The BP blowout is like a volcano spewing highly toxic oil and gas into an already weakened marine ecosystem. Before our eyes we're seeing an over-arching catastrophe, killing not just humans and their economic foundations, but sperm whales, dolphins, orcas, birds, turtles, shrimp, oysters, fish and the microscopic plants and animals that are the foundation of virtually every form of life in the Gulf.
But to address this problem we'll have to do more than hold BP accountable.
I don't want to sound dogmatic, but it's obvious from this growing disaster that America is not a democracy, it's a corporatocracy. The owners of the largest corporations have learned how to operate outside the law and are able to control the economy we all depend on. Thus their extraction, production and distribution of product, in this case oil, can cause ecological horrors that hit us all very hard, and yet they remain beyond the reach of democratic control. They have grown accustomed to ignoring or subverting all legal restraints, and like drunk drivers who can't be caught, they just get more and more dangerous every time they get away with it.
In the short term, BP should be effectively seized and occupied by the federal government to allow complete transparency of operations and to prioritize stopping the flow and mitigating the spread of oil, even if it bankrupts the company.
Over the longer term, the best way to clean up after this spill is to become aware of the current realities of our economic and political systems and show support for efforts to bring major corporations under democratic control. "Corporate personhood" should be abolished for starters. Taxes should be re-aligned to remove breaks and shelters for super-wealthy and subsidies for monopolistic corporations.
There should be no illusions that this can be done without incurring the full wrath and backlash of the corporate hierarchy and all their indoctrinated loyal subjects. Wedge issues like abortion and immigration will be deployed at ever higher volumes to distract from objective examination of our economic plight and discourage effective remedies. There should also be no illusions that human civilization or most of life on Earth can be sustained if the corporate control of the world economy continues.
There are two messes to clean up here, and both may be beyond any hope of cleaning up any time soon. First and most obvious are the marshes, bayous and beaches, and the surface waters, from New Orleans to Tampa to Key West and beyond. As tar balls are scooped up they just keep coming day and night. Oiled birds instinctively try to preen themselves clean, ingesting oil and clogging and damaging internal organs in the process. They may look clean enough to release, but very few will survive more than a few weeks. Likewise once the grasses in wetlands are oiled they die, along with all the micro-organisms that are the foundation of the food chain. The sandy mud the grasses held together will wash away and the ocean will encroach far into the current mainland. As in Prince William Sound, Alaska, the oil remains embedded in the beaches and shorelines, killing all life for decades. The rule for realists is: there is no effective cleanup after a major oil spill, and this isn't even a spill, it's a blowout, like a geyser.
The public was never even told that this was possible, which takes us to the other mess that we probably can't clean up: the takeover of our economy, elections and media by the very top of the multinational corporations, i.e., Goldman Sachs, Exxon, BP, GE, GM, ADM, Monsanto, etc. These oligarchs, the actual owners and controllers of these companies (not small investors and pensioners) hold diversified portfolios, meaning they own majority shares in all these corporations, and operate them to benefit their overall quarterly returns on their investments above all other considerations. Their banks loan money to most of the rest of them and control their operations that way. They own most of the media outright and influence what can be said through advertising on the rest, now including public broadcasting. The banking, oil, coal, auto, media, shipping, agribusiness, insurance and pharmaceutical industries are not so separate after all.
Over the years, especially since the Reagan anti-government revolution, the few owners of these major corporations have managed to funnel most of America's economy into their hands. They now have our nation's wealth in their accounts. The vast majority of middle class families and individuals are losing incomes, while every government, from town to city to county to state to federal, is broke, deep in debt and slashing budgets by the day, and the big banks and oil companies are raking in billions every day. These few owners appoint themselves and hand-picked loyalists to the interlocking boards of their companies, which in turn hire the CEO's, COO's, CFO's and all down the line to carry out their wishes. The buck doesn't stop with Tony Baloney. Someone hired him and apparently is happy with his job performance to date.
By professionally crafted strategies developed in well-financed think tanks, these majority shareholders have devised ways to subvert our elections to put their candidates into office and corrupt the rest. The Republican party is almost entirely under corporate control, as is about half the Democratic party. It's little wonder that even Democratic law-makers can't get much done. The current popular rally cry to throw out all incumbents further diminishes the legitimacy of government.
And so BP and the other oil corporations have taken over the watchdog agencies, removed oversight and enforcement, and decided on their own to cut corners, in this case by using cheap casing and cement, neglecting maintenance of the blowout preventer, ignoring warnings, and then lying and hiding information as standard operating procedure, as they continue to do even now. Meanwhile BP squanders $50 million on a media campaign to lie again. They have the cash to waste, and they use it to further degrade democracy and waste the foundations of life on Earth. We've all ingested the corporate lies that government can't be trusted and that corporations represent freedom and the American way of life.
How are we going to clean up that mess?