Deepwater Horizon: It's More than Business Better

In the weeks since the oil rig, Deepwater Horizon, exploded and sank off the coast of Louisiana spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico BP has been the subject of much negative attention, arguably all deserved. To briefly summarize, BP:

• Was deliberately evasive as to how much oil their pipeline was spewing; either lying or willfully ignorant with initial estimates between 1/50th and 1/100th less than the actual amount.


• Hired local shrimp boat fishermen to help with clean up/track the spill - but only under condition of gag order. If they attempted to speak/complain to the press they would be fired.


• Deliberate choose a riskier casing to seal the oil well before the blast; opting for the best 'economic' case which likely lead to the explosion.


• Utilized a particularly nasty dispersant which they likened to dish soap and when asked to stop.

BP has a bad track record for environmental sustainability and responsible business. Deepwater Horizon simply made their abysmal track record extremely well known. And yet, while making business better is a key aspect of sustainable development, the issues surrounding Deepwater Horizon go, well, deeper.

Fundamental to modern Western Society, to American society, is a veil of ignorance that separates us from understanding the effects of our consumption. Our garbage is trucked away from our homes, to parts unknown, our eggs and vegetables come from farms thousands of miles from our home employing techniques which we can easily turn a blind eye towards, our clothes and electronics from mystery factories employing questionable labor techniques and source materials. Unless we are one of the increasingly rare who work directly in these industries, the direct effects of our consumption remain obscured. I say obscured, not invisible, because the effects are all around us: in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the fish we eat and so on. But the poisons are insidious ones, often blind to the naked eye.

Every so often, however, something happens that forces us to recognize that not only are our consumption patterns not sustainable, but that they have direct negative effects, not only in the long term but in the present. Every time there's a meat recall because of E.Coli O157:H7, we are faced directly with a consequence of our factory farming - E.coli did not exist before the rise of factory farming and could not exist if we did not feed cows corn. Cheap meat, it turns out, is often toxic meat.

Deepwater Horizon, the oil rig which exploded and sank off the coast of Louisiana at the end of April spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico serves as another reminder of the insidious nature of our oil addiction.

It is a reminder, one would think, that a nation facing war and terrorist attacks, in part, because of this oil addiction would not need, but in an era in which Prius drivers counteract the fuel efficiencies gained by driving a hybrid vehicle, simply by driving more, it has become clear that like any true addict we need these reminders because we have not yet as a society hit bottom.

One hopes that we develop this social awareness before we run out of oil.

The cruelest irony of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is not the inanity of drilling for oil in an environmentally sensitive region, but rather, that the catastrophe has negatively impacted the region's commercial fishing industry. The Louisiana gulf region plays host to a 2.5 billion dollar commercial fishing industry including half the total value of the U.S. oyster crop and most of the value of the US shrimp crop, according to a May 4th Article in the LA Times. That an oil spill would have a catastrophic effect on the local environment is unsurprising. That we would allow risky drilling in an environmentally sensitive region, is also unsurprising. What surprising, however, was the amazing insight of a Louisiana fisherman, now landlocked, who made noted that despite BP's effects on his livelihood he did not hate the oil industry. It was after all, oil upon which he depended to run his engines that allowed him to fish.

And that right there is the problem. Oil is the invisible driver of our economy: it's in the bread, mayonnaise, and shrimp of our po'boy sandwich. It's in the plastic bags we pick up from the grocery store, the apples we grab from the local farmers market, it's in the computer upon we use to view the internet.

We can talk all we want about improved safety standards, corporate social responsibility, making business better, and so on, but until we accept as a society that oil, much like heroine, is an insidious little drug that does far more harm than good - from climate change, to oil spills, to war - and start developing structures to fundamentally get us off of this oil habit we are merely spitting into the wind.