Enough blame to go around

It was the headline of the summer, you could not go anywhere or turn on any channel or pickup any newspaper without seeing something about it…it was the BP Oil Spill.

Back on April 20, a Deepwater Horizon drill rig exploded, killing 11 and injuring 17 others. It also started spewing gallons upon gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. After all was said and done, nearly 4.2 million gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf. The spill devastated the area and the wildlife; the damage could be catastrophic for the ecosystem of the water for generations to come.

But there's been a million stories of the who, what, when, where and how, the question upon us is what do we do now and who is to blame?

The initial blame has to be put on BP. Drilling in the Gulf is controversial enough and this spill just proved that the skeptics worries were valid. The rig that exploded was nine years old. In a world where new technology is coming out daily a rig that is nearly a decade old is like having an ancient artifact. The rig should have been monitored even more closely.

A picture has been floating around the internet from a BP gas station where a sign next to the gas pump reads "WARNING: Do not leave pumps unattended, you are responsible for spills" now BP has to take responsibility for their spill.

Another part of the blame has to be put on the government regulators. Oil is worth its weight in gold in today's society, if not more. Those resources should be constantly monitored not only by BP but by the government regulators to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Wars are fought in the Middle East over the possession of oil and land where oil is drilled, there is no reason over 100,000 barrels of oil should be wasted because the rig was not monitored close enough.

The last part of the blame has to be put on ourselves. Yes, we are partially to blame with the BP spill. Although we didn't cause the explosion we had a part in it with our drive for oil. Our unquenchable thirst for oil is the reason BP was drilling in the Gulf in the first place. Can you really blame them? Supply and demand is the basis of our economy. The demand for oil is at an all-time high so BP did what any company would do and tried to fill the demand of its consumers.

This week marks the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters struck the New Orleans region. Five years later the city is still rebuilding and now has to deal with the oil spill which has put a halt on the fishing industry down in the Bayou. Five years apart they deal with a natural disaster and a natural resource causing a disaster.

So what can we as New Yorkers do? While we can't walk around the corner and help with the cleanup effort we can help in the bigger scheme. If our alarm clock hasn't gone off already this has to be the ultimate wake up call to the need for alternative fuels. We cannot keep hitting the snooze button on this issue, it is time that we really take a stand and put some serious investment in those alternative resources.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." is a quote from Shakespeare's Caesar that relates to this situation quite well. As Caesar was becoming too powerful he needed to be stopped. The Romans eventually took action by getting him vacating him of the throne through murder.

While I am not condoning murder, these oil corporations need to be stripped of their power. We let the monster become to powerful, but now it is our chance to give some of that power back to the people.