Boycott BP.
Why?
Because BP must pay.
Eleven oil workers are dead. One of the largest oil spills in U.S. history continues to worsen. BP's oil gusher at the floor of the Gulf of Mexico may be 100 times worse than BP first estimated (and 20 times worse than the company presently claims). 100 times!
BP's oil gusher is now threatening coastal lands in Louisiana and is almost certain to destroy fisheries and the livelihoods of people who fish and shrimp in the Gulf, or rely on it for tourism business. The giant plumes of oil deep underwater will exact an unknown toll on sea life. And the spreading oil may even wind up in currents that eventually take it to the U.S. Eastern shores.
BP CEO Tony Hayward is sanguine about the whole problem. The Financial Times quotes him saying, "I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest."
A boycott will send a message to BP that its shoddy oversight of this project and its history of environmental and worker safety violations is unforgivable. Take the BP Boycott Pledge, and commit not to buy gas from BP for at least three months.
BP cares desperately about its public image. This is the company that has sought to rebrand itself as "Beyond Petroleum." BusinessWeek estimates the BP brand as worth $3.9 billion -- the highest among oil companies. "Not even an Alaskan oil spill or an explosion at a Texas refinery has put a dent in BP's strong [brand] performance," said BusinessWeek in 2006. This time must be different. A boycott will express the organized consumer anger that BP so fears.
This is a company that should fear the public's wrath, for the Deepwater Horizon blowout was a preventable disaster. While much remains unknown, there is mounting evidence that BP could have averted the catastrophe. BP made a conscious decision not to install a $500,000 safety device that could have prevented the blowout. There is good reason to believe BP's contractors on the Deepwater Horizon made multiple mistakes leading up to the disaster, but it is ultimately BP's job to make sure its contractors are exercising sufficient care. And Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon, told 60 Minutes that BP pressured its contractors to skirt other safety measures that might have prevented the disaster.
All this from a company that made $14 billion in profits in 2009 -- a bad year. First quarter profits in 2010 were over $6 billion.
After the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, Tony Hayward reportedly asked why bad things keep happening to BP.
But this is not a case of bad things happening to good people. BP has one of the worst environmental and safety records of any oil company operating in the United States. BP has pleaded guilty in just the last few years to two crimes and paid more than $730 million in fines, penalties and settlements for environmental crimes, willful disregard for workplace safety and energy market manipulation.
BP sometimes says it will pay for the harms caused by the spill, but at other times hedges what it may be willing to do. There will be litigation and fines, and BP won't have the final say on what it wants to pay. In any case, cash compensation for economic harms caused -- while necessary -- doesn't bring back destroyed ecosystems and does little to mitigate the company's culpability for not preventing the blowout in the first place.
The only good that can come out of the BP disaster is if it forces the United States to fundamentally reorient energy policy. As a matter of simple common sense, the Obama administration should reverse its new policy and stop offshore drilling expansion. More fundamentally, BP's oil gusher is yet another reminder of the need for a massive shift away from fossil fuels and to investments in efficiency and renewable energy. The disaster also emphasizes how crucial it is to hold Big Oil accountable. The BP boycott is a way to start.
There are no "good" oil companies, but BP is a particularly bad and irresponsible actor. Consumers should make it pay. Take the BP Boycott Pledge.
DO NOT BOYCOTT !!! THEY GO OUT OF BUSINESS THEY GET AWAY WITH IT !!!
Before you all start jumping on the bash BP and the UK bandwagon...consider the things that have been kept quiet.
1. The rig owner was a large US multinational... Transocean....who have relocated their HQ to Switzerland....why?
2. Haliburton have their fingers in this pie too.....yet again all is quiet
3. In India Union Carbide (now Dow) killed thousands of people, injured hundreds of thousands in a chemical and spill..... and didn't pay a penny in compensation or clean up...their insurers paid $450 million....a fraction of what is being done by BP here. The damage has not yet been cleaned up despite repeated efforts by the Indian government
4. In the UK Occidental killed 167 people in an oil rig disaster....compensation paid slowly and no critisicm by the british people.
Lets not deny how bad this slick is and we all hope its stopped quickly, but boycotts will make ordinary Americans suffer even more....its local people who own the gas stations...not BP
The uncomfortable thruth is that american companies were involved in this mess ..and they've not been clean when other disaters have taken place.
Boycotts achieve nothing and i'm afrraid to say that Obama has now placed an expectation in the worlds minds....that when an american company is at the source of another disaster...other governments will take the same steps to ensure that they too pay!
BOYCOTT BP, Join me and millions more
Before you broadly support so-called "renewables," I want to make sure you know just WHO is going to scoop up all the money from these horrible Big Solar projects in our beautiful healthy desert wilderness - BP, CHEVRON AND GOLDMAN SACHS. BP and Chevron are "BrightSource," Chevron has "Chevron Solar Solutions" and Goldman Sachs wholly owns Cogentrix. All of them are trying to monopolize our sunshine for the new energy era, killing our ecosystems for private profits, because that's all they do...
We need to fight hard for democratically-owned point of use solutions within our built environment like rooftop solar, efficiency upgrades, etc. and STOP Big Energy imperialism of our wilderness, whether it's the Gulf or the Mojave - it's not "renewable" if the tragic, irreversible death of millions of acres of an ecosystem happen at the beginning of the project. No accident required!
PACE loans and feed in tariffs will save the planet, the economy, democracy, jobs, property values and our precious open spaces. Big Solar will destroy all of them. Please choose carefully!
Most of the blame for the BP Oil Spill surely belongs to me because I created the need.
When I could have used products that don’t contain petroleum, I dressed in clothes made with petroleum, washed dishes and laundered clothes in detergent made with petroleum, cleaned my hair with shampoo made with petroleum and wore makeup containing petroleum. I am sorry for all the plastic bags I used when paper or cloth would work as well. I am sorry for all the plastic containers I could have used glass. I apologize for the petroleum based fertilizer I used in my garden, when natural alternatives were available. I am sorry for the lights I left on when they were not needed, for leaving my computer in hibernate mode instead of turning it off, and for driving when I could have walked or carpooled. I regret that in a quest to save money, I looked for lower cost items even if they had to be transported from other continents.
I will forever regret how thoughtlessly I surrounded myself with hundreds of products made with petroleum when alternatives are available. Taking personal responsibility will mean living with as few oil-based products as I can and asking my government to champion the search for natural products to replace the petroleum-based products that are poisoning our environment and ourselves.
Oil is expected to hit Bermuda this weekend, a scientist suggested: "constructing a long, floating boom between Key West and Cuba, in a V-shaped weir, the current can funnel the petroleum to a refinery.
Other booms can be constructed to direct petroleum farther out in the Gulf toward the Straits of Florida for collection. The booms can be maintained by a flotilla of fishing craft and pleasure craft."
This is much an emergency as wartime.
After Pearl Harbor was attacked, within months the Willow Run plant completed a bomber every 59 minutes.
Fortunately, what is needed now to fight the oil cataclysm and climate change is much simpler technology. However, gutsy, effective action is required, without delay!
See Moving Beyond Oil, and the complete comments by this scientist, Worst Case Scenario, both at: http://www.aesopinstitute.org
He also states: "The petroleum film will ...(cause) water temperature to rise accelerat(ing) Arctic Ocean melting. Mammals such as polar bears will probably not survive.
We may be watching (a) tipping point. This severe environmental catastrophe may turn into humanity’s greatest challenge."
The release of Methane from a tipping point may end millions of human lives, if not life on earth, in very few years.
With 24/7 development breakthrough alternatives can emerge from the laboratory. With a few wise, adventuresome, risk takers, they could begin to replace fossil fuels much faster. Perhaps, in time to protect most life on earth!