With all the trouble in the Gulf of Mexico with BP oil and their runaway oil demolition derby, am I the only one who thinks there should be a new classification of crime wherein big business is held accountable for any harm they do to our shared environment? It should be tantamount to crimes against humanity (& Nature) or war crimes, since we’ve waged a war with Nature through our ignorance for almost as long as man has built cities. Regardless of where the slick is being washed ashore, BP’s gusher is not just a monetary loss, but an environmental loss as well. This impacts the ocean’s long term ability to sustain the ecosystem, as well as its ability to sustain us.
I know there are people who think of the ocean as one big septic tank. They dump their garbage and other substances into the water to wash away their irresponsible and lazy attitude, but if the ocean was still capable of sweeping up after us, there wouldn’t be problems with garbage lurking in our waterways, nor would there be spreading dead spots from factory and agricultural runoff.
It’s quite obvious that there is a problem to anyone willing to look, but few people want to see something like this. I’m as guilty as the next person in so far as not wanting to look. It’s ugly and shameful. I have to wonder… do letter campaigns and petitions even do anything more than make people who participate feel good about themselves? At least some countries are willing to do something about some of the issues.
I don’t think any country should have to be responsible for BP’s misdeeds, however I think that the US should seize all of their assets and sell them off, the proceeds to go to cleaning up the mess they’ve made in the gulf. At this point, I don’t think that BP should be allowed to continue as a company. It’s time for liquidation (which is an unintentional, yet ironic, pun). I think they showed just how little regard they have for the environment when they beefed up their attempts to clean up after themselves only for the day of the president’s visit.
If anything, this ecological disaster in the Gulf should be a wake up call, not just to America, but to the entire world. Whether it’s oil, industrial or medical waste, factory or agricultural run off, or exploitation of wildlife, it is time for humanity to realize we are not masters of Nature, we’re just one aspect of it. We need to start treating not just our environment with respect, but everything that lives in it as well. We are all connected, no matter what we think of our high and mighty selves, and we cannot live with out the world we live upon. We do have environmentally friendly energy resources. We have the technology to overcome our dependency on oil-energy and oil based products. The only thing holding us back is greed.
Grow Up Humanity
Check this out!
The Venus Project
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Jacque Fresco’s Designing the Future E-book
Comments (21)
My thoughts exactly. Bravo for a wonderfully written post. The world needs to wake the f*** up!
So true! I’m talking to a lot of friends lately about sustainability. The world, especially our ‘civilized’ ‘first world’ nation, is addicted to oil. We’re addicted to consumption. We sell our souls and the lives and work of other people to get it. Holding people accountable for their actions is one great way to effect change. The first step, which you do every day by being you, is to educate people and help people see that they don’t have to be slaves to the system. I’m recommending you today.
If BP is able to pay for the cost of the cleanup, the government has no right to seize their assets. If they want to pass a law that makes cause this kind of natural disaster a crime I would be all for it but you cannot put BP on trial ex post facto.
This is my conspiracy theory self coming out but I personally beleive the oil rig was blow up on purpose.
@tatertot1972 - @BoureeMusique - Thanks
@wearywalden - The problem is that they keep insisting they’ll take care of it, but all their efforts seem to amount to half-assery and lip service. I think if a country and/or army can be tried for war crimes after the fact, then a company can/should be tried for environmental depravity in exactly the same way. This issue isn’t about money any more, but the damage the oil spill is continuing to cause in the Gulf. It also concerns the message it sends to people that a big business can get away with “murder” while an individual would have been arrested by now – at the very least for malicious destruction of property and vandalism. If nothing else, what is happening in the Gulf is a wake up call telling us we need to better monitory and regulate big businesses, especially those which can potentially impact the environment negatively.
@NightlyDreams - Oh I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s just a matter of who and why. Maybe the price of gas was getting too cheap and they decided to artificially bump up the price through intentional destruction. Big businesses aren’t human. They have no souls and no guilt.
@harmony0stars - so who would you imprison for the “crimes”?
@wearywalden - The board of trustees or whoever owns BP -whoever benefits the most from the business and/or makes the financial decisions. There’s been cost-cutting going on from the get-go, even before the disaster. They’re still cutting corners as they supposedly try to correct the problem. At the very least, the government should stop subsidizing oil and other unhealthy industries and start giving clean energy a leg up. At least we’ll never run out of sun, wind, geothermic, or hydroelectric energy.
BP’s assets should be seized and some execs go to prison, at least. Since we’re going to be dependent on oil and other hydrocarbons for at least 50 years, maybe we should think about nationalizing the oil companies. IDK. Congress could in theory change the legal status of corporations but they wont–they cant even pass decent health care reform. And with the Supreme Court poisoned by four Statist justices it’d be struck down anyway.
Another aspect of pollution and climate change most people dont even think about is simply overpopulation. More people need more energy, which means an entropy increase locally. In 1970 there was actually a low-key effort at “zero population growth,” where births=deaths but nobody took it seriously and now that’s getting late no politician will touch it. If we had less people we might be able to get by until we can transition to fuel cell technology or whatever other alternatives are viable. Since the money for R&D for the renewables has never been done, we simply do not know.
@dasfenster - I totally agree with you. I think anything the public depends upon as a matter of course should be nationalized… energy, phone, public transportation, the police, interstate highways, (health care)… If everyone in the whole country depends on something then it should be a public service, not private. I wouldn’t mind paying higher taxes if my taxes took care of things I need to live (instead of things the government thinks are worthy of expenditure). I seriously think that anytime the government wants to distribute our tax money, we should be given the option of determining what percentage of our money goes where, either at income tax time or in November. It would even out with the Right putting money into the military and subsidies for big business and the Left putting money into education, healthcare, environmental protection, and clean energy.
Every time we attempt to nationalize anything though, the Rightwingers start blathering on about socialism and communism. (I happen to be a socialist so
) I’m also a proponent of ZPG. I don’t intend to have any children of my own. I have one nephew; that’s enough, and he’s probably the only child my family’s likely to have. Of course, when you start to talk about ZPG, the Rightwingers jump on the migration issue, saying if “we” don’t bread, the immigrants will. /rolls eyes/ My problem with that is… we’re all human. Who cares?
Like I said to wearywalden above, if the government would just stop subsidizing oil and start subsidizing renewable energy instead, we could at least start to transition away from oil, but they as much as endorse it by the way they treat it.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
BP’s bottom line is profit and they are going to look out for profit just like Exxon did in abandoning the environment and people in Alaska once the leak was capped. Exxon made record profits in the last few years while the shores in Alaska still ooze crude and the herring industry was destroyed. The same thing is happening on land with the coal industry. The practice of mountain top blasting is absolutely destroying the Appalachian eco-system as we speak. From satellite images, the mountain chain looks like sores on the Earth’s surface. Land and sea, corporations will destroy in the name of the demand, greed and profit.
I agree, the bottom line is that the Latin West has got to reduce its dependence on petroleum based products and over consumption of coal energy. This can be done, but it would be inconvenient and we are as addicted to these energies as we are on the delusion of life and the Earth being at our pleasure without consequence.
If it is proven, as theorized now, that cell phone radiation is causing the bee population to self destruct (just as Naval sonar is causing whales and dolphins to beach), I wonder if people would reduce their dependency on cell phones? Even at the risk of their own destruction? It is the same thing with the evil of Monsanto in creating artificial and genetically altered seeds. It is how we inject hormones into livestock and feed them food that essentially turns them into cannibals with by-products of other animals when livestock are herbivores, causing them to become ill.
No matter what religion or non-religion humankind claims to be, every one worships or is at the mercy of the Money God…that deity which allows the promise of leisure and power, but only at the expense of other living beings and the Earth. The corporate machine has made its choice and evidently humanity has as well.
Great blog. I feel the rage and confusion as well. The best we can do is refuse to be a part of the machine as much as humanly possible. Live simply. Keep informed.
Peace~
@Bijouli - I agree so much with this. Money really is the root of all evil. It’s the tool of greed. I made a conscious decision to leave my job because I didn’t feel the stress was worth the money I made. I refuse to work in an industry that treats people like cattle, which is probably why it’s been hard for me to find a replacement (aside from out blighted economy). I just wish people would wake up and see that money, possessions, gluttony… it doesn’t fill that empty pocket in the soul. I’m glad we’re transitioning away from Christianity, since most hardcore Christians seem to think the environment is something to be used and abused, not respected, not treasured. I just don’t know that we’re changing fast enough to save the next generations some serious hardships.
I strongly agree with you, harmony0stars, that we need to respond with speed and energy to the evil that is demonstrated so viscerally by the disaster ongoing in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s very good to see how the conversation here has built upon the foundation laid in your article. So much is revealed by starting to dig into the root causes of this problem, and I see big pieces of it shown in various prior responses.
Bijouli, you cut right to the heart of it when you proclaim that “every one worships or is at the mercy of the Money God…that deity which allows the promise of leisure and power, but only at the expense of other living beings and the Earth”. Thus we see that the terrifying problem of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the even larger problem of reducing our “dependence on petroleum” and “coal energy” are both symptoms of the still larger problem: a deeply rooted sense that we are entitled to exploit the world and one another in order to get ahead. This is what we must fight, with everything that we have.
Another symptom of this problem, as dasfenster points out, is population growth. When we believe that it is good for us to try to be better than our neighbors through competition, then that leads naturally to across-the-board growth (because everyone is constantly trying to do “better”): growth of production, consumption, and population; all three form a tangled mess that is killing our planet. Modern economics is dependent on this growth, but exactly this growth is both unsustainable and wrong.
It is critical that we understand the breadth of these symptoms (and as we continue to look, we see that there is an intricate web of global manifestations of these symptoms), so that we can very accurately portray the truth of the core issue, which is rampant consumption fueled by rampant exploitation. This is currently embodied in industrial capitalism, but it has been going on since before humans had conceived of capitalism, specifically, and it is equally important to understand the history of this evil, for the same reason.
It is interesting to see how the mainstream media talks about prosecuting BP for its crimes. Many are only concerned with BP’s negligence, while ignoring the vast underlying issues. It is not surprising that existing law, both in the United States and elsewhere, is highly favorable to corporations and turns a blind eye to the many consequences, for legal systems themselves were created and guided to support a culture of exploitation. It would certainly be good to make such exploitation illegal, but since law enforcement itself is a tool of those who want to take, rather than give, it will always be a difficult tool to wield for those who want change.
Thank you very much for sparking this discussion, for it allows me to offer to stand with you. Having these discussions is vital, but it is only the beginning.
@John L. Clark - Thank you for your excellent response! And for the link to the NY Times article. It’s the first I’ve heard of criminal action being taken against BP, and I am relieved that I’m not alone in suggesting BP be made to answer for its crimes. I can only hope that action against BP is not too little or too late in regards to the larger picture. I doubt very much that BP is the only oil company or big business that is guilty of jeopardizing our environment; it’s simply the one in the news now. Maybe if something more drastic had been done about Exxon when they had their mess in Alaska, BP wouldn’t have thought what they were doing was okay. Unfortunately, humanity tends to build on past experience and when big companies see that they can get away with such criminal negligence, they’ll keep making wider and wider grabs to see how far they can go.
What we need is to have more public protest in such cases. The 60s and 70s may be over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still be publicly vocal about these travesties of common sense. It would be very easy to take a cue from “flash mobs” and stage public protests with cellular speed. It’s time we started using the tools we have to make sure the message, that we do not support business that does not respect the environment, gets heard by as many people as possible, but especially the big businesses.
The whole situation is one big clusterfuck. I only wish the government would plan to liquidate BP as punishment for the spill, but that’s not likely to happen, is it?
This oil spill is going to have dire effects on the ocean and if the ocean dies we die.
@heidenkind - No, unfortunately it’s not… but I was thinking… you know how the government can take land under eminent domain? I wonder if they could take all of BP’s oil rigs under the banner of protecting the wildlife endangered by BP’s stupidity.
@Zeal4living - I am really on the very edge of not reincarnating on Earth again. Just when I think people are starting to change, to be more open minded and concerned about the environment, something like this happens. It’s enough to make a person crazy, but then our whole species must be some kind of insane to allow this kind of thing to go on, and on, and on….
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Letter campaigns and whatnot tend to do nothing, because people don’t actually have the power (in the form of money to do stuff with) to make them stop. It’s hard to take back the power to do things when you’re still enslaved by the system that makes it possible for them to have accumulated such power in the first place. The irony is that they still “try” without ever noticing the illogicality of it.
The Venus Project is something humanity may just not be ready for yet. A lot of people probably can’t imagine a world in which they aren’t expected to be slaves. A lot of people probably wouldn’t want to live in a world where they aren’t expected to be slaves because they’ve built up this insane life pattern where having something pressing to do all the time is essential to their sanity (I wonder if these people can imagine something creative to do with their lives outside of work..). Some people probably can imagine this reality, but to many of them it would turn out a dystopia because they don’t understand that the current state of many people is one of external corruption internalized, not of their own nature.
@harmony0stars - There’s a bit of a problem with nationalizing some things in their current state, however. Health care is a great example, and the reason is twofold: it forces people to pay into a health care system they might not accept or want, and it promotes a system that is already diseased.
Western “health care” is run primarily (or at least influenced to the point of insanity) by a pharmaceutical industry that pumps out inferior drugs which produce toxic symptoms in other areas, and they make a gigantic profit by keeping people medicated. The pharmaceutical industry is propped up indirectly by the FDA, who reserve the right to declare what is and is not a drug. Apparently any claim of any effects on your health at all gives them the right to declare your product a drug, which means that if you’re a farmer who’s trying to show that your produce has different long-term health benefits and helps prevent certain diseases (and it’s all backed up by research), and you decide to put this on your food packaging, you can be subject to regulation by the FDA – and pay exorbitant fees for the regulation, to the point where you would be put out of business to accept it rather than change your packaging back to being plain.
The FDA owns the truth about food these days, and their truth is that food can’t cure disease. Nor can herbs, apparently – they have pulled some fun quick ones on people selling herbal medicines that actually worked for grievous conditions.
Don’t get me started on insurance companies, either. Yay, deliberate manipulation of what choices for health care are subsidized, directing what people will choose and who makes more profit!
Corrupt FDA –> corrupt pharmaceuticals (+corrupt insurance companies)–> corrupt “health care” (otherwise known as sick care) –> bad health. Rather than nationalizing this system without any other action, why don’t we unpollute our drinking water? Why don’t we get the carcinogens and other health-nasties (sweeteners and BPA and all those awesome things come to mind) out of our food? Why don’t we try destroying the whole medicopoly that exists, brick by brick, and take charge of our own health?
@Lord_Wu - The Venus project reminds me of the way the Star Trek universe supposedly works. No money, everyone doing what pleases without the pressure to succeed because it’s fun being productive. Maybe we’ll need replicators before we can make it work. :-/
The healthcare that we have is not what I consider healthcare. No one should have the right to tell you what kind of care you should have access to. Real healthcare should pay for whatever treatment your doctor of choice recommends (within reason). I agree about the FDA. It needs more than an overhaul; it needs to be revamped from the ground up, but then, so many government organizations do. I think, more than anything, that we need to get the lobbyists out of DC. Submitting a paper or study or letter to politicians should be fine, but people actually paying people to lobby (or picket) for something should be considered a waste of resources and against the law. Kickbacks that doctors get from recommending specific pharmaceuticals should also be against the law. They’re basically being paid to make people unwitting guinea pigs, and then, months or years later we get a commercials that says if you took this or that drug and had this or that problem, join our class action lawsuit. It shouldn’t just be the pharmaceutical company that gets sued in that one. The doctors are just as guilty.