Normally, this is where I – and most writers – would put a three-paragraph introduction meant to soften you, the reader, for the direct thesis statement that would follow. But today is different. I don’t feel like wasting your time, so I’ll get right to it.
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not BP’s fault. It is your fault.
Okay, it’s not entirely your fault. It is also my fault, and the fault of every American – nay, Earthling – who drives a car, uses products made of rubber, or eats food that is shipped, processed, or harvested using a machine powered by gasoline.
We are to blame. Not American President Barack Obama, not BP chief executive Tony Hayward, not Republican Senator Joe Barton.
Us. You and I. Your mom. Your brother. Your ex-girlfriend, the one who used to tell you looked best in the navy blue boxer briefs.
The earth’s ejaculation of oil into the water south of the U.S. is a dirty, messy, environmental catastrophe. But to call it a “tragedy”, to call it “unexpected”, or to call it “reprehensible” is to participate in something that is worse than the catastrophe itself. It is to dodge responsibility for our role in the sequence of events that led directly to it.
We need the gasoline provided by oil rigs like the Deepwater Horizon, and we want to pay as little for that gasoline as possible. The result: companies dig wells and float offshore mini-cities in order to provide consumers with the good they desire. They don’t do it out of a sense of duty, mind you. They do it because it is profitable. In the case of the oil industry, wildly so.
Many people, when faced with the news that there was a massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, responded as if an alien race had come to our planet and dumped a previously unknown, toxic substance into our waters.
Come on. We know that companies are pulling oil out from under the ocean – hell, they’re pulling oil out from wherever they can. We also know – assuming that “we” have anything above a second-grade education – that doing so probably carries with it a few risks. I don’t think one has to have an engineering degree to realize that pumping oil out of the ocean floor probably isn’t a foolproof plan, especially when that ocean floor is a mile below the lowest point the best snorkeler among us has ever reached.
But, by the outrage displayed, the news that a process that is arguably more complicated than the moon landing (my estimate) went wrong comes as a surprise to some, if not most people.
But, but, but…BP had a terrible safety record; they were responsible for 97% of willful safety violations among oil refineries between 2007 and 2010! (Source: The Economist.)
Great. So why weren’t you demanding justice then? I’ll tell you – because you had decided that it wasn’t worth your time.
But, but, but…nobody told me!
Really, it’s a surprise that an oil company cuts corners? Or to take it a step further, that any sort of company cuts corners?
Blaming an individual company for trying to make money, in all the ways that companies try to make money – by increasing prices, by cutting costs, by firing workers – is like blaming an individual mosquito for spreading malaria. The little bug isn’t willfully trying to harm humans. He’s just going for a snack, and he happens to be carrying a group of parasites that may or may not kill the snackee and his family.
That doesn’t mean that either entity – the mosquito or BP – should be encouraged in its indirect malevolence. It does mean that humans being should understand reality before they point figurative fingers and start real Facebook pages dedicated to boycotting BP.
This is the reality:
Most of us would complain if we saw even the slightest hike in gas or food prices due to an increase in cost to BP or ExxonMobil or Shell because of more money spent on safety procedures.
Most of us would bemoan any significant increase in the tax on gasoline, even if the proceeds went directly to the creation of alternative forms of energy.
None of us will call our Senators, stage protests, or campaign for the opposition when a watered-down environmental bill is passed in the US Congress in a few weeks or months.
Instead, what “we” will do is talk about whether the head of BP should have gone to a yacht race. We’ll be heartbroken for bayou fishermen while we eat the food their Peruvian replacements ship to Red Lobster. We’ll pretend to care about the fates of gulls and oysters and pretty little turtles – because they’re on our televisions – while we continue to allow farmers to pump pesticides into our groundwater, destroying the purity of that water for generations.
This willful ignorance, more than anything else, is the source of my frustration with the public’s reaction to the BP oil spill. I can handle partisan finger-pointing; they’re politicians, after all. I can deal with numb businessmen; they can’t help being the mosquitoes they are. What I can’t handle is an American population that is so easily distracted that it can’t see the relationship between its own behavior and the consequences of that behavior.
People often respond with outrage when they have no control over the outcome of a particular chain of events. That outrage is intensified when some part of them knows that they could have done something to prevent the circumstances that resulted. By railing even more vehemently against the issue in question, they overcompensate, perhaps thinking, subconsciously, that they can prove how much they care or how little they are to blame by reacting the most fiercely.
For example, a week ago, I took a break from writing a brilliant piece on the Deftones and noticed a missed call and accompanying message from a strange Kansas City phone number. Not wanting to be bothered by some inanity, I chose to put off dealing with the message for a few hours. When I decided to stand and face the voicemail, I discovered that the message was from the office of an orthopedist I’d been trying desperately to see, only to have been told that the man’s next available appointment was in September.
His nurse was calling to tell me that he’d had a cancellation for the next morning and that he could see me then, as long as I called back soon. I hurriedly dialed the number provided. The phone rang, and rang, and rang. I hung up and tried again, to the same avail. Frustrated by my own delinquency, my first thought was, How can they not have an answering machine?, when it should have been, Why didn’t I listen to the message when it came in?
My instinct was to blame anyone but myself. The doctor, or the nurse, or the man who set up their telephones must have been at fault. It couldn’t have been me.
My mini-story has a happy ending. (If an ending in which a man tells me my ankle is just as fouled as originally thought can be considered happy.) I woke up early the next day, called the doctor’s office, and got in to see him.
The BP disaster is not likely to have a similarly pleasant end. Some cute sea birds have died and are going to die, some fishcatchers aren’t going to have any fish to catch, and a bunch of oil is going to wash up on the coastline of the American South.
And, sure, it would have been nice if none of that would have happened. But it did happen, and it’s because of us.
Every time you see a tar ball on the news, every time you see a baby bird coated in oil, remember this: You and I did it. Not Obama. Not Hayward. Not Barton
We killed that baby bird, with our inability to understand the link between our behavior – our driving, our eating, and our love of luxuries – and the processes needed to support that behavior.
So, when you see a news report about whichever Englishman has been picked to be the face of BP, or when you’re asked to boycott BP gasoline, don’t take the easy path. Don’t join in with the masses, who would turn on their own mothers if it meant they didn’t have to think. Stand up and take responsibility.
Stand up and say, “I did this. Now what can I do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”
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Paul,always enjoy your writing and this was very thought provoking. I agree with you and hope more people will understand what you are trying to say. Most likely though,people will continue to blame OTHER people when we are indeed the ones responsible. Thanks again
I was going to write something similar to this about regulation for things that have never been done before. We seem to think that BP should regulate themselves since they are really the only ones who know how to do what they are doing. But of course they aren’t going to do that. Much like the moon landing, it’s difficult to tell people how to do something no one’s ever done before. There are going to be some setbacks (oil spills / astronauts being sucked into space) before we all figure it out and can regulate it properly.
The governor of Mississippi on on NPR today talking about the oil spill. He’s gone on television and talked about how the beaches in Mississippi are clean and the water is clear, and for this he’s being accused of being a BP sympathizer and trying to minimize how bad the spill was.
His response is that he’s simply telling the truth, and you can go to the beaches and see that they are clean. Then, he attacked the news media (mostly television) for acting as though the beaches are drenched in oil, and the misinformation is sinking the gulf coast tourism industry.
I don’t know much about the man, but based on this interview, he seems like he’s both intelligent and a straight shooter.
I just wanted to take a minute for no other purpose than to agree. Good piece Paul.
This is great, Paul. The part about us complaining should gas prices increase due to safety procedures or to help develop alternate energy sources is spot on. And by boycotting BP, we are simply ignoring one gasoline provider and pulling into the 7-Eleven next door. That being said, it is very, very hard not to hate the human James Bond villain that is Tony Hayward. I just wish everyone would have listened to me the day the oil spill started: “Somebody call Kevin Costner!”
I get it; however, I bet the corporations blame the consumer as well with your same line of reasoning… there needs to be a sense of responsibility at all levels…
Here’s an idea…how about more government regulation? We don’t have enough of that yet. Anyone care about the people that lost their lives on the rig or just the animals and beaches. I agree to a point, but BP missed the boat on a lot of their safety measures.
Chrissy: Unfortunately the response to many crises is “more” regulation, as though the number of laws on the books is what matters. What we need is smarter regulation and better enforcement. Odds are, if the relevant safety standards had been met in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened. We probably have the right laws on the books, we just don’t enforce them.
BL1Y:
“The governor of Mississippi on on NPR today talking about the oil spill. He’s gone on television and talked about how the beaches in Mississippi are clean and the water is clear, and for this he’s being accused of being a BP sympathizer and trying to minimize how bad the spill was . . . you can go to the beaches and see that they are clean.”
Seriously? The beaches are not clean. I think you might be confusing his stance three weeks ago with what he said on NPR.
“With BP Oil Spill Reaching Mississippi Shore, Gov. Haley Barbour Pleads for Supplies
Just weeks ago, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour claimed that oil was not a big threat to the people of the Gulf Coast. Now, with oil hitting his state’s beaches for the first time since the start of the BP spill , the Republican governor says his state isn’t prepared for the spill and needs more help.
***
Earlier in June, Barbour said, “Once [oil] gets to this stage, it’s not poisonous,” though he said it probably wasn’t a good idea to brush one’s teeth with it.
With black gobs of oil now sullying Mississippi’s white beaches, the governor is taking a more serious tone, asking for more resources to combat the problem he had dismissed.
* * *
“We have to be honest with the public. Right now we don’t have enough skimming capacity if everything that’s off our shores continues going north,” Barbour said.
On day 70 of the spill, local officials say they’re sorely lacking in supplies to fight the oil. The mayor of Ocean Springs, Miss. told ABC News they’re not seeing the response they need from state and federal officials to an urgent problem.
When told that significant amounts of oil were hitting shore, authorities “didn’t react at all,” said Mayor Connie Morgan. “They said there’s more oil than boats.”
* * *
“It’s a lot worse than I thought it would be,” said Mike Brown, who took his three young daughters to a Mississippi beach today, only to find it closed. “The place where we go to get away from it all, can’t go there anymore.”
After a beach trip yesterday, Brown’s daughter Kendall was smothered in oil they described as “goopy.” I assume ‘goopy’ is not some Southern synonym for ‘clean’.
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-mississippi-coast-polluted-gov-haley/story?id=11037777
Do you seriously hold out that man as a model of competent leadership?
Smanitoba: He may have been defending his earlier position before the oil reached the beaches, or he may have been talking about specific tourist heavy beaches. I can’t recall at the moment.
Geez…Paul is both pro-oil spills, pro-killing Jews in Israel and pro-poor blacks being killed. I’m betting he’s also pro-priests raping young boys and pro-kicking puppies in the face. What kind of horrible person is pro-kicking puppies?!? How dare he!!!
Oh, wait, he didn’t actually say that? Damn, I guess I should have actually read his words instead of only reading the opinions of others on what he wrote….but that’s too hard so I’m just going to grab my torch and pitch fork, who’s with me?!? Save the puppies!
I understand what you are saying here, Paul. But, as I consider myself a ‘normal’ person, I don’t feel as if I have nearly the influence necessary to impart a change in policy to anything connected with this. Nothing I say to my Senator would make them enforce current regulations for oil companies or develop smarter ones. I would also love to buy an all-electric or hybrid vehicle, but currently don’t have any extra money sitting around and certainly won’t ever if I don’t drive to work every day. I could go on and on. Some would say
I already have.
Despite that, I am willing to shoulder some of the proverbial burden. But really: How do we (normal people) answer your closing question?
Wow, great article! It’s reading comments like Scott’s^^^ that make me lose faith in the American people. And it’s sadder that he’s not alone. I mean his mentality represents the mentality of any average American. And if that’s the mentality we maintain, our country is doomed unless the people begin to recognize and appreciate the responsibilities of being an American citizen. I hope more articles like this one are read and understood by the American public. Great article. Got me all fired up inside.
Great article Paul.
I may only be one person, but the next time I’m deciding between the grapes shipped from Chile, the bananas from Ecuador, or the apples from the grower down the road, I’m not going to pretend I “need” or “deserve” grapes or bananas and will gladly cope with only having apples. And the next time I’m feeling too lazy to ride my bike instead of drive my car to run an errand, I’ll quietly and without preaching rejoice in being part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Even if I’m only one insignificant person. Better to be a tiny part of the solution than maintain the status quo.
It’s over a year since this article, and 5 years since I owned a car, and most people I know are sad for me that I don’t drive, while acting 10x sadder about the environment. Just reporting back as someone walking the walk (and taking the train/bus/bike)– expect to do a lot of explaining, over and over and over and over to people who completely understand until it means a real life change.