Furthermore, every public appearance of a BP executive or spokesperson serves to minimize the crisis, implying that a less immediate reaction is required. Indeed, as a for-profit company, BP's actions remain motivated by concern for their shareholders, whose only motivation is profit. In practice, this means fewer resources are dedicated to the spill than would be otherwise, since higher cleanup costs equal lower profits. One glaring example of this was cited in The New York Times, which quoted a scientist working for the Flow Rate Technical Group, a team of scientists trying to accurately gauge the flow of oil into the Gulf:
"It's apparent that BP is playing games with us, presumably under the advice of their legal team," Dr. Leifer said. "It's six weeks that it's been dumping into the gulf, and still no measurements." (June 7, 2010).
Local government officials in Florida are also disgusted with BP's lack of action in preventing the oil from landing on their beaches, while doing next to nothing in cleaning up the beached oil. The attorney general of Florida complained:
"I'm outraged"why are we waiting so long to do this? Why is the Coast Guard, Obama, BP waiting? They've seen it coming, so why are we waiting?" (Bloomberg, June 7, 2010).
Obama's religious faith in BP to properly handle the spill -- after it had no emergency plan to deal with such a spill in the first place -- borders on lunacy. But the logic is sensible from the corporate prospective, which preaches that all is rational which protects profits.
In a sane world, BP's executives would be facing severe criminal charges, and the billions of profits they've earned in the last year would be confiscated to pay for the cleanup. BP's infrastructure would be taken under the control of the U.S. government, which could ensure that the job was done correctly, timely, and publicly, as opposed to the shield of corporate secrecy currently protecting BP.
The ultimate lesson of this environmental/economic catastrophe is that Obama is not at all serious about confronting corporate interests. Rather, he allows them to stampede over the public interests, ensuring that such disasters will happen again.
Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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