Yesterday I mowed my land with a riding mower as did several individuals in the neighborhood. I ate breakfast opening several plastic containers for food that traveled thousands of miles. Turned on my plastic encased computer and watched my plastic enclosed flat screened TV. I drove my car loaded with plastic to an event in the evening as did many other people. I took photos with a plastic encased camera stored on a plastic SD Card. At that event were plastic cups and eating utensils. Some of the food had also traveled thousands of miles to get there not to mention the fertilizer required to grow the food. I could go on but the point is it took lots of oil to get through one day in my life.
We live in a nation that has less than 2% of the world's proven oil reserves! We are importing over 60% but we refuse to see the seriousness of our situation. In February of 05 a report was done for the Department of Energy PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION: IMPACTS, MITIGATION, & RISK MANAGEMENT. Perhaps some here are familiar with the report but it is relevant to what is happening in the Gulf today. The 'Peak Oil' title not withstanding,(peak oil is nonsense to some), in it's ninety pages is information that every American should know and that is the real value of the report.
The list of our top fifteen imported oils suppliers is very telling. It shows how desperate we have become to fill our gas tanks and have food on the table. We are in places like Angola, Nigeria and Venezuela maintaining that American Dream. Top fifteen oil suppliers Iraq is a new entry on that list and is number six but the war in that country had nothing to do with oil. What if any of these suppliers cut us off as happened in 1973 when we imported under 38% of our oil? The economic consequenses would be catastrophic not to mention what a war with Iran might cause to this intricate web keeping the US going.
So the answer to the question "Who is responsible" has to be we are as a nation. BP failed to have to have adequate safety equipment in place, acoustic switch, due to deregulation by the Bush Administration but that is just a consequence. The reason for the drill being necessary in the first place is our total lack of a viable energy policy. We chose to ride the cheap energy bus rather than make hard decisions. The most telling moment in our history was the day Reagan had the Solar Panels removed from the roof of the White House. On that day we took the road to the oil spill that is today becoming the greatest evironmental disaster in our history. The fact is there is no 100% safe method of drilling deep in the ocean floor for oil. I've lived my life by the rule that if I can't accept the consequence I don't take the risk. We don't have any choice either we accept more oil spills or we don't drill offshore and change the American Dream! That means everyone of us will have to make changes and sacrifices in our everyday lives without any exceptions! The only real question is do we have the courage to make the change.
I'll end with this from the above referenced Peaking of World Oil Production page 65 of that report.
5. Mitigation Efforts Will Require Substantial Time
Mitigation will require an intense effort over decades. This inescapable
conclusion is based on the time required to replace vast numbers of liquid
fuel consuming vehicles and the time required to build a substantial number
of substitute fuel production facilities. Our scenarios analysis shows:
• Waiting until world oil production peaks before taking crash program
action would leave the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for more
than two decades.
• Initiating a mitigation crash program 10 years before world oil peaking
helps considerably but still leaves a liquid fuels shortfall roughly a decade
after the time that oil would have peaked.
• Initiating a mitigation crash program 20 years before peaking appears to
offer the possibility of avoiding a world liquid fuels shortfall for the forecast
period.
The obvious conclusion from this analysis is that with adequate, timely
mitigation, the economic costs to the world can be minimized. If mitigation
were to be too little, too late, world supply/demand balance will be achieved
through massive demand destruction (shortages), which would translate to
significant economic hardship.
There will be no quick fixes. Even crash programs will require more than a
decade to yield substantial relief.