The American Spectator : Sic Transit Tony Hayward: BP's Abused and Fumbling CEO

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Sic Transit Tony Hayward: BP's Abused and Fumbling CEO

But he committed far fewer gaffes than the august Obama administration.

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On July 26 -- the same day that news came out of Hayward's resignation -- ABC News carried a special report saying that oil from the spill was becoming "increasingly hard to find." "At its peak last month," ABC News reported, "the oil slick was the size of Kansas, but it has been rapidly shrinking, now down to the size of New Hampshire.… The numbers don't lie: two weeks ago, skimmers picked up about 25,000 barrels of oily water. Last Thursday, they gathered just 200 barrels." Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University, told ABC: "Mother Nature is doing what she is supposed to be doing and we're losing most of it [the spilt oil] to microbial degradation in the open ocean."

Admiral Allen -- who is still around to provide a sense of adult supervision in the cleanup operation and the final stages of permanently sealing the now-capped gusher -- agrees. The National Incident Commandant (his official title) observed: "It is becoming a very elusive bunch of oil for us to find and do anything about." Hundreds of skimmers have been idled as the size of the oil slick has diminished.

NONE OF THIS IS TO SUGGEST that the environmental damage -- and the damage to marine life -- won't be long-lasting and severe. Scientists worry that patches of oil below the surface could reduce oxygen levels and endanger many species of fish and marine mammals. No one can tell what the final outcome may be.

What is certain is that the blowout in the Gulf will be remembered for a very long time as an extremely traumatic and costly accident. Eleven crew members lost their lives in the ferocious explosion on the night of April 20 and thousands of people living and working along the Gulf coast have suffered real economic hardship. Without a doubt, as I endeavored to show in an earlier article in the Weekly Standard (entitled "Beyond Pathetic: BP's Gulf disaster was no surprise to those who understood the corporate culture," link), this was a preventable accident. This accident involved a whole chain of mistakes and failures of a human or managerial nature. It was human failure rather than technological failure. Was BP's top management (including both Hayward and his predecessor John Browne) at fault? Absolutely, say the insiders cited in my article.

One of the ways that BP began to go wrong almost a decade ago was in short-changing safety and basic engineering excellence in a dash for faster growth and higher profitability through international acquisitions and forging closer ties with political leaders in the United States and elsewhere. BP became more and more of a politicized, rent-seeking company and one that paid a lot of lip service to the easy part of safety (e.g. telling people to hold onto the hand rails and keep the lids fastened on their coffee cups) while slashing maintenance budgets on aging and rusty rigs.

It was under Browne's tenure as CEO that BP became the first major oil company to embrace "the clean energy future" that Obama and other leading Democrats so love to talk about. In fact, BP has been walking that walk and talking that talk for a dozen years already. BP never fails to play up all it is doing to promote solar panels, windmills, and other forms of alternate energy in its annual reports and other publications. Until the blowout, it went about calling itself the "green" petroleum company. The company and its people have been large political contributors. According to Politico, "During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and was the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past ten years."

In today's context, it is funny to see how President Obama and others have seized upon oil gusher as an excuse to revive cap-and-trade (or cap-and-tax). The fact is, with help from Enron, BP invented cap and trade and has been trying to sell it to Congress. Browne brags about it in his memoir published early this year:

In order to know where to reduce carbon emissions, we wanted to develop a simple emissions trading scheme. It would become the first of its kind. And the person instrumental in helping us set this up was Fred Krupp, head of the Environmental Defense Fund, an environment NGO. We had come full circle. This NGO had virtually single-handedly halted the construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline in the early 1970s.

And now BP has come full circle again. It is back to being regarded as evil incarnate by the left-wing politicians it has spent so much time and money courting over the past decade. As Tony Hayward could tell you, events since April 20 have shown just how ready this government is to throw its corporate benefactors under the bus for reasons of political expediency.

Andrew B. Wilson is a writer and business consultant.

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About the Author

Andrew B. Wilson is a freelance writer living in St. Louis.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (51) | Leave a comment

Brian J. Donovan| 7.30.10 @ 8:42AM

The following perspective on the BP Oil Spill Victim Compensation Fund may be of interest:

http://donovanlawgroup.wordpre.....egitimate/

Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 8:47AM

by Marcelo Rinesi
"We are going to burn all of the oil and coal we have, because their benefits as energy sources are concrete, immediate, and local, while their costs are gradual, delayed, and global.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but when facing similar choices, humankind has never chosen the more long-term view.
There are only three conceivable scenarios in which we stop burning fossil fuels at a massive scale. First and foremost, nobody will use fossil fuels if there’s a more effective energy source available. For that to happen, we need investments in science, development, and infrastructure that are orders of magnitude larger than what we’re doing now, because our technology isn’t there yet, and our energy transport infrastructure is still woefully inadequate.
A second scenario involves the impact of climate change being so harsh and destructive — and impacting directly the developed world in such a way — that the use of fossil fuels becomes an immediate casus belli. Of course, by then the proverbial horses will be out of the equally proverbial barn, but every megatonne of carbon is likely to have an impact, and, besides, this would be a matter of politics, not global climate management.
Fossil FuelsFinally, and perhaps most likely, we’ll stop burning fossil fuels simply because we’ll run out of them. More precisely, we’ll stop using them when they become so hard to extract that using alternative energy sources becomes more convenient. Given how bad those alternative energy sources are at the moment, by that moment we might also be well into the catastrophic climate change scenario.
What happens afterward will depend on whether or not we have upgraded our energy infrastructure by then. Make no mistake, we can and should try to get as energy-efficient as we can, but to an enormous degree civilization is simply about energy per capita, which is one of the reasons why we no longer have to dedicate 90% of our population to growing food. In terms of quality of life and political freedom, 17th-century Europe, Japan, and China are perhaps the highest you can go without massive non-human energy sources. If we have found a viable alternative to fossil fuels by the time or before we have used most of them, then we will “only” have to deal with climate upheaval of a scale unprecedented in human history. If we haven’t, then we’ll have to deal with climate upheaval of a scale unprecedented in human history… while dealing with an economic depression that will make 1930 look like a Golden Age, and WWII a minor inconvenience. And, needlessly to say, the longer we burn fossil fuels, the deeper the climate catastrophe is going to be.
The time for smooth, convenient solutions was decades ago, when scientists first began to raise the alarm about the greenhouse effect and peak oil, and the twin approaching disasters of a changing climate and an energy crunch. By now, the most we can do, and the least we have to, is to scramble however we can. Yes, even during a global recession, and even during the next ones. If you think upgrading the energy foundations of a planetary civilization is hard during an economic recession, imagine how hard it’ll be with a fraction of the energy available, and climate-related disruptions erupting everywhere.
We need to make extraordinary advances in energy sources, and we have to do if fast, or, to put it simply, the 22nd century will look like the 17th. We need to constrain our use of fossil fuels as much as possible. It’s one thing to have to deal with an oncoming train, and quite another to be running toward it. And we need to become much better at handling our atmosphere and ecosystems, mass human migration and infrastructure development, and political coordination and humanitarian support, because the latter half of the century is shaping up to be one ugly mess. We are in this fix because a few short decades ago we did nothing. If we do nothing, or even if we just don’t do enough, the fix we’re going to be a few short decades from now will be much, much worse.
If we fail, the best case scenario is losing most of what we’ve accomplished in the last few centuries. In the worst case, we also lose everything else.

Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 9:49AM

(Hilarity to ensue)

Thomas| 7.30.10 @ 10:56AM

Actually, you are spot on, Alan, as they say across the pond. Something should have been done decades ago. But, I am not sure if you are entirely aware of what you actually said.

There is a cheap, efficient and, overall, safe alternative energy source available; and it has been available for the last 50 years; nuclear energy. Why hasn't a single nuclear facility been built, in the U.S., in the last 25 years? Know the answer? Environmental action groups. The same people that scream about the harm caused by use of fossil fuels also scream about the possible harm done by nuclear facilities, dams, tide motors, solar cells and wind turbines. They shout for the use of alternative energy sources and then, when one is proposed, they shout even louder for its abandonment due to negative environmental impact. People, who demand that something be done about what they perceive to be a problem and then turn around and demand that what is proposed must not be done either, have no credibility on the subject.

There is a crisis brewing regarding the use of fossil fuels for energy, but not for the reasons that you mentioned. The true problem lies in the fact that more and more of the world is becoming dependent upon hydrocarbon construction. That keyboard you used to type your post, oil based plastic. The monitor you are reading this on, oil based to a large degree. The carpet your feet are on, petroleum based. The skin of many vehicles, including cars and aircraft, petroleum based materials. Your clothing, water bottle, the water connection to your home, all petroleum based today. As more and more of civilization's consumer items are made directly from petroleum, the use of that petroleum, for fuel, becomes more expensive. Eventually, the cost of petroleum will preclude it from being an economically viable source for power generation. So, as long as we keep making things out of petroleum, the drilling will continue. It is not just power that is at stake here.

What to do to limit the use of fossil fuels? Try an alternative energy source that really works, nuclear power. See, I recommended a viable alternative energy source, that exists today. Not a nebulous cry for a miraculous, undiscovered clean, cheap limitless energy source; but a real, cheap, near limitless energy source that actually exists. Is there a better energy source out in the universe somewhere? Undoubtedly. And, being the inquisitive species that we are, we will eventually find it. But, until them, you have to do the best you can with what you have.

Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 9:48AM

...just you watch as I get cluster****ed below all day.
Line up for your turn, guys.

Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 11:13AM

BTW, Thomas, I didn't write the above comment-- no one seemed to have noticed it was by Marcelo Rinesi. The one right below is by Dave Brin:

"The denier movement pretends to be about asking honest questions about a scientific matter that is both complex and (possibly) fraught with systematic errors.I believe that honest skeptics can play an important role there. climate change image

But denialism is also about preventing the community consensus in atmospheric science from affecting public policy. They insist on a burden of proof that says 99% of skilled experts in a field are insufficient, and that a slim majority of science-illiterate politicians (during the Bush era) and now a 40% minority of science-clueless politicians should have absolute power to ignore the best scientific advice of the time.

This legerdemain and sleight of hand over burden of proof is dismal, ignorant, dishonest, and purely a product of left-right fixated ideology.

1. By any standard of logic, the burden of proof falls upon those dissenting from the current standard model, especially when the percentage of experts hewing to the SM is in the high 90s and when that field has a recent track record of being very very very very smart. (e.g. atmospheric studies of far planets, correlating perfectly with weather models that have improved reliability from three hours to four days (!) in just a generation.)

2. When the precautionary principal shows us a genuine (if as-yet unproved) chance of catastrophic risk, prudent measures are called for before the risk is “proved.” Yes, there can be arguments over other tradeoffs like economic impact. But when the denier side was responsible for (a) catastrophically bad economic management and an economic theory (supply side) that always and universally failed, and (b) deliberate obstruction of ANY climate palliation measures, even basic research…
...then that side merits very little credibility under our present conditions.

3. Since most (admittedly not all) climate palliation measures are blatantly “things we ought to do anyway” (TWODA), in order to seek economic success, reduce dependence upon foreign petro-lords, dominate new industries and make a safer world, this obstructionism is especially nonsensical. Indeed, this is the smoking gun proof that koolaid-drinking deniers are parroting talking points from a conniving oligarchy that is spreading sedition purely for personal benefit. Those who dance under such marionette strings may not be directly culpable. But neither do we have to give credibility to puppets.

(An aside: I have yet to see anyone, on either side of the debate, consider the Big Tobacco Precedent; that those who have used very similar tactics to obstruct and delay action on climate change may be gambling their bankrolls. If HGCC does prove to be calamitous, an angry world may seek tort redress from those who blocked palliation efforts. Think about it.)

Thomas| 7.30.10 @ 11:23AM

So, are you standing by the statements of Mr. Rinesi and Mr Brin or did you post them in an attempt to discredit those remarks?

Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 11:39AM

I'm no scientist, obviously, so I go by the most persuasive rhetoric available at a given time, without reading hundreds of documents. Brin & Rinesi provided the last two pieces I read, and they were persuasive about (admittedly) very long term trends Since I'm extremely skeptical on the speculation involved in long term trends, I do not know what to think, Thomas.
Do you have it all figured out yet?

Thomas| 7.30.10 @ 12:43PM

Nope. And that is the point. No one knows. We are forced to make predictions based upon evidence that in some way relates to historical fact to give us a realistic basis upon which to attempt to predict future events. Unfortunately, our historical knowledge is limited. Add to that the fact that human analysis is colored by preconceived notions and active prejudices and our ability to accurately predict the outcome of any long term trend or future occurrence is reduced to just slightly better than that based solely upon chance itself.

Based upon geological history, it is clear that the Earth has been struck numerous times by rather substantial pieces of astronomical debris. In at least one case, there appears to be significant evidence that such a strike led, irrevocably, to the extinction of nearly all life upon this planet. Will such a strike happen again? Probably. When will it happen? This can not be predicted based upon the information at hand. Will mankind be able to prevent it? Again, this is unknown. Will mankind even be around when it occurs? Again, unknown. Then there is the postulation, based upon extrapolations made by observing celestial phenomena, that our Sun will go nova, or, at least, expand to the point that our planet will be uninhabitable by our species. Once again, the time and effect upon the human species can only be guessed at.

But, based upon the logic applied to the theory of man-made global warming, and previously to the theory of man-made global cooling [c. 1975], by their supporters, we should be actively seeking a defense for both the predicted astronomical catastrophes. But, such is not the case. In fact, just the reverse is occurring. Once again, human prejudices and psychological factors intrude on logic thought.

Now, per your last post, you have intimated that you do, indeed, agree with the substance of the passages by Mr. Rinesi and Mr. Brin. That is fine. If you are going to post another's work to buttress or illustrate your own point of view, that is entirely acceptable. However, once you have done that, you can not back away from that writer's statements. These men both believe that global warming is caused, exclusively, by human activity, in particular the use of carbon based fuel sources. Yet, they apparently have no answer to that source of "pollution" other than to force the reduction in the use of petroleum fuels, without the availability of any alternate power source that meets with their approval. In the case of Mr. Brin, his piece is full of factual historical inaccuracies. It is simply a propaganda piece that completely ignores the actual numbers of scientists who do not agree with the findings of the pro-human causation global warming [the majority of scientists who have spoken on the subject disagree with that stance and, in fact, the raw reports issued by the conference participants in both the UN Climate Change Conferences in 2007 and 2009 clearly stated that there was no clear evidence that global warming was tied to human activity] and even injects the falsehood that supply side economics was a failure [even though its principles have been shown to stimulate economic growth in a much more stable, and long lasting, manner than government controlled economic practices]. It is a defense of the human-created global warming theory, and not a very good one at that.

But, the need for new energy sources is very real. Fossil fuels are finite and, to a lesser extend, so is nuclear fuel sources. At our current level of technology, all other postulated alternative energy sources are insufficient for the needs of the human race. It would be nice if some form of clean, cheap [preferably free] abundant energy was known. But that is not the case. So, once again, you have to do what you can with what you have.

JP| 7.30.10 @ 2:57PM

Alan,
I find it somewhat puzzeling that people who pride themselves on being cool rationalists, who only wish to discover the facts would resort to such rhetoric devices best reserved for the irrational partisans. The term Denier is wrought with an entire emotional baggage. It's intent is to inject political emotion into the debate when raw facts fail. Such luminaries in the Climate Science field such as Dr Phil Jones, Dr Michael Mann, Dr Jame Hansen, and Doctor Trenbeth all have used this term in thier public utterences. And the victims of such libel are not the rabid partisans of Fly-Over Country but other professionals whose credentials in the field of science tower above everyone else. I am speaking of the esteemed Dr Lindzen (MIT), Dr. Spence (Univ of Alabama), Dr Christy (NASA), Dr McKitrick Guelph University, Dr Monkton (Oxford), Dr von Storch (Max Planck Institute) just to name a few of the thousands who question AGW.

All look at the world of applied Climate Science, Dendroclimatology, and Paleo-Climatology reveals a large group of scientists who are no more than partisans and grant whores. Dr Phil Jones correspondence revealed to the world the ture nature of these people.

So please, mention the term Denier no more.

carnot| 7.30.10 @ 4:19PM

and the reference is precisely why fewer and fewer take climate change ideologues seriously. skeptics from MIT are not Bush hacks.

as for the gloom and doom? so what? there's no God...no afterlife...no absolute morality....right? what difference is there between working at the coop for 50-60 years and off'ing every Liberal one knows in the few decades left to humanity? there is no right or wrong. just scientific community consensus.

Alan Brooks| 7.31.10 @ 4:45PM

Thomas, I didn't write I agreed with Rinesi and Brin, only that they were persuasive, albeit I don't know what to think. The question is, why post their pieces here at all? because they were the last two I had read
(perhaps the last on the topic I WILL read).

Ken (Old Texican)| 7.30.10 @ 9:20AM

Alan,
As usual, total BS from you.

Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 9:41AM

Yeah, you the guy who wrote "anyone who votes for Obama will burn in Hell..."
You have the personality of the character Leatherface in Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Ken (Old Texican)| 7.30.10 @ 11:52AM

Actually,
I did not write about burning in hell by voting for Obama.....heh...but maybe I should have.

Let me correct the oversight.
Obama is a committed communist, (pardon the shorthand), and he won't call out Islamics as a tool of Satan they are.
If you voted for Obama...you were stuck on stupid. God forgives stupidity I understand, but He will...let you turn your back on Him and go to hell.
Your choice.

DRed| 7.30.10 @ 12:00PM

Commited communist? Really? Do you have any idea what a communist is?

Bydand76| 8.1.10 @ 10:40AM

I got a pretty good idea DRed -douchebag!

Do you?

I got no problems removing them either!

Pro Libertate!

carnot| 7.30.10 @ 4:22PM

ken...these cats are amusing beyond belief. after solemnizing about how smart and informed they are - they consistently follow the dumbest path available: alienating the majority of folks they need to play along.

Alan Brooks| 7.31.10 @ 4:59PM

You guys might be more informed, but how disingenuous you are. Old Tex writing he never said voting for Obama will get you into Hell, when it's in the archives. I wrote that I didn't vote for Obama in '08, but that I will in '12, as the GOP will screw it up again-- they are sure to, there's no Cold War to unify them per Reagan. And Carnot's senile finger wagging:
"they consistently follow the dumbest path available: alienating the majority of folks they need to play along."
Majority? what majority?
but "play along" is correct, it is play; a game of sending checks to the campaigns of GOP egotists so they can fail to get elected. Like, you were surprised a farty old fart such as Dole didn't make it in '96? You chump- o -matics.

JOTHEPRO| 7.30.10 @ 9:28AM

I am new at this,but I have been reading AM SPEC for years.So here goes. Alan Brooks is an idiot.

Bob K.| 7.30.10 @ 10:56AM

True.

Don't bother responding to him.

Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 11:17AM

oh, sure! they are going to lay off on me.

Prometheus| 7.30.10 @ 9:31AM

Good Grief! You really are objecting to the discovery of fire. There has been global warming and cooling over the ages. Caarbon is not the culprate. So called ecologists just hate the periodic table. Atomic power can generate energy better than coal. The rest is nonsense. Someday we may have fusion power but it's a long way off. For flight we need petrol. I suppose we could use trolleys and each drive a "bumper car"
200years ago, Voltaire said of Rousseau,"he allmost had me convinced I should go about on all fours.." That's where the discussion still stands.

Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 9:37AM

"Carbon is not the culprit"

Correct, however it exacerbates.

RDN in Houston| 8.1.10 @ 12:31PM

Brooks, you are a leftist troll. Go crawl back under your creaky bridge at MoveOn.org, the Daily Kos or where ever you crawled out. You are like a tur# in a punch bowl and you add nothing of any use to serious discussion.

Liberal Reader| 7.30.10 @ 9:38AM

Alcohol will totally destroy what was just an average mind and Alan didn't start with even that.

Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 9:45AM

You mean I possess a useless mind like Trig Palin?

Liberal Reader| 7.30.10 @ 9:51AM

Alan is aiming too high.

Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 9:57AM

btw, can't you do better than 'Liberal Reader'? if someone at the New Republic called himself 'Conservative Reader', bloggers there would ask the same thing. Besides, why liberal reader, and not liberal thinker? are you only a liberal reader when you read a conservative blog?

Baal kroons| 7.30.10 @ 12:46PM

You go girl.

Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 9:51AM

Bah, if Liberal Reader had what it takes, he'd be writing articles, not blogging.

Roy| 8.1.10 @ 6:16PM

these type of personal flame wars always make me laugh because, due to TAS' failure to implement any type of authentication, I am always pretty sure that at least half the posts are made by somebody other than who is listed at the top..rofl.

Stan Redmond| 7.30.10 @ 10:38AM

Obama is shameless. What is Hayward to do with the full weight of the Obama boot on his neck? Obama is kicking his ass extorting billions of dollars rather then supporting him to "PLUG THE DAMN HOLE." OK Hayward made some silly statements under incredible pressure. He's only human. But obama [pbuh] insults all Americans on a daily basis. Calls Black people "mongrels." Condones voter intimidation by blacks. Calls cops stupid. Calls doctors greedy butchers. Considers veterans and right wingers potential terrorists whiloe IGNORING the Islamic threat. Ignores the will of the people. Signs anti-constitution laws. CRIES AND WHINES on a daily basis. Blames everyone else for his idiocy. ALLOWS the US to be run over with illegal aliens. I can't even make an intelligent statement I'm so angry at his administration.

How many jobs has BP created? How many will Hayward create in Russia? A HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN THE LIAR IN CHIEF!!!

Obama you are a liar and an incompitent thug.

DRed| 7.30.10 @ 12:07PM

" I can't even make an intelligent statement I'm so angry at his administration. "

Couldn't have put it any better myself

carnot| 7.30.10 @ 4:26PM

I have no doubt but that you identify with the unintended humor 100%!!!

Alan Brooks| 7.31.10 @ 5:02PM

Now you are cooking with gas, carnot.

Kellee| 7.30.10 @ 11:15AM

Alan - Keep repeating this over and over "Day After Tomorrow is only a movie, it's not real". There's no monster under your bed and Big Foot does not exist.

We can't even predict earthquakes and you think there is a brain out there that can actually predict, end of the world as we know it, catastrophic disaster due to the fact we drive cars and use good ole fashion gas to fill them up. You’ve been duped.

I want to add, I do think we should invest in alternative energy sources. Not because of impending doom, but because at some point (very far down the road) we will run out of these resources.

JP| 7.30.10 @ 2:41PM

The market will determine when and if alternative energy sources are needed. The fossil fuel industry (esp those who extract it) know better than anyone how much fuel we have, how much we can extract in the future (and at what cost), and how much we will need. If there was even an inkling that we are within 100 years of "peak oil", oil prices would soar. And by soar, I mean $300-500 per gallon price range. And the minute they happens, "alternative energy" becomes feasible. Not because of politics or the envirorment, but for the simple reason the market priced it so.

carnot| 7.30.10 @ 4:29PM

I don't think sooooooo. Obama is going to kill the market. State Enterprises gonna fix everything!!

As Kurtz might say "The Irony. The Irony." The equivalent of DoD bureaucracies Liberals so hate will nevertheless work wonders! DoD for health....DoD for Alternative Energy....DoD for Automobiles...DoD for Financial Services....cuz well....everyone just wants to work as honestly and as hard as they can for The executive, legislative and judicial ruling classes!

Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 11:24AM

"I want to add, I do think we should invest in alternative energy sources. Not because of impending doom, but because at some point (very far down the road) we will run out of these resources."

This is in some contradiction to your first paragraphs; if it were "very far down the road" it wouldn't matter much if at all, so investing in alternative energy sources would be almost jumping the gun--
premature.

Kellee| 7.30.10 @ 12:16PM

No, it's called being responsible, preparing for the future, understanding the resources that we have and what needs to be done to protect our way of life. There is no rush order on these alternative investments - just something that should be done over time and gradually introduced into our communities. Not because we've destroyed our planet. She'll be alive and kicking long after we are dead and gone, but because the reality is oil will not be around forever and why wait until we're down to the last 100 bbls before we do something about it?

carnot| 7.30.10 @ 4:40PM

ummm...not quite. there's an opportunity cost to everything. it's not whether you address a problem, but to what level you address it and the value of lost opportunities.

Alan Brooks| 7.31.10 @ 5:07PM

"There is no rush order on these alternative investments - just something that should be done over time and gradually introduced into our communities."

Quite reassuring-- like David GergenSpeak.

Alan Brooks| 7.30.10 @ 11:30AM

Kellee,
depends what you mean by very far down the road (time frames are weasely): if I were to write "the Chinese might colonize Mars by the 23rd century, so we'd better start a Mars Program in America soon", what would you reply?

Kellee| 7.30.10 @ 12:13PM

Let them have Mars. We'll save our money to buy China when they move. It's a win, win for everyone. They have more space and we have more space.

On a serious note, a Mars Program can't really be compared to the energy topic. It is known oil will not be abundant in the future. Who knows when, but it will be gone, and honestly that’s enough information to start investing for our future. This Mars Program would be an investment in a race to say we did it first, of course, for the sake of scientific exploration with a possibility that we could maybe discover something spectacular after our billions of dollars are spent, maybe.

Alan Brooks| 7.31.10 @ 5:11PM

um, Mars and oil were not a... direct ... comparison. You diminished your message by writing "there is no rush order on these alternative investments - just something that should be done over time and gradually introduced into our communities."

PABLUM.
MUSH.

DatsunMark| 7.30.10 @ 12:51PM

Did anyone notice how much oil was coming from that (1) well? We should be drilling the bejeasus out of the Gulf...but no...we have Obama and his crooks to protect us. Frankly, this couldn't have happened to a better company (BP), they were so in-bed with these people and to get thrown under the bus...poetic justice.

JP| 7.30.10 @ 2:44PM

We are drilling there -we have thousands of wells all over the Gulf. And I might add, it is quite expensive, dangerous, and potentially harmful to the enviorment. We drill there for the simple fact that Congress and the EPA forbid drilling on most lands and near shore locations.

carnot| 7.30.10 @ 4:36PM

ever check out www.fws.gov or listen to some recent evidence on what is going on in the Gulf? The scientific community was way off (or dishonest once again) in its prognostication about environmental catastrophe. the real cost in all of this (reinforced by the East Anglia fabrications/manipulations) is that the next time the "scientific" community trips into being right about something apocalyptic folks like me will ignore them anyway - their credibility is shot.

Emma| 8.1.10 @ 1:54PM

"If BP's CEO was to be pilloried for taking any kind of a break during the midst of the crisis, why not the president?"

You.have.got.to.be.kidding. Is this a serious query?

Doesn't the questioner understand that no one is permitted to question the motives, qualifications, decisions, inactions, stupid moves, unAmerican policies or identity of "The Gray President?"