How Did We Get Here?

No, that's not a headline for a post on evolution but rather a question about how did the spill in the Gulf come to pass? How is it that oil companies could be self-regulating? All MSM spin aside, who really is responsible for the volcano in the Gulf otther than BP, Transocean and Haliburton? Rebecca Lefton of the Center for American Progress has the answer, and it ain't Obama.



She reports that every year from 2001 to 2008 included tax breaks for coal, oil and gas and nuclear energy corps and/or cuts to renewable energy programs. For example in the budget for 2002 the House energy bill included $33.5 billion in tax breaks for dirty energy and steep cuts for clean energy research and development: “Solar and renewable energy R&D would drop by more than a third; nuclear energy R&D would be almost halved; and energy conservation R&D would fall by nearly 25 percent.”

By 2005 after continuing the pattern of more money to fossil fuel and nuclear industries, and cuts to renewable energy R&D, they went even further: The Interior Department’s MMS—the agency responsible for managing oil and gas resources on the Outer Continental Shelf and collecting royalties from companies—decided in 2005 that oil companies, rather than the government, were in the best position to determining their operations’ environmental impacts. This meant that there was no longer any need for an environmental impact analysis for deepwater drilling, though an earlier draft stated that such drilling experience was limited. In fact, MMS “repeatedly ignored warnings from government scientists about environmental risks in its push to approve energy exploration activities quickly, according to numerous documents and interviews.” And an interior general analysis even found that between 2005 and 2007 MMS officials let the oil industry to fill out their own inspection reports.

That pretty much covers it. The Bush administration bent over backwards to accommodate the oil and gas industry and they took full advantage. There's more, so go read the whole thing but that pretty much gives you enough to know that if politicians are going to be blamed for the ecocide that BP has caused in the Gulf, it should not be Obama. Here's a song written for Sister Sarah. Enjoy!