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Earlier this week, BP CEO Tony Hayward had the audacity to tell the lie that the environmental impact of the Deepwater Horizon spill will be "very, very, modest":
Throughout the disaster, BP has been doing its best to control information flow about the extent of the damage, but reality is beginning to creep into public awareness. An article appearing on the front page of today’s New York Times describes in great detail the conflicts of interest inherent in how the government has allowed BP to control all testing of samples from the disaster:
Local environmental officials throughout the Gulf Coast are feverishly collecting water, sediment and marine animal tissue samples that will be used in the coming months to help track pollution levels resulting from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, since those readings will be used by the federal government and courts to establish liability claims against BP. But the laboratory that officials have chosen to process virtually all of the samples is part of an oil and gas services company in Texas that counts oil firms, including BP, among its biggest clients.
Some people are questioning the independence of the Texas lab. Taylor Kirschenfeld, an environmental official for Escambia County, Fla., rebuffed instructions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to send water samples to the lab, which is based at TDI-Brooks International in College Station, Tex. He opted instead to get a waiver so he could send his county’s samples to a local laboratory that is licensed to do the same tests.
The tragic truth is beginning to come out, though, as the real impact of the spill begins to be felt. Here is Billy Nungesser of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, describing the oily death of a marsh that has a twenty-four mile shoreline:
How’s that "very, very modest" claim of impact looking now, Mr. Hayward?
Well, there is a good chance that the twenty-four miles of dead marsh is very, very, small compared to the total miles of shoreline in the Gulf and beyond that will die before the flow of oil is even stopped.
32 Comments
another great diary. thanks jim!
Is there any possibility of a conviction for manslaughter, or causing death by criminal negligence?
In fact, 24 miles of coastline IS very, very modest — IF you compare it to all of the coastline worldwide.
I guess that would be relative to….just so long as it’s not the same 24 miles of coastline where you earn your living.
I’m pretty sure the reference was to Hayward claiming earlier that the spill is not much oil when you compare it to the volume of the ocean. I really should have worked that into the post…
So glad that our POTUS was able to look so darling in his Tux this past week for the State Dinner.
By all appearances Jim, this is our future. Great Diary – Thanks
BP has no clue what to do.
Great post Jim.
Thank you for all your work to shine light on this disaster of hubris and greed destroying the environment.
Hayward hasn’t yet been to the Rove-Luntz school of communications.
Wait, I may be wrong on that.
•••
How terribly sad for those folks.
What we don’t see is the underwater damage.
The coral beds around florida were just beginning to make a comeback. Everything in the sea depends on life forms underneath it. It’s all dying.
It’s just a bunch of dead wildlife and unemployed sick working people to this SOB. It is also not going to be just 24 miles of irreplaceable marsh which is nesting ground for some of the most beautiful birds in the world, it will be thousands of miles of oil gunk on beaches, docks, and yachts of millionaires in Florida. Then this asshole might care. I am waiting for the Keys and Disney World to smell like an old refinery. We will see if anyone in the press and DC gets it then.
Yes. I have said very little about this catastrophe – here or at “my place” – because I am, frankly, stunned and grieving. And I am not usually one of the “freezers” when things go wrong. I just can’t get my head around this one. It’s just so, well, disrespectful – an admittedly weak characterization, but it’s how I feel. :(
I don’t know where Jim & D-Day get the fortitude to follow this story. Of course it must be done, and so I am somewhat in awe of such journalistic fortitude.
Hayward reminds me of the pet shop owner in the Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch. A classic case of denying the obvious.
Here’s what Mr. Hayward sings late at night in the bars:
I got twenty-four miles of dead marsh
And an oil slick for a necktie
Got a brand new house up on the roadside
Paid for with oil-slicked lives
I got a brand new chimney on top,
And it’s made out of shrimpers’ skulls,
C’mon take a little walk with me baby
And tell me who do you loooooove….
So. Question. If we had a press that wasn’t worried about what happens to them when they challenge corporate power, how should they be interviewing this guy?. I can assure you he is media trained, but if you were an interviewer what would you ask, in order? What would you hope to get out of the interview?
The days of tylanol are over. In fact the way they are trained to deal with this is to minimize, divert, and deflect. If they were more modern they would use the republican way andoho on the attack. And start complaining about how they are being treated. Only a few companies act like the old style. They have learned that their real public is the shareholders and they appreciate all steps they take to keep the costs down. Especially companies that are not retail.
The key is to fine the people who really care about, and make THEM demand they act in a certain way that we want. They listen to those people.
Here is the full video from a local station that the clips in the Nungesser interview are taken from, marinara posted it last night. Guy sticks his hand in the water, pulls it out covered in oil. Terrible. BP’s flackjob insists on saying ‘light sheen’ of oil, which of course sounds kind of pretty. Crude oil on your hand after you stick it in the water is not a sheen, and it isn’t pretty.
The video.
http://videosift.com/video/Worst-Nightmare-Realized-for-Plaquemines-President
marinara’s thread.
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/49604/
My laser focus is to shut down the other 15 deep water wells, two weeks ago.
If this depth is indeed unmanageable then remove the other rigs, one going 1 1/2 times as deep run by these same clowns.
Stop the fly overs over every damn sporting event , like the fuel is water.
If we need to conserve, stand down the parasitic death department.
Somebody get an adult who will lead, obviously in entirely different direction that get us out of this oil slick. Why didn’t we hire a mature leader instead of a justice roberts type young whipper snapper, wet behind the ears, way short of life experience to have a clue what to do except a song and dance routine.
What a nightmare with these clowns BPUSA running the show.
Eli is upstairs!
Rand Paul Gets Weary. Oh Yes, He Does Get Weary.
Imagine if a foreign enemy wanted to destroy the entire eco-system of the Gulf what would happen if they went around attacking and burning the other 15 deep wells. These things are time bombs just waiting to be detonated.
Thanks, Jim.
“BP: The gulf between image and reality”
“Oil gusher forces State Dept. into awkward diplomacy with Cuba”
From “Misty oil-colored memories: Remembering my last oil spill“:
Criminal negligence applies to the WH.
Here’s a company destroying our eco-system,incapable of being honest
and the WH…..well as always there is no leadership coming from the Prez.
And where are the so called “progressive orgs”……if the environment is important to us like they claim, why aren’t they blasting the Prez for his lackadaisical approach to this nightmare.
Wonder what it would have been like if Bush was the Prez & this disaster
was occurring……..well I have a good idea….absolutely sickening.
BP is certainly a master of war
You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins
I was going to post the following here,
It’s Time to End BP’s Plunder: Join the Action
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/05/21/it’s-time-to-end-bps-plunder-join-the-action/
But I am being prevented from posting it even though I am logged in, I keep getting an error message telling me I have to log in. I have seen this before, it is illegal spying and happens to me a lot more often than it should.
Attempted post:
Recommended posts,
BP Horizon largest accidental oil spill in history – effective tomorrow (that is today)
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/49674
Carville Goes Off on Obama — Grab the Popcorn
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/49817
I was just wondering … besides the direct toxic effect of the various Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene, and Xylene compounds in the water, what would all that dark slick do to the heat absorbing capacity of the gulf as a whole?
Does oil polluted water warm up faster, because if so, this might make for some amazing tropical storms.
It seems to me dark oil would absorb more heat from sunshine and would reduce evaporative cooling, so if Global warming meets an oil ‘spill’ on a truly colossal level in the gulf, what will happen next?
Another question I have is if their coral barrier reefs are killed and disappear, will Florida be washed away by wave action?
I don’t know, but it sure makes me glad I live in California. PS, I stopped eating shrimp and seafood the first day that I heard about the oil spill.
I like those lyrics. copyright Simon, “very good song choice”
what do you love
I said
what do you love
more good lyrics
there are some songwriters here.
All 110 neotropical migratory songbirds spend time in the Louisiana wetlands as they move back and forth from North America to South.
The migratory season is now.
As many as 25 million a day can pass through this area.
Bob Herbert this morning in the NYTimes, quoting Paul Harrison Mississippi River specialist for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Evolution of an excuse: FUBAR, SNAFU, Catch 22, Shit Happens, Act of God, Accidents Happens. The next permutation: Random ripples in the space time continuum. Of course we could never use JTF: Just the facts or IIAAL: Incredible incompetence at all levels. Mr. Obama, do you have the remotest idea where the buck is suppose to stop? Of course you don’t! But if you want to find out, just ask Harry. He sure as hell knew. So much for our commander and thief.
Our President has created a Presidential Commission now to Study the spill and investigate the disaster.
Incredibly great news.
Does he really think of this disaster in past tense?
A modest impact? Well, this is perfectly in line with BP’s world view. Oil companies simply do not care about the environment. They don’t care about fisherman or any blue-collar working stiff. These considerations just don’t enter into their thinking. This mess in the Gulf is a PR problem, nothing more. They’ll get the Ad agencies working overtime and reduce the current bad press to a modest mussing of the hair. If they unleashed a disaster that killed a billion people we’d be treated to commercials claiming ‘Now there’s more room for all of us’ with puppies bounding through meadows on a sunny day.
I about fell over when I heard this “modest” statement on NPR’s morning edition.
Hayward should be dropped butt ass naked down in the middle of the spill (oh give the guy a life jacket) and told to swim for the shore. Give him the vantage of a dolphin. And see if he still comes up with the word “modest”
Typical tripe from the CEO mentality of any large corporation. He doesn’t care because the damage is so far removed from his front yard. Either way oil companies are supposed to pay for the oil they pump. Right now, I say we send them a bill for half a billion dollars. To start with. Even though they aren’t pumping the oil to be refined they are still liable for the oil that is being lost. It’s their screwup that caused this. One of many in their history here on our soil. Given their history, I feel that any future permits they apply for should be granted only after extensive scrutiny of their methods and environmental impact studies before anyone even lifts a wrench. But the odds are that our governing agencies will bend over backwards or just bend over period to allow BP more lax overview.
Get [Edited by Moderator. Do not go there].