The State of the Ocean
3 min read
I don’t know how many of you were old enough to remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill that occurred in Alaska to help close out the 1980’s. If you were too young to remember, it was one of those blunders that was and still is really hard to fathom. Basically it was a large oil company and their negligence eventually leading to biological cluster muck of epic proportions. We’re talking about 1300 miles of coastline and 11,000 square miles of ocean – that’s a lot of pollution. Now what’s crazy is that this eventually led to tons of litigation and eventually led to Exxon being held accountable for a couple of billion dollars worth of damages that the U.S. Supreme Court eventually overturned. The reason for decision, as ruled by them was deemed excessive. Eventually Exxon would only be held accountable for 500 million or so dollars (give or take) and thus teaching us that governments and judicial systems do not necessarily exist to protect the common welfare of the planet or ecosystems. They exist to protect the common wealth of businesses that support commerce.
Now that we’re in 2010, we’re up against a similar situation with the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico except that this time they fear that the biological disaster could be even worse, while BP representative Randy Prescott has been quoted all over the interwebs having said that “Louisiana isn’t the only place that has shrimp.” Now I’m not trying to take things out of context, so let me make this very clear, these remarks are clearly missing a sensitivity required by someone representing a company that just ruined a 200 billion dollar industry for the foreseeable future – a reminder of those not so glorious days of the Exxon disaster and a complete lack of wanting to be held accountable for ones actions. And why not? He’s telling the truth…it’s a big ocean. There are other places on the planet that also harvest shrimp. It just won’t be Louisiana for a while…a long while. When it’s all said and done – BP will get the equivalent of a small fine and a slap on the wrist because let’s face it, if we learned nothing from the Valdez it’s that countries are not interested in their citizens as much as they are interested in revenue created by big business.
Strangely, more than ever before, we’re a world community dictated by commodity brokers that really don’t care about the logistics of safety (the BP catastrophe is being dubbed the Chernobyl of the Gulf) and that alone would be a shame if it weren’t also for the fact that British Petroleum has also been given the okay to spill mercury into our beloved Lake Michigan to its heart’s content. Still think that there isn’t some sort of egregious mishandling of our resources by one company? Why not spill an element containing the sort of neurotoxins that might also cause birth defects if consumed in abundance? It’s no wonder this company was named one of the ten worst corporations during the first half of this decade. Are they trying to get us back for the tea in Boston harbor? I don’t know. But it makes one wonder doesn’t it?
Why such a blatant disregard for the environment? Why isn’t there more urgency than what they’ve been demonstrating? Why is their immediate response to their initial negligence of properly handling the rig simply to leave us with the answer that it might be many more weeks before they can stop the coast from continuing to gather the kind of muck and mire that will continue to kill resources, but wildlife too? Why? I imagine BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward shrugging and patting us on the head – it’s a big ocean, right? It certainly is, though a lot blacker now thanks to you guys.
