Opinions Expressed in "Rants," while informed by Catholic doctrine, are merely the opinions of the author.
Stupid Oil Slick! Let's Blame Someone!!
Well, turn on the news. Can't get away from it. The Gulf of Mexico is filling up with petrolium. It happened because a multinational conglomerate called British Petrolium (bp) was drilling down there at the bottom of the ocean for oil, and they didn't plug the hole properly, and now its leaking all over the place.
GRRR!! This really ticks me off!! Doesn't it you!! I can't BELIEVE what an environmental catastrophe this big company has made, all in the pursuit of that all encompassing force: greed. Another sign that humans are quite literally ruining the world, for ourselves, and for every other living thing here.
So, let's blame someone.
Well the first target that I'd like to go after is bp themselves. The fact that the first people who were on the scene when the accident happened were LAWYERS doesn't help much. Nor does the fact that bp has spent more money on advertizing so that they can keep their share holders than they have on actually fixing the leak. Nor does the fact that they have been showing low definition film footage of the leak itself to scientists that doesn't make it look as bad. Nor the fact that three weeks later IT ISN'T FIXED YET!! So we could blame bp. Not that they delibrately caused the leak, but they screwed up - this accident was (I think) preventable, and they didn't prevent it.
Some are saying that we shouldn't blame them - they were just doing their jobs, and the government should have been regulating them more closely. Yea, that's true too - the U.S. government does have regulatory agencies in place that are supposed to oversee these kinds of things, and they didn't - at least it doesn't appear that they did. So it might be their fault too.
And while we're at it, we could blame ALL oil companies for being greedy, conniving weiners - we could blame all international conglomerates for being soulless cheats, we could blame all government regulatory agencies for being either incompetent or in someone's pocket, we could blame Barack Obama for - some reason (although he actually is taking responsibility himself - I don't get it - he has enough dumb things to take responsibility for without taking on this). We could blame all these people. But I think we'd be forgetting someone.
ME!! I drive a six cylender Jeep Wrangler when I could be driving a Toyota Yaris. Or less.
We have to remember, the real BLAME here goes to a society that is dependant, ADDICTED, to oil. There are cheaper and safer alternative sources of energy, like natural gas for example, that wouldn't have these devastating potential consequences.
But they aren't as cheap - that's the problem.
The fact is, if we are going to accept a society that depends on petroleum to drive our cars three blocks to the store, then we'd better be ready to accept car accidents, air pollution and smog, stress and high blood pressure, automotive recalls, job out-sourcing, drunk driving, global warming, and yes, oil slicks.
Somethings gotta change folks. Maybe disasters like this will be what it takes.