Monday, June 14, 2010

Where are the celebrities and Spill-Aid concerts?

A friend of mine recently posted a comment on Facebook that really got me thinking. She asked, "Where are all the "Save the Gulf" concerts? Where are all the TV benefits with celebrities and musicians giving heart-felt speeches about those fisherman, wildlife, beaches, etc.?"

Where are they?

I know the media is talking about the oil spill. Watching "Morning Joe" recently, they kept showing a video clip of a bird struggling to breathe and so coated in oil, you couldn't even tell what type of bird it was. I couldn't watch it. It was painful and just sad to see an animal struggle like that.

When I lived in Texas in the mid-1980s, I would travel down to Galveston and spend time on the beach. It was an incredibly peaceful place for me. But, I could see off-shore oil rigs in the distance and there was always a tar ball here and there on the beach. I'm not a big fan of big oil, so I would be disgusted by the tar ball, but thought that an occasional tar ball wasn't a huge environmental risk.

The disaster that looms now in the gulf is overwhelming to comprehend. It's been happening now for 56 days. (The counting of the days is reminding me of the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979/1980) Plumes of oil are being found 150 miles away from the oil leak site. No one can say for sure, how much oil is escaping from BP's containment cap.

It has occurred to me that the reason we're not seeing these celebrity fundraisers is, unlike Katrina and 9/11, this is a disaster was caused by a corporation. While it doesn't lessen the horrible impact on the economy or the economy, the expectation is that BP will be paying and cleaning up. I don't know if that is even realistic.

I've seen the public relations ad campaign that BP has started running and it just serves to anger me more than improve my opinion of BP.

I learned yesterday that BP had over 700 citations for safety, pollution and other violations - in just the last 3 years. Tony Hayward said that it wasn't an excessive number and they have been improving since he took over.The other Big Oil companies (such as Shell & Exxon)? The individual count for their violations weren't even double digit (yes- less than 10!)

How do you know when Tony Hayward is lying? His lips are moving.

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