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| The BP Oil Disaster Reveals the Failure of a System |
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by Michael Perovic - BASICS Issue #20 (July/Aug 2010) The April 20, 2010 explosion and failure of the blowout preventer on the British Petroleum (BP) owned oil-rig in the Gulf of Mexico has led to what is now clearly the largest oil spill disaster in United States history. As of the writing of this article, the geyser that was unleashed on the sea floor continues to spew its toxic crude oil into the surrounding ocean at an unknown rate that certainly runs at least into several tens of thousands of gallons daily. The spill is not just the oil slick along the top of the water - there are particles of oil floating in various layers beneath the water’s surface in giant plumes that stretch for miles in all directions, draining the ocean of its oxygen levels and threatening to create “dead zones” – the complete collapse of the marine ecosystem in areas that stretch from the sea floor to the surface. The livelihoods and safety of people impacted and at health risk expands daily, stretching beyond the United States into Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.  BP is mounting a huge cynical propaganda effort to try to convince the public that it will take responsibility for the clean up, that it will assume all costs and that it will cooperate with providing compensation to those affected. BP has even purchased search terms from the popular search engine Google, so that links to their own website boasting about their clean-ups efforts appear at the top of searches conducted by browsing members of the public. All this while in practice BP has over the course of events denied access to independent scientific review at the site of the disaster, has consistently engaged in lies, denies publicly the extent of the disaster and has even refused to pay for safety masks for the workers hired to spray (toxic) dispersants on the oil that has collected on the ocean surface. A number of workers have reported health side effects from the combined oil and dispersant fumes.If the self-serving behaviour of those who control BP wasn’t enough to leave one sceptical of BP’s claims, a closer look at the reality of the bigger system within which BP was created and operates shows how hollow their assuring words are. BP is a corporation, and as such its sole legal mandate is the maximization of profit for its shareholders through its activities – it is legally obligated to pursue this end and none other. Corporations are today the main way that large enterprises and industries are legally structured under capitalism as profit seeking centres of activity. The drive for profit leads to all sorts of shortsighted actions, resistance to safer regulations and planning that would cost more. Even where such regulation exists, in the drive to do things cheaper and therefore more profitably in the short term, even regulations can be ignored in daily practice. Workers who attempt to question or raise concerns will be singled out and fired. The profit motive leads corporations to attempt to externalize costs on the environment and people. It also leads to a legal responsibility in this instance for BP executives to do everything to limit their liability in this disaster of their own making. Are we really to believe that a Mexican fisherman who develops cancer as a result of this spill 15 years from now will be compensated? How do you even compensate someone for such damage as their own death? Who and how do you compensate for the destruction of an ecosystem? BP has already assured its shareholders (including JP Morgan which owns 30% of US BP) that it will not be on the hook for more than 3-6 billion UD$ as a result of this. Why is BP still entitled to its assets? How can BP treat such an ecological disaster and its management as if it were a private affair? We are told by those that profit that the profit motive is the best way to organize the various branches of production in our society. Yet here we see an ecological catastrophe brought on by a corporation that makes billions of dollars each year, but that wouldn’t even install a $500,000 acoustic switch safety feature (mandatory in Norway) because it was not required to do so by law. The ineffectual response of the US Government has simply revealed the extent to which it is dominated by and complicit in the interests of wealthy corporations over even the most basic interests of its own people and the environment. |
| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 16 June 2010 11:06 ) |