generalspeaking

Strong-Arming BP

State intervention of the kind that was seen in the United States last week, with President Barack Obama forcefully stating that his government will guarantee that the environmental disaster visited upon the coastal waters of the United States from the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher will be fully paid for by BP goes well beyond what generally occurs in countries of the West. In Russia, in Zimbabwe, in Venezuela, the kind of aggressive belligerence displayed has occurred in the past, and will doubtless occur again.

The difference is that the questionable lawfulness of a country nationalizing or revoking rights and agreements of international corporations that have heavily invested in those countries, and what has occurred in the United States with the Gulf disaster, diverge, as a clear symptom of a government that has been embarrassed, and which refuses to take responsibility for its own inadequate and inept handling of critical environmental safeguard. Covering its proverbial ass, as it were.

All the more embarrassing when this is the very government that insisted its environmental conscience would lead America to clean up its lax and wasteful energy outputs, and which, furthermore, intended to lead the country away from its reliance on cheap energy, equating that with oil and gas consumed by the nation and imported from countries with dire human rights records, and which, for the most part, are no friends of the United States.

A grim-faced President Obama bemoaned his country's oil habit, the importation of which comes to a staggering $1-billion daily. That is $1-billion that the United States sends abroad to countries from which emanate threats to world stability. And there's a catch-22 to that situation in that, without that $1-billion expenditure, the production capability of the United States, valued an awful lot higher, would come to a staggering halt. The symbiosis is what concerns the U.S.

Everything in the modern world is dependent on the energy supply. From heating and cooling, to transport and manufacturing, the world is entirely and completely dependent on a conventionally-dwindling energy supply. An alternative is available; to produce and consume less, to alter our 21st-Century mode of living, but this is one singularly unattractive to most. Even President Obama doesn't seriously contemplate slowing down the U.S. production engine.

He does, however, seek other alternatives, and they are solar, nuclear, wind, water-sourced and other not-yet imagined methods of energy production. Science has yet to get its creative juices flowing in that direction, although talk of greening energy sources has captured the imaginations of countries world-wide. In an ever-food-hungry world it makes no sense at all to divert crops to bio-fuels. In the process unduly utilizing other resources, like water, to end up with alternate energy.

President Obama's blasting of his own government's Minerals Management Service, as corrupted and improperly regulated doesn't pass the smell test, since this is after all, his own bailiwick, a government body tasked with very particular, some would even say, exacting responsibilities. And when those 'responsibilities' have been watered down, it is usually because some high-functioning government entity has guided it to that direction.

Obviously, President Obama doesn't quite buy into the ultimate responsibility claim that the buck stops at his desk in the Oval Office. In encouraging the House energy and commerce subcommittee to paint BP as black and bleak as possible, U.S. legislators are attempting to insist the corporation is only interested in 'cutting corners' to hoist its bottom line. And while that may be true to some great degree, it also reflects government's position. When tenders are put out it's the most 'efficient', and 'cost-effective' that get the nod. Greed is a two-way street.

Cutting corners, doing vital things on the cheap, gambling that the 'impossible' simply will not materialize, is taking a gamble on critical issues that should never be entertained. But they are, simply because both governments and corporations are run by human beings and human beings are notoriously fallible. As careless as BP appears to have been in overlooking issues it should have been on top of, it simply reflected the attitude of the government agency it worked with.

Which itself reflected the attitude of the government representing the needs of the taxpayers and the internal corporate interests that sustain the economy. And by shoving BP into the corner of ultimate responsibility, by making it grovel anxiously and unctuously to seek the pardon of those its carelessness has harmed, while giving the government a clean slate of responsibility, an object lesson is being taught to the energy industry.

One that government should be aware of; that the very industry it is so heavily reliant upon may, in future, be a little shy in future of imperilling themselves should anything go awry, and they are left holding the bag, on the cusp of seeing their stock market shares crash, their investors and stock-holders' expectations dashed, their very future as a functioning, global corporate interest in jeopardy.

Labels: Economy, Environment, Technology, Troublespots

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, June 20, 2010