Boycott BP – yeah, like that will help? The Government is in control – yeah right why it is all bullshit and who is REALLY to blame!

Well, I can tell you right now that you and I are to blame, WHAT you might be saying but it is indeed you and I. We have found it very easy to blame British Petroleum and the Government and the folks who leased the rig that sank and the manufacturers of the broken blowout preventer and any other list of folks, EASY to blame them BUT………….. I ask that we back up a couple of steps first. What do you suppose they were doing out there in the first place? Why is there a company called BP? Why do we have an insatiable thirst for the black gold? Why, why and why. Well I am here to tell you why. It is because we want this and we want that and to manufacture this and that takes oil. I am not just talking about the obvious culprits such as gas and diesel, although transportation does takes the lions share, 66% of all oil goes to transportation of some kind. Another 25% goes to industry, to make things. The other 4%, 2% and 3% goes to residential, commercial and for electrical power generation. It is all about our hedonistic consumerism and that is why BP is out there – we want our goodies. We want the perfumes, the hand lotions and sanitizers, the bottled water and the Glade thingies that make the room smell good. We want the surgical gloves and the car tires, we want the synthetic fibers for clothes that breath and wick away moisture. We want it all AND these are the consequences of our self-indulgent ways and it has lead us to where we are now - an oil slick, literally the size of the gulf of Mexico.

Somehow, we can sit in righteous indignation that they have not stopped the leak, and there is enough of blame gaming everywhere ya look but never once have I heard a conversation about our addition to oil. In my opinion, it is short termed thinking by shortsighted people. We want that oil leak stopped but instead of filling that hole with cement to stop it we keep playing games with it, trying desperately to save the hole that provides the nectar that runs our country. It seems unfathomable to me that we are trying one thing at a time and waiting for it to fail before we pre-stage the plan B. If I were running that show I would have plan A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M and freaking N all moving at the same time. There would be no waiting ANOTHER week after another potential solution that failed magnificently before the next plan was in place, that would take minutes to go to the next plan. But NO we somehow are relying on BP and the Government to fix this, both of which have a HUGE vested interest in having that hole returned to usability. It would be akin to the turning over to the bullet manufacturers and the hunting license bureaus to stop hunting all together nationewide. They would be coming up with reason after reason and idea after idea to keep the hunters hunting while trying to bullshit rational people into believing they can not control the situation. They would have NO reason to stop and actual they would be de-incentivized to actually do so. You can begin to see how crazy this disaster is and how they are not really trying to stop the leak, they are trying to save the investment in the hole.

Who knows how many barrels of oil have spilled out, they do not have a clue and even amongst the “experts” they are only speculating. And really does it matter? It is REALLY bad and they need to get it under control now, whatever the costs – period. They should also be held accountable, to the families of the people who died and for all the people who lost their livelihood due to this disaster. They should reimburse municipalities for their loss and they should be reimburse the businesses that have been devastated by their GROSS negligence. One more thing that I do not care about is this, I do not care how much BP is paying to clean their mess up, I just don’t. I do not care today, I will not care tomorrow. It is their mess and if they go bankrupt cleaning up their mess so be it, oh wait a minute - are they going to be one of those companies that is too big to fail? Will the government bail them out, will they take them over? I hope the answer to both is NO. Why should they do either, well we are talking about oil so I would not be surprised to see it happen.



Is there really anyway to guarantee, 100% of the time, that the technology will never fail? I have been in the repair business for my whole life and there is one constant I have seen time and time again, without fail, is that everything will fail eventually. Let me say that again, EVERYTHING will fail eventually. There is absolutely no way that every single contingency can be covered, because there is no way to guarantee that the man made devices will work, every time all the time, it is a statistical impossibility - no damn way! So no matter how many contingency plans we build into any off shore drilling there will always be a chance of an accident, it is the whole risk versus reward thing and oil will win every time. The accident would not be on purpose, it would be an accident, but at that point it matters little, the freaking oil is gushing into our environment. The other down side of building in plans to cover all the known contingencies is that it will increase the costs of gas right along with the cost of all the things made with petroleum products and I do not know about you but I got no budge in my budget at all to cover those additional costs. You think we are pissed about the costs of gas now, imagine if each oil hole in the future has to have millions upon millions of dollars worth of equipment to prevent some litany of potential possible incidents. The oil companies are NOT going to eat that cost, we will - in the increased cost of the stuff we want to buy.

We can go on about they shoulda, they were supposed to and even the other folks were supposed to ensure this or that and it still matters little for the thousands of barrels of oil that have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. We want our stuff and the government wants their stuff and the drillers want their stuff. We all want different things and we all have different reasons but it still boils down to everyone wanting stuff. Hell we even want our toothpaste to be sweet tasting so we add glycerin to get the taste – petroleum product. Our dependence on oil is INSANE. It dominates every part of our lives, every single part! Have we started car pooling more – NO, have we shifted to baking soda for cleaning our teeth – NO. We, as a society, have done NOTHING significant that would lead to removing our addiction to oil – NOTHING. What have we, as consumers, really done to cut our addition to oil, better yet what have you done, yeah – YOU? I am ashamed to admit that I myself have done little in this regard but this spill in the gulf has me evaluating and reevaluating the way I live my life and my actual impact on the world around me. Not in some superficial way, carbon footprints and the carbon trading seems to me a veiled attempt by an entire industry to scare us and make us feel bad about our usage of the earth’s resources. I am talking about meaningful change and that is hard for everyone.

We have to get control folks and I am not sure what that means anymore but I think it has to start with understanding what impact oil has on our lives and then we need to start looking at alternatives that require less dependence on any oil, let alone foreign oil. It will not be easy, our world revolves around being able to have everything we want, wherever we want it and whenever we want it. It will require personal sacrifice, not someone else but YOU and ME too. I don’t know what the answers are but doing nothing is no longer going to work for me. I do not know what the answer is, but boycotting BP is not it. That is, in my opinion, nothing but symbolism over substance and it will in the long run make NO difference, even if they go bankrupt some other oil company will buy them and the game will continue, boycotting is not the answer friends – controlling our appetites is what will bring an end to this craziness.