This oil leak is a disaster that has already killed 11 people.  Today it was reported that the Gulf’s loop currents are going to carry it around Florida.  Gooey, red oil has come ashore, past the booms that were used to try to stop it.  New BP video, as reported by NBC, reveals that most likely,  double the amount of 70,000 gallons of oil per day are pouring into the ocean. Most of us have no concept of what damage this oil will do.  Criminal charges are probably next.  So let’s determine blame.  Should BP pay for this mess, or Halliburton, or Transocean?

It would be convenient to have several large corporations to choose from when pointing the finger of blame for this disaster, but we need to look at who is at the root of all this.  That would be us.

The American people should be on trial. We should pay damages and we should pay for this at the gas pump.  We are the ones with the oil addiction.  We have an automobile culture that we are not willing to give up or even alter.  That mind-set is now destroying the Gulf coast.  We have supported the need for dangerous drilling with our 1) unwavering support for offshore drilling and our 2) insatiable “need” and use of gas and oil.   Have any of us stopped driving our cars, or stopped doing anything that uses gas and oil,  since this oil leak happened?  Have the drug addicts stopped using the drug, or are we just upset that our habit is causing such damage and pollution? So far, Americans seem really upset with ourselves but want to blame someone else.  Sure, BP is legally responsible, but who is ethically responsible?  No one forces us to use the massive amounts of gas and oil that we use.  Americans  buy millions of dollars worth of gasoline and oil a year and we are obsessed with the price of it, not the use of it.  By now, most Americans feel that it’s our birthright to use as much gasoline and oil as we want to. Who has ever tried to stop us?

Our whole economy is based on fossil fuels and the obtaining of them, whether through drilling, digging, exploding tops off mountains,  or waging wars.  Oil, gas and coal keep capitalism and never-ending growth humming along, and Americans accept that as the way things ought to be.

The price of fossil fuels we use also includes the climate damage, ocean damage, and climate change burning these fuels causes.   Climate change in the sky or oil-soaked coastlines down on earth;   it’s all bad.   It’s very bad.  It’s going to end up destroying our civilization, but that’s too hard to think about, so most people don’t.  Like most addicts, we are in deep denial.

We are oil addicts by choice, though, and as addicts we should pay for our expensive, dirty, damaging habit.  But we don’t, we blame the big fossil fuel corporations,  because they [...]