FollowFirstly, please note I used the word ‘volcano’ in the title. From the time of the first drop of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, I sat here at my New Jersey computer screen, absorbing every bit of information, but feeling a gut-wrenching sense of doom. Leakage totals went up each day from a thousand barrels to hints of apocalyptic now. Why does a guy with no oil background in New Jersey of all places sense an environmental catastrophe? Why do I have the feeling that BP absolutely does NOT care what it did? Is it true, if they spent $500 thousand on some kind of valve, none of this would’ve happened? We’re they part of the group that lobbied OUR Congress to ease regulations so they did not have to buy this part? Nothing surprises me about companies; designed to make a profit and keep stockholders happy. I own stock in some companies. Not BP.
In my novel ‘Vichy Water,’ there’s a character who claimed American companies were responsible one way or another, for more deaths than the Nazi’s during World War Two(50 million people dead). Interesting premise. I just reached for my hand held calculator. When I was a little boy, sitting in high school math, we had to use a slide rule. There were no hand held calculators. Was my first calculator in college from Rockwell? People have been smoking for a long time (remember pictures of those early colonies in Virginia? Men with funny hats and leggings, puffs of smoke rising) Since the sixties, there’s been more relationship evidence of tobacco and cancer; a perfect marriage if you’re into decreasing surface population. How many millions cigarette dead since the sixties or end of WWII? What about car companies knowing they should recall but being told by actuaries to let it ride; additional sales for a year more than covers law suits for those who died; same thing with drug companies. Seems every few months or so, some drug company confesses they knew about the side effect being deleterious (great word). A couple of months ago, a company mentioned their diabetes drug increased heart attacks 43%. They knew all along. I’m working my calculator. Trans fat purveyors knew. Faulty infant cribs knew. Fast food companies and an incredibly UNhealthy menu knew. If companies reduced salt intake, it could save 100,000 lives a year. Multiply that by the number of years since the end of WWII. I’m still working my calculator. I saw an article not 5 minutes ago about a minor league baseball park in Michigan with a hamburger that tallied 4800 calories(5 patties, 5 slices of cheese). How about the coal industry and the soot it produces? Maybe another 30,000 people a year dead from that. How about the coal mining companies that ignore safety warnings? How about all the companies since we signed the armistice with Japan on the USS Missouri, that dump illegal things into our water and ground? How about all the smoke stacks from sea to shining sea? How about all those movie theatre companies that load salt into their popcorn to make us thirsty? How about the bottled water companies who use BPA to keep the bottles crisp and functional? Still playing with my calculator. The point being to all of this(do your own calculating) is some companies since the end of WWII have knowingly done quite a bit to decrease surface population. But this is the business we’ve chosen. It’s to make money. After all, what’s the cheapest renewable resource? People. So BP’s behavior is par for the historic course. Why am I so upset? It’s a hard rain. I eat no RED meat. Mostly fish.