JP talks BP
The new BBC News Page tells me this morning that BP faces an offshore drilling ban, thanks to new measures agreed by a US Congressional committee. Although the measures do not mention BP by name, they seem to be well crafted to target it, and this has really annoyed me.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that the Gulf oil spill is a disaster and that lessons need to be learned. Do I doubt that BP made mistakes? No. But neither do I doubt the fact that BP were under immense pressure to feed America’s insatiable appetite for oil, or the fact that many of the non-BP contractors also had their part to play.
If Mr Obama was a real man, he’d be finding other ways of improving the safety of all offshore drilling – and not just focussing on BP. He’d be considering the fact that the average US household has an annual carbon footprint of more than double the European equivalent, and wondering if such greedy demand for oil should continue to be encouraged.
Thanks to Obama’s bullying arrogance, American companies are relieved of their competition, the American people can still think that $2.54 a gallon is a lot to pay at the pumps, and the ignorant among them probably think that the British are entirely responsible for the Gulf Oil Spill, Global Warming and all sorts of other nasty disasters.
Lovely stuff.
Comments
At the top you rightly mention that the measures were agreed by the Committee on Natural Resources, so I'm not sure why the rest of your blog post descends into an anti Obama rant.
I agree that our oil dependence has led us to drill in riskier and riskier places, which makes disasters like the gulf spill more likely. However when you look at the difficulty Obama is having trying to get a cap and trade mechanism into the energy bill, I'm surprised that reserve your vitriol for him, and not the "drill baby drill" elements of American politics.
Nice to hear from you, as always. Are you keeping well?
My main reason for ranting about Obama stems from my feeling that he should be leading from the top. You may be right in your observation that the Committee on Natural Resources agreed the measures without his blessing, but Obama has himself been seen recently in the media openly criticising ‘British Petroleum’. I am told that the use of the full name (as opposed to ‘BP’) stems from the American custom when making a formal speech – which would be fair enough – but I’m still feeling some anti-British/anti-BP vibes.
I’m not well versed with Obama’s efforts to get a cap and trade mechanism into the energy bill (perhaps I should be) but the fact that I’ve not seen him openly criticise the thirst for oil in the wake of the spill fills me with disappointment – when he was inaugurated as President, I was full of hope that we had a man who would have the guts to invoke tough decisions.
He's overseen three fairly major pieces of legislation (financial stimulus, health care and now financial reform) and each one has been a struggle because 41 no votes in the senate can completely derail the 59 ayes. Every step of the way, his opponents scream socialism and accuse him of trying to destroy America.
With that political climate, Obama linking the gulf spill to the cap and trade bill could well harm the bill's chances.I think that goes some way to explaining why he doesn't give the speech that many in Europe would like to here.