Making It Right?

Recently, British Petroleum has been buying full-page ads in major newspapers nationwide to tell us the company is accepting responsibility for the oil spill laying waste to the Southern coast of the nation. I suppose we should be thankful that—hopefully—BP will not, like Exxon, choose to draw out litigation for decades. But to the latest headline for their ads that reads, “We’ll Make It Right,” I say, “Bullshit.” 

What is happening as hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil leak daily into the Gulf of Mexico is more than a tragedy, more than a disaster. It’s a catastrophe of unknowable proportions. We have no experience dealing with the ramifications of such a spill. We have no clear view as to what will happen this decade, or even this century. The harm being caused will influence life on and in the Gulf—and in this and other countries—for decades to come. We are looking at a possible extinction of marine life in an area the size of Texas.  We cannot foretell the depredations as currents pick up the oil and carry it out to western Florida and, from there, south.  Make no mistake, this spill, caused by greed, carelessness, poor planning and the monumental hubris only a multinational can muster, is a planet-altering event. 

After four failed attempts to cap the flow, experts now believe the well will keep gushing until August before it is stopped and by the time this is over—if the next attempts are successful in the foreseeable future—BP will have loosed more than 80 million gallons of crude into Gulf waters.  Crude oil kills by asphyxiation or poison. Plant life gets no oxygen, fish can’t breathe, birds can’t fly and ingest the stuff while trying to clean themselves. Mammal life fares no better. The economy of fishing and beach towns essentially closes down. One tourist shop on the coast reported making $26 on May 30^th, down from $800 to $1000. Expect to see the price of fish and shrimp triple as importers go farther afield to buy their supplies, which will in turn lead to the closure of mom and pop eateries. Meanwhile the fishers and boat handlers, many of whom are temporarily working cleaning up the oil, will soon be unemployed.

So the question is, how exactly will BP make this right? To the best of my knowledge, the company is hardly in the miracle-making business. No a single dead bird will rise to fly again. Fish populations, once decimated, take decades return to normal and it’s pretty unlikely that BP—or anyone else—will be around to offer work to the unemployed. Owners of vacation homes will lose both summer rental incomes and equity. Will BP be there to offset these people’s financial losses? Probably not. Look for a flurry of early activity followed by a throwing up of hands. Think Katrina. Think New Orleans which in August 2005 was partially destroyed. The city is still not what it once was. 

Somewhere in the deep dark hallways of government, BP and government attorneys are already meeting to discuss the scope of future lawsuits. Regardless of the tough talk both parties have engaged in recently, the bottom line is that all these guys are on the same side. Neither the oil folks nor the Justice Department attorneys have an interest in driving the company to the brink of bankruptcy, which means whatever the amount of payments, it will never be enough to “make this right.”  Things simply cannot be made right.  But maybe the damage can be alleviated. Payments to beach towns, over time, might be helpful. Retraining for workers who will no longer earn their livings from the waters should be encouraged, as should buybacks of homes and working boats. One thought has been to force the oil giants to put very large amounts in escrow to pay for future damages. This is not a bad notion, since the current spill will not be the last one.

No one can make this right. But maybe, just maybe, they can make it not quite so horrible.