The Gulf Oil Disaster is Our Fault

Everyone is furious at BP for causing the worst man made environmental disaster in history.  The logic is that somehow BP was negligent, irresponsible, even criminal.  Maybe.   But it was we, the people, who gave them the right to drill offshore in the first place.  It was we, the people, who  ignored the ramifications of an offshore drilling accident.  And it is, we the people, (and the animals) who will suffer the consequences.

Anything humans can conceive of and build will be imperfect and thus will eventually fail.  Witness the computer on your desk, the car in your driveway, the ice maker in your fridge and the lawnmower in your yard.  If any of those things fail...and they most certainly will, at most its an inconvenience and a pain in the butt.  Certainly no one would consider your overgrown yard an environmental disaster (although the garden club would appalled).

Even the most technically advanced things we build fail.  Space shuttles blow up, airliners crash, the cable TV goes on the blink.  How did we ever think that something as risky as drilling 18,000 feet into the ocean floor for oil would be just another day at the beach?

The next time some politician on TV blathers "Drill Baby Drill" or emphatically claims that your economic future relies on giant concrete plants and such being located in your community, think about the last computer crash you had.  In that case, you picked up the phone and called the "Geek Squad".

In the case of oil spills and mercury poisoning that will affect your children and their children, ....who you gonna call?