Over the years I have realized that in my lonliness, im finding the most to think about, to ponder over, to talk about.
Ive been recently thinking of the Oil spills and the devestation that they have caused.
Like the Exxon in the Alaskan bay, or the one in the mediterranean and most recently publicized, the BP spill near the southern coast of the United States.
Were seeing 100's of pictures of aquatic life, like birds, fish, whales, plants bieng affected.
I feel so so sad! such cruelty!
Also, unethical conduct and corruption in large companies such as BP is unimaginable.
The fine is a measely punishment for a company that size.
I read yesterday about how theyre hiring prisoners to clean-up their mess. Literally!
For this cheap labour BP earns tax credits worth 2400USD per labourer. Also they may earn back upto 40% of the wages theyre paying to each prisoner. They will work 12 hours a day and 6 days a week. It pisses me off and makes me sick
For this cheap labour BP earns tax credits worth 2400USD per labourer. Also they may earn back upto 40% of the wages theyre paying to each prisoner. They will work 12 hours a day and 6 days a week. It pisses me off and makes me sick
More devastating to me are the effects that will last well over a century. To me this is akin to a Chernobyl or a Bhopal Gas tragedy over a region a hundred times larger!
What shit timming! the Oil Spill conincides with the spawning of the Highly endangered Blue Fin Tuna. The gulf is one of their preferred spawning grounds and the population of the fish has already plummeted down a shocking 90% in the last 40 years or so. This mistake which would probbaly cost BP a years profit would cost this species its existence. Scientists arent so confident that the population could ever recover after this Oil spill. Dolphins are behaving intoxicated and spraying oil through their blow holes, Turtles and Birds covered in Oil are washing up upon the shore.
So what does BP do? firstly down plays the amount of oil leaked, to avoid hefty fines, does not allow scientists to assess the leakage saying it will disturb their capping efforts which should be the first priority and uses a disperant that is controversial and not even allowed in the UK, but approved safe by the EPA. They say they have used Corexit as it was readily available in the week the tragedy occured. What not many know is that they stock it in huge quantites because of close business ties with its manufacturers.
The spill has affected wildlife and economies of the southern states that depend on the sea. They have some of USA's largest fishing communities. So far 200 odd suits have been filed and over 20,000 claims have been made. 9000 have been settled.
The sad part is, in the greed for oil, a large company uses "more economically viable" building materials around the well, which are cheap but unsafe, fails to follow basic protocol and carry certain safety equipment that they would normally carry at even much lesser depths, rapes the environment, the government is quick to blame but complacent in response and while fines will run into billions of USD, the costs of clean-up will run deeper. It will take decades, perhaps even a century to bring things to an equilibirium, or perhaps things may never be the same again.
As it is impossible to remove salt from the water once dissolved, remenants of this devastation may always exist. The oxygen levels in these waters will drop and the chemical composition will alter. This could amount to circumstances that we will only have to sit back and watch out for.
For we are humans, not Gods. We may have sent a man on the moon, or built a station in space but we cannot stop an accident which is theoretically as simple as putting a well fitted cap over a leaking mouth.
So until we may learn to control what happens here on this planet, in this time, we should probably restrict ourselves from venturing out in the galaxy because God knows what can happen there. I dont care about how many people may die or how much money we may loose. Because a 100 or even a 10,000 out of 6 billion will not jeopardize the existence of our kind. And money, well we will just print some more (were so good at it anyway). But if things change out there, we will have altered billions of years of stellar evolution. I mean weve already got garbage floating around in space and I think until we are confident enough to solve our problems here on earth we should probably not go create more where we may run out of breath!
