Image: The Boston Globe, via The Big Caption
My problem isn’t so much with the whole “Drill Baby, Drill” chanting crowd. My problem is that most are shocked and appalled at the Deepwater Horizon disaster. I mean, come on.
It is a testament to the very good safety measures in place on the thousands of super tankers and thousands of ocean oil rigs that this kind of thing doesn’t happen all the time. All that safety stuff is there because the failure modes of supertankers and oil rigs are catastrophic. But nothing is foolproof, people. When the gods of probability rolls snake-eyes, its pretty disingenuous to start laying blame all over the place.
Oh sure, BP leased the rig so it’s their problem and honestly or not they downplayed the scale of it until last Thursday. So, everyone — including the government — took them at their word. But when they finally went, “oh, shit!” people are all like, “Why didn’t the government act earlier? This is just like Katrina!”
Bullshit. We asked for this. You want to blame someone? Look in the mirror. We’re junkies for the black stuff. This kind of thing is just the usual cost of doing business for people with the monkey on their backs.
