Addicted to Oil

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/panel-reveals-litany-of-failures-on-oil-spill/article1566781/

A litany of failures in the blow-out preventer led to the catastrophic spill from BP’s leaking Gulf of Mexico well, a powerful Congressional investigations panel revealed on Wednesday, suggesting that BP and Transocean officials overlooked warning signs and then disagreed on what to do about them. “Our investigation is at its early stages, but already we have uncovered at least four significant problems with the blow-out preventer used on the Deepwater Horizon drill rig,” said Bart Stupak, the Michigan congressman who chairs the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the House of Representatives’ energy committee.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/bp-fought-safety-measures-deepwater-oil-rigs/story?id=10521078

BP, the company that owned the Louisiana oil rig that exploded last week, spent years battling federal regulators over how many layers of safeguards would be needed to prevent a deepwater well from this type of accident.  In a letter sent last year to the Department of the Interior, BP objected to what it called "extensive, prescriptive regulations" proposed in new rules to toughen safety standards. "We believe industry's current safety and environmental statistics demonstrate that the voluntary programs…continue to be very successful."

We don't let corporations and individuals manufacture and sell crustal meth or crack cocaine if we can prevent it.  We consider it immoral or unethical - no matter big the profits.  Period. If I could pass regulations, BP would have cause to complain about "extensive, prescriptive regulation!"

Why aren't we regulating drilling for oil / mining the tar sands/ and the uses of oil ?  We've only got so much of the stuff left - why waste it? We're gonna need lots of energy in the near future to save something form the wreckage.  We need  to use the energy  from oil  to build light rapid transit -  move our coastal cities inland or shore up defences such as levees and dikes - and create wind farms and solar energy farms.  Climate change is already happening  - we need to deal with it.   And we need to deal with corporations that pollute the environment and ignore worker safety.  Eleven men died on the Deepwater Horizon -   think about  ecosystem death and destruction in the Gulf of Mexico - and for what?  Higher emissions of greenhouse gases from our Hummers?