Another oil spill entry:
Lots of people on Facebook are clamoring for a boycott of BP, the giant oil company that owned the Deepwater Horizon, the Gulf of Mexico drilling rig that was destroyed and caused the largest oil spill in U. S. history (though not the largest in the world). Here was my comment about one of them…
The problem with a boycott like that is that ALL the oil companies have the same agenda, the same lack of scruples, the same slack safety standards, and the same commerce-driven business model. It was just BPs turn. Do you still boycott Exxon? Enron? WaMu? WorldComm? The NEXT oil company that has a spill? Boycotting BP might make you feel good in the short term, but in the end, if we are a part of commerce, we are also a part of the problem in the bigger picture.
Before I saw your caption, I figured the area on the map was the area with no BP stations. In my nine years in Seminole, I can’t recall seeing a single BP station in our county, or even in Oklahoma City for that matter.
That would make my boycott very easy; since I couldn’t buy from them anyway. :-)
And I almost spit food out my nostrils when I first heard people wanted to boycott BP. Boycotts are supposed to be when one particular company has made a grievous or offensive error; you then buy from that company’s competitors to teach a lesson to the first company.
So a boycott makes no sense here. Let’s say every single person in the world suddenly quit buying BP oil/gas. That only sends more money to the other companies, so they can built more offshore oil wells. Duh.
The trick is to use less gas, less oil, less plastic, etc., whenever possible. This will slow down the industry as a whole and help us to move on to less harmful products…