Ramnath Subramanian: Plugging the Integrity Leak: Lessons from the Mahabharata
What strikes me about the Mahabharata is the emphasis on character development and integrity before skills are bestowed. Were this rule applied in business schools today, the BP rig leak may never have happened.
They are that desperate to look good in all of this
A piece yesterday in the Washington Post reveals that the Obama administration gave BP an exemption from any detailed analysis of the company’s environmental impact. Indeed, BP’s lease at Deeper Horizen received a “categorical exclusion” from the National Enviromental Policy Act:
BP’s exploration plan for Lease 206, which calls the prospect of an oil spill “unlikely,” stated that “no mitigation measures other than those required by regulation and BP policy will be employed to avoid, diminish or eliminate potential impacts on environmental resources.”
While the plan included a 13-page environmental impact analysis, it minimized the prospect of any serious damage associated with a spill, saying there would be only “sub-lethal” effects on fish and marine mammals, and “birds could become oiled. However it is unlikely that an accidental oil spill would occur from the proposed activities.”
Kierán Suckling, executive director of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said the administration’s waiver “put BP entirely in control” of the way it conducted its drilling.
“The agency’s oversight role has devolved to little more than rubber-stamping British Petroleum’s self-serving drilling plans,” Suckling said.
Here's what we have to gain from getting out of oil (Middle Eastern or otherwise): (1) no more dependence on decadent dictatorships - we can't really go around preaching peace and freedom when we're forced to publicly make out with crime lords, opium barons, and people who consider themselves living gods; (2) significantly reduced greenhouse gas pollution; (3) we can stop getting ripped off by OPEC; (4) we can avoid coming tensions with Russia, Canada, and Greenland over access to Arctic oil deposits; (5) the exorbitant prices our citizens pay to meet their daily energy needs will no longer line the pockets of speculators, currency manipulators, and day-traders; (6) we will have incentives to develop new energy technologies, which we can then market to the rest of the world.
Read more: http://www.theinductive.com/blog/2010/5/7/our-visceral-energy-policy.html
Domestic oil could supply about 2% of the US consumption (at full "drill, baby, drill" bore), so it's great that you think we can reduce consumption by 98%.
How?