been increased. Nor, this weekend, is there any breakthrough to report on the efforts to stop this continuing disaster. For every barrel that gushes out of this hole 5,000ft below the surface, there is a bandwagon jumper ready to trade insult for insult, or put the dividend paid to pension funds before the real issues.

So, while BP has responsibility for this spill, is it the sole villain of this ugly piece? Or are there other companies, bodies and even governments that should carry some of the can? Time for as cool a look as can be achieved at the three levels of possible responsibility: the immediate accident, the planning and oversight, and the wider dilemma of our insatiable need for oil.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/oil-spill-disaster-the-guilty-parties-1999192.html

[Zoeisright]

1. No mention of repuke government deregulation over the last 30 years

in that article, or Cheney's secret energy meetings in 2003. FAIL.

[IndianaGreen]

2. It is the British point of view

Salazar has been head of Interior, and over MMS, for over 15 months.