I have heard a million opinions on the BP oil spill. And to add to the mix I want to share my thoughts.
First of all it is a tragedy. The animals and wildlife that will be hurt or killed is devastating. The people who are losing their livelihood as a result of the spill is devastating. The fisherman who cannot fish and small town bait shops and such that cannot sell are truly heartbreaking. It is sad and awful. But it was an accident. I have no idea why or how it happened. I am sure when the smoke clears we will find out some very technical thing that went wrong that caused this tragic accident. It was most likely some sort of human error. But that is the human element. We are imperfect and make mistakes. Someone screwed up. And someone screwed up big time.
I do, however, think that in the wake of this tragedy BP has handled themselves well. I do not think they were perfect. The CEO clearly made some rough comments in the beginning. But they are committed to cleaning up this mess. They could have walked away. They could have broken the lease and walked away and said this was the government's mess. They did not. They chose to stay and devote man power to fixing it.
So as Christians, I think our response should be to pray for them. We should pray for the leak to be fixed quickly and for the people in charge to have wisdom to fix this mess. And I think we should buy BP gasoline. I have heard people call for a boycott on BP stations. I think it is riciculus
BP does not make the majority of their revenue from BP stations anyway. If you boycott your local BP station the only people that will suffer will be your local BP franchise holder. A local small business person. That is who will suffer. A small business owner who is trying to feed their family and pay their bills. Is it their fault? And in all honesty now is not the time for a boycott. I seem to get this sense from some people that simply because BP makes a lot of money they are evil. I do not think BP intentionally spilled tons of oil into the ocean. Can we seriously believe that? Does anyone really? Someone made a mistake and it was probably not the CEO. It was probably some midlevel employee working to feed his family and pay his mortgage. Someone certainly made a big mess.
We can choose to hate BP and not shop at BP stations. We can, but I really don't think it will hurt BPs bottom line. In the end we will only be hurting someone like ourselves. We can choose forgiveness and work towards a solution. That would be far better.
And also I think we still need to keep drilling. We are dependent on oil for our way of life. Do we need to find a better way? Absolutely. But in the mean time I do not like the idea of being completely dependant upon the Middle east for our very way of life. Aren't these the very people who have flown planes into our buildings and killed thousands of American citizens. Now I know not every person in the Middle East is a terrorist. But how do we know who we can trust? How do we know that some terrorist group will not infiltrate our oil supply? It seems to me that we have branded the wrong bad guys.
About Me
- Momma
- I am trying to learn how to do this thing called life, in community with others. I am blessed to be wife to an amazing man. Momma to two precious girls. And we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our third child. I fail daily. I am more a mess than I ever thought I was. But I realize that God is bigger and more gracious than I ever dreamed He could be. My hope is that He makes something beautiful out of this mess I call, my life.
3 comments:
"It seems to me that we have branded the wrong bad guys."
How is it that after an American oil spill, we can some how jump to still blame, or shift blame, or point fingers at people in the middle east? How is it at all in this situation, anyone's fault but BP's? It doesn't matter if they meant to do it, they still did it, it is still someone's fault in the BP company, it had absolutely nothing to do with oil we get from over seas. In fact, the problem has more to do with our way of life, which is OUR responsibility as individuals and as a nation, what have you personally done to change or reduce your need for oil, (Yes, it would be more expensive, and yes it would be harder to cut back on oil and focus on alternatives, but again, because Americans are so comfortable in our way of life, any inconvenience should be avoided no matter the benefit of the outcome. ) the problem is the insane need of oil itself, the problems with trading it are secondary. If Americans use less oil, they wouldn't have to drill deeper and deeper and deeper to the point where we have disasters like this. And how does some one over seas go about contaminating oil, couldn't it just as well be done on our own soil?!
Anonymous-
My point was never to shift the blame for the spill over to people in the middle east. If it came across that way, I apologize.
It was clearly BPs fault. It was their oil rig. It was their fault.
I think they should be held responsible. I personally wanted to put forth the idea that they need our help and not our condemnation. They screwed up. But they are fixing it. They are going to pay dearly for the mistake they made. They already are. They are losing revenue and dishing out money to clean it up. I just do not see how us punishing the franchise holders will make any difference. That was my main point. I think boycotting BP is silly at this point.
Clearly you seem to think it is wrong for us to drill for oil. (That is the impression I got from you.) I do not think it is wrong. The point I was trying to make with the Middle East comment was that it is better to drill than to rely on foreign sources for oil. I think that we cannot trust the source. (I am not sure how one could contaminate oil or even if it was possible.) I was simply trying to point out that we cannot rely on foreign resources. Because we are dependant upon oil for life we either get it from foreign sources or we drill for it ourselves. I think it is far better to drill for it ourselves than to rely on outsourcing it.
I understand that the dependancy upon oil is a whole other debate. I did state that I would like America to become less dependant. I personally drive a car and heat my home all by the same methods that require oil. I have not reduced the need for it by any stretch. But I am not sure how me having the opinion that we should not condemn BP requires that I personally use less oil.
Should we as Americans work together to use less? Sure. Does that mean that I will pay more money for a hybrid car right now? Not neccessarily. I do not hold to the idea that drilling for oil is wrong. I do not think using oil is wrong. I think it is a neccessity in our way of life.
This does not mean I am not heartbroken by the devastation. I wish it would not have happened. I wish that the local people would not suffer and possibly lose their livelihoods. I wish that the animals and wildlife would not suffer from it. I wish the situation would not have happened. But it did.
I was more concerned with our reaction. I simply think that Americans have this attitude now towards BP that is not helpful and I consider it wrong. BP owned up to what they have done. And they are working to fix it.
Is it enough? No. I hope that with this BP and other companies can learn something that will help reduce the risk of this ever happening again.
Jessica - I agree wholeheartedly.
Anonymous- A couple of things. First, BP among other companies did not originally want to go out so far to drill. For one it is much harder and much more expensive to do so. The ocean floor there is a mile down. The gov't restricted them from drilling in shallower waters, because they didn't want people to see the rig from land. Now when they have a problem, fixing it at ocean floor level is extremely difficult compared to shallower waters. It is BP's fault and they are doing the best they can to deal with it. If you don't believe so, you try capping a well a mile down in the ocean with thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch.
About our way or life. I agree we should use our resources on this earth in a responsible way. Alternatives to oil are going to take a long time to make reasonable. Most of the major energy alternatives are heavily subsidized by the gov't. That means that they do not have a reasonable price tag to the normal consumer. If the gov't is paying for a big chunk of it, that comes out of all the tax payers pockets. Our nation is just not at a point to just give up oil all the sudden.
I really do not think you understand the magnitude of oil use for our country. It's not just about gas. Every product that has a petroleum base means that it has oil used. We can't up and drop all of those products. By the way, this would cover ever type of plastic we use. Can you think of running your life without any plastic usage. That is just a start of a long list of things that use petroleum. Look it up.
In terms of gas. Electric is the next step in that world and that is many decades away from being reasonably used. Sure there are some electric cars, but it's just passenger vehicles. Right now, they don't have the horsepower for light duty trucks, semi-trucks, planes, boats, etc. And if you can't power those items correctly you might as well see our economy come to a dead hault. Additionally, our electrical infrastructure is not even close to being ready to handle major electric car usage. Can you imagine even a small percentage of America plugging their cars in at night. The power outages would be constant. I hope you are in favor of nuclear plants, because that is the only reasonable way to help that problem. Oh, and it takes no less than 10 yrs to build a nuclear power plant. When you talk about planning, gov't red tape, building, infrastructure improvements. The gov't may want to take there hands off the hold they have on that sector if they want electric cars to prevail.
I'm just sayin'
Also, why be anonymous, just curious?
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