Over the weekend the headlines have being overwhelmed by the media 'cleansing' David Laws and largely ignoring how Danny Alexander broke the rules laid down by his own party leader. At the same time, the people of Louisiana are preparing for one of the biggest ecological disasters they have ever had to face as between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels of crude oil pour from the BP oil disaster.
The latest attempt to plug the oil leak, "Top Kill", which started last Wednesday, has now failed and latest indicators are that the company will attempt to sever the pipe at the well and lower a container onto the blowout preventer. If this occurs, the tanker will have no other alternative other than to relase the pipe and allow the uncontrolled oil to spew back out into the ocean. It seems BP hope that from this they will be able to transfer much of the leaked oil onto a tanker on the surface.
However, there are several problems with this plan. Firstly, it is not a cure and (even if it works, which many scientists question) assumes that local flora and fauna will cope with the spewing crude that is not collected and transferred to the tanker. Secondly, the plan has not taken into account the fact that in June the hurricane season starts and if a storm occurs in that region the tanker will not be able to stay above the well. If this happens the tanker will have no other option other than to relese the uncontrolled oil into the ocean and if that were to occur, BP would be essentially back to square one.
So far, BP has been forced to spend £642m in compensation claims and federal costs and they anticipate the final costs could extend to, as much as over £41bn (approximately a quarter of the current UK national debt). At the same time, 105 miles of Louisiana coastline have been contaminated and countless numbers of birds, fish and plant life have been killed by a disaster that is ten times bigger than the Exxon Valdez disaster.
Surprisingly, no one has asked the key question - why did it happen? Of course, BP will put it down to a natural failure of the technology, whilst the British and American governments will place the blame on a lack of scrutiny over the drilling procedures. What all of them fail to acknowledge is that this would not have happened if internationally we had reappraised our needs and looked for more ecologically friendly natural energy sources. Our obsession with the motor vehicle and international air travel lie at the heart of this problem, for if there had been no demand, there would have been no drilling and thousands of fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico would now be earning a living. Instead, we continued our chase for black gold, craving its convenience, whilst disregarding the effect on the planet.
So, who is responsible? Well of course BP are in large part, for it was the capitalist greed of their shareholders and their worship of the God, Profit that led to the disaster. But so too must the blame lay with every motorist and passenger on an airline, for until we leave our cars in the garage and cut back on our foreign holidays, we must also take our share of the blame. It is these people, with their huge carbon footprint - the ones who demanded the crude that is now washing up on the marshlands of Louisiana that must bear sown of the burden.
Old 'Joe Public' may not be to blame for the oil spill - that was an inevitable consequence of capitalist greed - but for demanding more and more, for pushing for cheaper petrol and diesel, we are accountable ... and if there is to be any change we must acknowledge our guilt and atone by accepting that, as custodians of this planet we have a moral responsibility to protect for future generations.
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