Accident Vs Sin

Some people have been asking me what’s the point of the contest ( Contest info in Artist's comment )Pretty much everyone knows there is a Bp oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but how many people actually knows the details of the spill?  

Other people have been telling me that the spill was just an accident, so I should leave Bp alone, because accidents happen. Sadly, they wouldn’t say that if they know the details of the spill (hence the contest).

In my painting I said “Remember this sin. Remember tomorrow.” So what is an accident vs a sin?

An accident would be if the oil rig exploded for no reason regardless of all the safety measures they could have put in place. A sin is when greed is turned to shortcuts on safety measures for greater profit at the cost of people’s lives and the environment.

Where is the proof of this greed? Let’s see…

Bp decided to choose a cheaper method of casing steel tubes in the well, a method that’s so unsafe that one of Bp’s own engineers described it as a “nightmare well” in an e-mail. When engineers showed their concerns, the e-mail response they got was "But, who cares, it's done, end of story” (Read more at blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpun… )



That’s just one small example of why the rig explosion is not an accident. I’ve honestly lost track of all the things I’ve seen in the news. Some other snippets of info include how Bp has committed 97% of all egregious and willful violations (as in they did knowing it’s illegal for the sake of money).  www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05… Bp made 58 billion dollars in pure profit last year, but they only spent 29 million on research for safer drilling methods and guess what, $0 research to improve response efforts in case of an oil spill. That’s why they’re still using the same floating booms as 30 years ago.

Now, let’s pretend that the spill was just an accident that nothing could have prevented. Even then, Bp is committing sin by lying in just about everything which hampers clean up efforts.



First, they lied about the amount of oil they were spilling. On April 24th, they said only 1000 barrels were leaking per day, now we know it’s 60,000 barrels per day. Wait, what if they just didn’t know? Wrong. They knew and lied about it. They knew that up to 100,000 could be spilled but they refused to let independent scientists (as in people not working for Bp) have access to data and images for them to estimate the real amount that’s spilling. Scientists had to work with a low quality video that Bp was forced to release due to government pressure, but guess what, Bp had an HD video all along.

Lying about the amount of what’s spilling (a difference of  60 times) not only messed up the clean up effort (how many people do we need?) but also attempts to stop the leak (a cap or dome designed for 1000 barrels isn’t going to work on something that’s spilling 60 times more). That is why all efforts to stop the leak have failed. Bp isn’t even trying to stop the leak now. They’re just going to wait until the relief well is drilled, but that won’t be until August at the earliest and 2011 at the latest. That’s right, that’s 60,000 barrels (2,500,000 gallons) to 100,000 barrels leaking every day since April to August, or maybe even until next year.

Bp also denies the 22 mile long underwater oil plumes that’s poisoning the fish even though all the scientists have found plumes (they even traced the oil molecule back to the Bp well). www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05…

Then there is the clean up effort itself. Fishermen out of jobs due to the spill became Bp cleanup workers since they have no other choice. But wait, the oil is toxic and statistic from the Exxon Valdes spill showed that the oil fumes can cause serious health issues, and can lower one’s lifespan by 30 years (most of the cleanup workers of that spill died in their 50’s). It wouldn’t be a problem if Bp provided them with breathing masks, but they say the headaches and vomiting the workers are experience is due to food poisoning. What if the workers just bring their own mask? Well, they can’t or they will be fired. It’s part of the contract. WTF? Well, if the workers were wearing masks, the public will see just how toxic the oil really is, so workers, under contract, can’t protect their health because Bp doesn’t want you to know the truth. rawstory.com/rs/2010/0611/rfk-…

Clean up workers aside, they're also burning life sea turtles on purpose. Way to go, Bp, Not only will they cover the wildlife with oil, they'll burn them to death before others can clean and save them. When volunteers try to save the turtles trapped on booms, Bp won't let them and burned the turtles. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzCN7q… What is Bp thinking? If they burn them to ash, there won't be evidence washed up on shore?

To what extend does Bp what to keep the public in the dark? Well, before Obama made Bp set up a 20 billion dollar escrow fund to pay the people impacted by the spill, Bp was nickel and dimming the people yet they spent $50,000,000 on TV ads alone to lie to you guys that they’re being responsible. That 50 million is just TV ads alone, Bp won’t release how much they’re paying Google and other search engines to have their site, filled with lies, at the top of the search list. Why don’t they spend that 50 million on actually solving the problem instead of lying about it? blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpun…

Dead dolphin filled with oil washed up on shore

So how sorry is Bp for all the shit they’ve caused? Ask Bp CEO Tony Hayward who said “I want my life back.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZAVcP… Really? You know who else would like their life back? The 11 men that died in the explosion, the hundreds of thousands of dead birds, turtles, fish, and dolphins, and all the people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida who lost their jobs and way of life. Well, he got bashed for that and he said sorry (cause he got caught). So how sorry is he? Sorry enough to enjoy a yacht race www.politico.com/news/stories/… while everyone else suffers.

Wait! But what if it’s just Bp that’s an unprepared asshole of an oil company? The other ones must be better. Wrong again! In a Congress hearing, Bp and the other 4 large oil companies (Exxon Mobile, Conocophillips, Shell, Chevron) all had the same response plan
(same cover pictures, just different colors). It wouldn’t matter that much if the response plan actually works. The response plan includes procedures on how to save walruses that haven’t lived in the Gulf for 3 million years and the phone # of a marine science expert who died in 2005. This response plan was written in 2009. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/…

“What is undoubtedly true is that we did not have the tools you would want in your tool-kit,” – Tony Hayward, Bp CEO

Well, there you have it. To sum up everything. Accident vs Sin. This was sin. Bp was too cheap to build a proper rig and ignored warning signs. Bp lied about the amount being spill, the toxicity of the oil, and tried to keep the public in the dark. Not only was Bp not prepared to deal with a spill, none of the other oil companies can do anything either but call a dead guy.

The sad fact is, no matter what sweet lies of assurances the oil companies give you about how they are safe, they never will be. Not in the past, not now, and now in the future. “Fool me once, shame you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

This is why I’m holding the contest. I don’t have 50 million dollars to spend on TV ads but I’m doing what I can and you can too. Help spread the truth. You can draw a picture or write a journal. Let the world know we need to move on from oil and find clean energy for the future.