BP Fails Booming School, Fails the Planet, Why Should We Put Up With This Any More?

The first problem is demonstrated in the following video.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx8kMXufu3w There is a significant amount of swearing, but I can understand, because the person who wrote it is very very angry, and it's the way oil people talk anyway. In case you don't want to watch it, it makes the case the BP is doing a massively horrible job of booming the beach. Instead of blocking and collecting the oil, they are purposely allowing the oil to overflow the booms and wreak havoc.

Secondly, and emphatically, the only way to keep the oil industry, market, companies, and consumption under control is a fuel tax that truly takes into account the externalities of the commodity. We have an industry that can simply do whatever it wants because it has so much money it can't be controlled. The only feeble attempts being made are to try to tell the car manufacturers that they have to abide by arbitrary fuel economy restrictions. All this does is cripple the car companies because they make all their money off big cars because that's what people want. A European style fuel tax changes the purchasing dynamic on the demand side. The fuel prices in the last few years have borne that out unarguably. The first to go was Hummer.

Who knows when the hole will be fixed, nobody's solutions will come in time. The only way to do it right is to do it right from the beginning. There is virtually no governmental control or regulation over the oil industry, and the courts have consistently required less of oil companies than damage caused. So you either have to tell the oil companies "you will pay for every dollar to every person inconvenienced by your choices and every dollar needed to clean up your mess in perpetuity, or you will simply never drill without forceful backup plans in triplicate." I vote for both.

Business will never do what it is supposed to.  Money always comes first.  Remember that.

WiredForStereo