BP Oil Spill Should Not Be Forgotten

Written by Tristan Shaw
Video

« Previous Next »

Some graffiti in the sand where the BP oil spill ravaged the beach.

Over a year later, British Petroleum's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the worst in US history, continues to wreak havoc. The problems are many - human health, fish stocks, lack of compensation, destroyed local business - to name a few. Meanwhile, the US congress hasn’t changed a single law concerning deep water drilling. Why, after the largest US oil spill, isn’t the American public angry about the BP disaster?

As we see conventional petroleum becoming increasingly scarce, corporations move to more dangerous drilling situations in an attempt to retrieve the last of nature’s diminishing oil stocks.

It is likely due to the lack of media reporting on the issue. Fox News, one of the most watched networks on the air, will not confront the catastrophe caused by their transnational corporate advertisers. In their eyes, it is just the necessary cost of doing business. “SUV-sized tar balls washing up on the coast,” as Mother Jones and others have reported, don’t make for the kind of coverage that furthers their agenda. And most other mainstream media outlets are not much better at exposing the environmental and human harm caused by the spill.

Deepwater Horizon’s failure and the resulting environmental damage was not some unlikely anomaly that will never repeat itself: in fact, there was much surprise regarding the level of catastrophe because the well was not that deep, relatively speaking. The other more fragile wells, which spread along the ocean’s landscape around the East coast, pose even more deadly consequences. As we see conventional petroleum becoming increasingly scarce, corporations move to more dangerous drilling situations in an attempt to retrieve the last of nature’s diminishing oil stocks. Even Saudi Arabia, a land perceived as affluent in oil, is moving to off-shore drilling due to their lack of conventional supplies. They call those highly energy intensive oil retrieval methods “unconventional” drilling. And we can only anticipate more danger as this frightening trend mounts.

The legacy of Deepwater Horizon should be ingrained into the world’s collective consciousness as the inevitable consequences of our addiction to fossil fuels. The multi-trillion-dollar oil industry will go to great lengths to impose a state of historical amnesia regarding the Gulf of Mexico spill, which we readily see with the lack of media coverage. The enormous amount of oil and chemical dispersants remaining in the gulf are still ruining human lives and the environment. And even given the scale and scope of the disaster, BP has continued business as usual, as if the world no longer cares about their horrific historic event – and the scary thing is: they might be right.