–Recast to be slightly less surreal
Nov. 4-6, 2022 — Opinion by Mathew Carr
The UK is arguably the US’s butler.
Want some bidding done? Get Britain on it.
Fed raises interest rates by 0.75 of one percent? The UK follows, precisely, one day later, earlier this week.
Mainstream media messaging on climate and nature is better in the UK than in America, though it’s still not good.
Sometimes, America demonises fossil fuels. But only in popular culture. Mostly, it demonises climate action.
Doing climate action in reality, and recognizing their obligation to do so, is too confronting for Americans, who can’t handle the truth…apparently.
The BP oil spill. 2010.
I was thinking about Britain’s butler status while watching the cartoon episode of South Park focussed on that environmentally damaging event, the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, more than a decade ago.
The episode mocked how heros are turned into villains, it exposed how the U.S. capitalist and political system is in dire need of repair.
British Petroleum and its pension-fund owners payed a big price in the real version of the Gulf of Mexico spill story. The butler does what the boss wants.
Massive US firms are apparently allowed more freedom to get away with damage, such as in the case of Chevron’s damage to the Amazon rainforest.
I publish below a video and some snips, because the episode said a lot about the dire state of the world, ahead of next week’s climate talks in Egypt.
Drill, baby, drill.
Kill, wildlife, kill.
BP apologises.
Captain Hindsight says drilling needs more safety.:
But others demonise Captain Hindsight:
[Speaking of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, the Wikileaks whistleblower on climate and war crimes languishing in an English jail, was accused of sex crimes (as well as hacking). The US’s bulter has agreed to extradite Assange to the US, a decision which is being appealed.
In contrast, the US refuses its butler’s request to extradite an American woman who fled the UK after apparently causing the death of a teenager in Britain in 2020 because of her dangerous driving.]
Back to the cartoon-version of the spill …BP makes “clever” name change from Beyond Petroleum to Dependable Petroleum…(the acronym sounds like deplete).
DP then drills on the moon, wreaking more havoc:
BP apologies, again.
Captain who?
The hero fails.
Reality:
Britannica snips (unedited, emphasis added):
It later emerged through documents released by Wikileaks that a similar incident had occurred on a BP-owned rig in the Caspian Sea in September 2008. Both cores were likely too weak to withstand the pressure because they were composed of a concrete mixture that used nitrogen gas to accelerate curing.
Horizon:
…Once released by the fracture of the core, the natural gas traveled up the Deepwater rig’s riser to the platform, where it ignited, killing 11 workers and injuring 17. The rig capsized and sank on the morning of April 22, rupturing the riser, through which drilling mud had been injected in order to counteract the upward pressure of oil and natural gas.
And….
The commission’s final report, issued in January 2011, attributed the spill to a lack of regulatory oversight by the government and negligence and time-saving measures on the part of BP and its partners.
A report released … by the Joint Investigation Team of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) and the U.S. Coast Guard emphasized BP’s ultimate responsibility for the disaster. (BOEMRE had supplanted the Minerals Management Agency, which had regulated drilling before the spill, in June 2010.)
…In 2020, 10 years after the disaster, the former members of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling noted that the U.S. Congress had failed to act on most of the recommendations in the final report. However, they did note that the oil industry had improved well containment capability.
CarrZee: This spill resulted massive damage to nature.
Yet, the emissions being spewed into the atmosphere at record or near-record levels are just as real, if not as physically dirty as black oil sludge, explosions and death.
BP’s blowout resulted in one of the biggest wealth transfers from the UK to the US.
There now needs to be a huge wealth transfer to the emerging world from the rich people most responsible for the climate crisis.
Why are cartoons apparently the only media allowed in America to do the global climate-damaging mockery, the climate educating.
Key Questions
Will the climate baddies keep winning over the try-hard heros?
Where is the leadership of US President Joe Biden?
Or what about the Republican leadership in the same country?
Is it too much to ask for some leadership ahead of the midterm elections (in two days), the UN climate talks?
The lack of leadership is doing my head in.
Would the compensation paid by BP have been so great, had US giants Exxon or Chevron done the damage?
Will Europe make the US pay for its (and NATOs) role in stoking tensions with Russia?
Did Britain help blow up Nord Stream for the U.S., potentially causing an extension of the global calamity that’s become known as the benign-sounding cost-of-living crisis?
Now, if only America will copy its butler’s climate-action program that makes polluters pay — global emissions may fall instead of rise.
With thanks to: South Park, Comedy Central, Britannica and …
(Fixes typo on the second mention of the word Britannica, adds context)