I guess my green credentials are pretty second rate. Don’t get me wrong; I care about the petrocano erupting at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. I feel for the boat captains and crews who are facing bankruptcy through no fault of their own. I am upset that brown pelicans that just got off the endangered species list are covered in crude oil. Tar balls on beaches suck. Forgive me, though, for saying that that’s all pretty secondary to the fact that 11 men are dead, and no one is even talking about homicide.
I’m not a lawyer (unless you count one university course in international law – I sure don’t), but it doesn’t take a law degree to know that an explosion on an oil rig is the result of some kind of screw up. I severely doubt there was any malice involved in the deaths of Adam Weise, Jason Anderson, Dale Burkeen, Donald Clark, Roy Kemp, Stephen Curtis, Gordon Jones, Karl Kleppinger, Blair Manuel, Dewey Revette, and Shane Roshto. So, Murder One is probably not the appropriate charge. But surely, there’s a case to be made for manslaughter, or negligent homicide or some such charge. So, where’s the grand jury? Where’s the crusading DA? Hell, anyone seen a cop?
It’s the same sorry story with the disaster in the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. Coalmines don’t explode unless someone makes a severe bad mistake. The Massey folks had a pretty clear policy of resisting safety standards imposed by that damned interferin’ gummint in Washin’ton. Twenty-nine corpses later, anyone been called in for questioning by the sheriff even? Anyone want to take 5-to-1 odds no one will ever be charged with a criminal act in those deaths? Hell, I’ll give you 10-to-1 and pay in Chinese yuan if you should win.
These jobs are dangerous, no two ways about it. And sometimes, the deceased does something stupid to wind up dead – forgetting a basic rule or piece of equipment. That’s not what happened on the Deepsea Horizon. Nothing those 11 men could have done would make the rig explode and sink to the bottom.
Still, it’s like the old Clash standard goes, "Somebody got murdered/His name cannot be found/A small stain on the pavement/They’ll scrub it off the ground."
So, I’m sorry about the pelicans, and the shrimp boat captains, and I might even work up a sympathetic albeit short-lived feeling of empathy for the engineers at BP. But there are 11 men are wrongfully dead, and no one seems to give a good God damn. I guess there’s something wrong with me. The spill just doesn’t bug me as much as the killings that lead to it.