Environment

The backlash against BP

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President Barack Obama has strongly criticized BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward over the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In an NBC interview, Mr Obama was asked about comments Hayward made in the wake of the disaster, such as “I want my life back” and the Gulf is “a big ocean”. The President aid: “He wouldn’t be working for me after any of those statements.” The World’s Katy Clark reports on how every day citizens are grappling with the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Some are now boycotting BP. But do such actions really make a difference? Download MP3

• BBC coverage
• BP’s tarnished image
• Global oil spill accountability

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  The Obama administration is trying to tighten the screws on BP.  Today the administrations’ top oil spill response official gave the British oil giant 72 hours to strengthen its plans for battling the Gulf of Mexico disaster.  The deadline comes after reports that BP’s lengthy plan for fighting a spill in the Gulf was riddled with omissions and glaring errors.  According to an Associated Press analysis, BP officials were pretty much making things up as they went along.  Meantime, public outrage over the spill continues to grow as well.  The World’s Katy Clark reports on what some people are doing.

KATY CLARK:  The frustration and outrage has been building for weeks.  Americans have been seeing image after image of sea birds drowning in oil and BP officials have seemed nearly powerless to stop the flow, even as they’ve talked about restoring the environment.  The mood of many might have bee captured by actor and director Robert Redford.  He made this video for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

ROBERT REDFORD:  I want to throw up and when BP or other like companies put millions of dollars to pull the wool over our eyes, it’s about time to just cut all that.

CLARK: The anger at BP has prompted calls for boycotts of the oil giant, including a boycott BP Facebook group that’s attracted almost a half a million followers.

GAIL BECKHAM:  My name is Gail Beckham.  I live in Atlanta, Georgia and I’ve spent a lot of time on the Gulf Coast.

CLARK: Beckham is one of those half million people.  She is originally from Panama City, Florida.  Her 77-year-old mother still lives there.  She’s also outraged at BP and she’s worried a whole way of life may be gone for good simply because of the spill.

BECKHAM: As I said on my Facebook page, people want to criticize BP and boycott BP and all that, it’s not BP’s fault, it’s our fault.

CLARK: Beckham says boycotting BP misses the big picture.  She says the spill is a consequence of our nation’s fossil fuel habit.  Beckham says she and her husband have tried to cut their use of oil from all companies.  They own just one car and they use public transportation as much as possible.  It hasn’t been easy for them.  Her husband has been out of work for the past two years and they don’t have a lot of money to spend on alternatives to personal reliance on fossil fuels.  Peter Moss, author of “Crude World:  The Violent Twilight of Oil” says that if we’re really concerned about the problems associated with oil dependence, we all have to make these kinds of changes.

PETER MOSS:  Driving less, driving smaller cars, using public transportation, making home insulation much better, being more conservation oriented, supporting and using renewable fuels in whatever way one can, supporting politicians who are going to reduce American’s carbon footprint, things of that sort are really the most useful ones because they attack not the symptom of the problem, but the problem itself which is our very large carbon footprint and our dependence on very large amounts of oil.

CLARK: David Friedman of the Union of Concerned Scientists says that’s not going to happen overnight.

DAVID FRIEDMAN:  But the longer we wait, the longer it’s going to take and the more often we’re going to see tragedies like the oil spill in the Gulf.

CLARK: Of course we’ve heard that before.  The Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 was supposed to have been a wake up call too.  People boycotted Exxon back then and also promised to use less gas.  But there was no real long term change in our oil consumption habits.  David Pettit with the Natural Resources Defense Council says things are different in 2010.

DAVID PETTIT:  We have an energy bill ready to go in Congress.  It’s not perfect, but it’s been introduced and people are working on it.

CLARK: That bill was introduced as an effort to fight climate change.  But it would also start shifting the economy away from oil.  Pettit says public awareness about climate change, plus the relentlessly bad news out of the Gulf has him encouraged about the prospects for change.

PETTIT: I was in a meeting the other day where one of our people who had been down to Louisiana talked about hearing dolphins swimming through the oil and literally gasping for breath.  People misted up when she said that.  I think it’s that kind of outrage, when people see the effect on wildlife that leads to change.

CLARK: Until then, individuals are doing what they can to make a difference.  On June 26th, people in 30 states and nearly a dozen countries plan to join hands to form symbolic barriers to protect coastlines from oil spills.  They’ll also pledge to take personal steps to conserve energy and let elected officials know they oppose off shore oil drilling.  For The World, this is Katy Clark.

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