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Saturday mornings at the gym I usually see a guy who I've become pretty good friends with, who told me he worked for BP. This morning the conversation went something like this:
"Hey Chris, don't you work for BP?"
"Yeaaaahhh..."
"What's the deal? Are they going to be able to cap this thing?" For some reason I thought BP would be mounting a massive PR effort and keeping their employees in the loop, but instead it seemed like the company has given up - Chris was more interested in backpedaling and passing the buck.
"Well, it's not like they didn't try to stop the leak...BP didn't even own this rig, it was leased from another company...BP is taking the blame anyway, and will be spending billions to clean it up...it's just one of those natural disasters."
After picking my jaw up off the carpeted floor I didn't really want to hear more, so I changed the subject.
If there's a silver lining to this tragedy, it's that maybe John and Jane Doe will now appreciate the fact that oil is not some harmless liquid that goes from the ground to the refinery to the gas station to the car, then makes the car go, then vanishes. It's a noxious, toxic carcinogen that is already killing people, plants, and animals 24/7/365. And every once in a while, instead of a slow, agonizing strangle, it draws blood - a leak like this one will destroy entire ecosystems and wipe out businesses along the Gulf coast.
Fossil fuels are (literally) a dead end.
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