Thank you to the Worn Out Accountant for inspiration for today's entry. The oil spill has been on my mind a lot, and I've read quite a bit about it. Here's my take.
I'm sure there will be all sorts of new rules and regulations enacted to clamp down on drilling, if drilling in the gulf is ever allowed again. This is the sort of knee-jerk reaction we Americans tend to take. Obama has stopped not only all deep water drilling, but all gulf oil drilling. I'm sure all the oil industry employees appreciate that, and it really is a grand idea what with unemployment so low and all...(!) It is a close-the-barn-door-after-the-cow-gets-out reaction. But I digress.
The deep water rig itself did not cause this spill. It was, as most of these things go, human error. To be more accurate, it was a series of human errors that lead up to this event. I'm not going to try to convince any of you that that is the correct summation, you should read all about it yourself and decide. But that's my take. So blaming drilling itself is a waste of time. Drilling for oil, last I checked, is a dangerous exercise. Drilling for oil a mile deep in the ocean is extremely difficult, and dangerous. Companies need to study this event, learn from it, and make sure they follow proper procedures to make sure it doesn't happen again.
So let's all stop demonizing BP. Did their folks screw up? Yes. Is there a disaster in the gulf? Yes. People died, and that is tragic. Marine life is in jeopardy, and that is a shame. But if we are going to demonize companies that cause bad events, BP needs to take a number. Are we going to demonize all the fast-food companies that fill our fellow Americans with food that makes us all fat, diabetic, rife with high blood pressure, etc? Didn't think so. But that is a post for another day.
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