"Well, you know, it's, um, very difficult to repair something 5,000 feet below the surface."

[Ned Bro]

Yeah? Well maybe you SHOULDN'T BE FUCKING AROUND 5,000 feet below the surface looking for something we should be getting ourselves weaned off of in the first place!!!

I almost never swear, but "BP" is starting to sound like "Bhopal" in my head!

[Shadow Creature]

1. but we are not weaned

and we won't be weaned for decades most likely. We do need oil sadly and this administration has even invested $10 billion in Brazilian ocean drilling.

You can't cut off the oil cold turkey, there is simply no source of cheap, abundant energy to replace it with at the moment. Natural gas is close to being that but it'd take years and a lot of investment to get started.

[Ned Bro]

6. Of course not!

I said "weaning," which we should've started decades ago! But the bottom line is that we have to start sometime!

[kath]

10. Jimmy Carter tried to start weaning us off it, but ol' Ronnie Rayguns sure put a stop to

that shit, oh yessirree Bob.

[kestrel91316]

2. I think the Pottery Barn rule must apply here: you break it, you bought it, but

in this case "you fix it" is what really applies.

BP is obligated to fix the Gulf. In its entirety. Down to the last molecule and microbe in its ecosystems. And if that bankrupts the poor dears, oh well........too bad, so sad.

[flamingdem]

3. Regardless they get all excited saying that "this has never been tried!" as if they want an award nt

[jp11]

5. LMRP sounds like they got some NASA guys in on it to make it sound complicated and not another

type of 'top hat' that failed 2x already.

[stray cat]

4. Too late now - making time go backwards is even more difficult

[scentopine]

7. Watch this - I remember this and it was only 200 ft down (a fact I had forgotten about)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo

We've learned nothing from our mistakes. At the time they said this was a once in a lifetime disasters. They way we continue to pollute this planet, this will be true sooner than they realize.

[Ned Bro]

13. What amazes me are the people who

think we can just go on and on and on, screwing the environment, and it's not gonna turn around and do an ecological Gramm-Rudman on us eventually! I'd call it a rude awakening, except for the fact that, when it occurs, it might just put us to sleep. Forever.

[datasuspect]

8. i think they want to create a deadzone

that way they can get the mineral rights to tons of land in an oil rich area.

[inna]

9. then don't start drilling there, you idiots!!!!

:banghead:

[Jamastiene]

11. Well said

and welcome to DU. :hi:

[Ned Bro]

14. Thanks!

I hope I can stay! :fistbump:

[MadMaddie]

12. BP hasn't killed any humans yet but the similarity of the companies

inaction to the disaster is.

Welcome to DU!:hi:

[Jamastiene]

15. Yes, it has.

Remember, 11 died when this whole disaster started and it started because of BP's negligence.

[Ned Bro]

17. Good point, Jamastiene

Lord forgive me, I'd forgotten about those men!

[MadMaddie]

21. I agree and I didn't mean to give the impression that those 11 lives

lost were insignificant.

Below are some of the impacts of the bombing of Hirioshima

<snip>
http://nuclearwarfaretribunal.org/nwtp_c303.html
total of 140,000 people had died in Hiroshima by the end of 1945.

"The first cause of death of these victims was atomic burns, called flash burns, plus external wounds caused by blast. The epidermis of A-bomb victims a short distance from the hypocentre was carbonized, and their internal organs vaporized instantly. Those who suffered serious burns within 1.0km where there was no shelter from radiation died within one week at a ratio of 90-100 per cent. Deaths from acute symptoms from the A-bombing occurred till around the end of 1945. But 90 per cent of the victims who suffered acute symptoms were dead within two weeks, and almost all the others died 8 weeks after the bombing.
<snip>

I think that a true comparison of health risks is to compare perhaps the Exxon Valdez spill and the human health effects.

I wasn't able to find too much statistical information

http://www.ecosalon.com/oil-spills-and-human-health-lessons-from-history/
<snip>
599 local residents were surveyed one year after the spill. They found that exposed individuals were 3.6 more likely to have anxiety disorder, 2.9 times more likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder, and 2.1 times more likely to be depressed.
<snip>

[csziggy]

16. BP has the worst safety record in the industry

Check out the Texas City explosion: http://www.texascityexplosion.com/

BP Oil Spill Highlights Poor Safety Record, the Worst of Any Oil Company in America

"BP is a London-based oil company with one of the worst safety records of any oil company operating in America," says Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen. "In just the last few years, BP has paid $485 million in fines and settlements to the US government for environmental crimes, willful neglect of worker safety rules, and penalties for manipulating energy markets." We speak with Slocum and with an attorney representing several workers who survived the blast that sank BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig. He’s also representing the wife of one of the 11 workers now presumed dead who is filing a lawsuit accusing BP of negligence.

TYSON SLOCUM: Sure. They have been fined over $550 million over the last several years for various infractions of federal laws spanning workplace safety, environmental protection, and even anti market manipulation walls. One of the worst issues with BP was a refinery explosion in Texas City, Texas in March of 2005 that resulted in BP pleading guilty to a criminal felony violation of the Clean Air Act and paying over $150 million in fines for the explosion that resulted in the deaths of fifteen workers, and serious injury to 170 other workers. The important issue here as we’ve seen in multiple other instances with BP, Amy, is that the immediate investigation found hundreds of workplace violations. The company was fined, it was placed on probation where BP was expected to address the hundreds of systemic workplace safety violations that were found. When the Obama administration reviewed whether or not BP had been in compliance with this probationary period, last year, the Obama administration’s Department of Labor found that BP failed to comply with the terms of its probation and fined the company and additional $87 million.

One of the things that we’ve seen in all of these fines, whether it’s for the oil spill a couple of years ago at Prudhoe Bay where the Department of Justice found that BP willfully under-invested in routine maintenance that allowed the pipes to corrode that resulted in 200,000 gallons of crude oil released directly into the tundra. Whether it was the Commodity Futures Trading Commission fining the company $300 million for single-handedly manipulating the entire U.S. propane market. Whether it’s the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission fining BP $21 million for its role in price gouging California electricity consumers during the California electricity crisis. Whether it’s other violations of the Clean Air Act at its Indiana refinery or workplace violations at its Toledo, Ohio refinery. The fact is, that this company when it’s found to have violated the law, the times that it’s been put on probation, it has not even adhered to the terms of that probation in multiple instances. And that raises the question of when we have habitual repeat corporate lawbreakers, we need to do more than just issue financial penalties against them. When a company like BP is earning $6 billion or more in profits every three months, issuing a fine of $20 million here, $50 million here, finding them guilty of crimes as the Department of Justice has done on two occasions in just a last couple of years, that is all just the cost of doing business for the accountants at BP. We’ve got to think about permanent sanctions against repeat criminal offenders like BP. We’ve got to start talking about denying them access to lucrative leases that the government sells to these companies. We have got to think about revoking a corporate charters of companies that habitually demonstrate to the American people that they don’t have respect for U.S. laws, U.S. worker safety, or U.S. environmental laws.
More: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/5/group_bp_has_one_of_the

They have reached the point that they should not be allowed to operate since it is clear they cannot do so in a fashion that is safe for their workers and the world.

[sabrina 1]

19. They killed eleven men on this rig and

15 workers died in the Texas explosion five years ago, 70 were injured, some pretty badly.

I don't have a record of all the people who have died or been permanently injured as a result of their abysmal safety record, but I do know they were accused of human abuses also in Colombia for using para-military troops there to shoot at the people.

Their human rights record is well known and the reason for their recent 'green ads' and their change of name from British Petroleum to BP.

[Ned Bro]

20. What a waste of human life!

I know that people have died building bridges, like the famous one in Brooklyn, but at least we need bridges. Oil, on the other hand, is an addiction we could be easing ourselves away from, if our "leaders" had the will, or weren't already wholly-owned subsidiaries of companies like BP.

And the resource is both toxic AND non-renewable! It would be a lot easier to make peace with the deaths of people installing solar arrays or building wind turbines, though it would be equally sad. As is, it's like we're killing ourselves in drug deals gone bad, searching for that next fix!

[uponit7771]

18. K&R