OREWELLIAN CORPORATE NEWSPEAK

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune courtesy of Eschaton:

BP is sticking with its dispersant choice

BP has told the Environmental Protection Agency that it cannot find a safe, effective and available dispersant to use instead of Corexit, and will continue to use that chemical application to help break up the growing spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP was responding to an EPA directive Thursday that gave BP 24 hours to identify a less toxic alternative to Corexit -- and 72 hours to start using it -- or provide the Coast Guard and EPA with a "detailed description of the alternative dispersants investigated, and the reason they believe those products did not meet the required standards."

BP spokesman Scott Dean said Friday that BP had replied with a letter "that outlines our findings that none of the alternative products on the EPA's National Contingency Plan Product Schedule list meets all three criteria specified in yesterday's directive for availability, toxicity and effectiveness."

Dean noted that "Corexit is an EPA pre-approved, effective, low-toxicity dispersant that is readily available, and we continue to use it."

He did not directly address widely broadcast news reports that more than 100,000 gallons of an alternative dispersant chemical call Sea-Brat 4 was stockpiled near Houston and available for application.

EPA issued its directive amid complaints from some environmentalists and members of Congress that, as Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., put it, "BP had chosen one of the most toxic and least effective chemicals that were approved for use."

More here.

So, of course, I just don't have the scientific background to know who's in the right about this. Perhaps BP, which knows all about oil because, after all, it is an oil company, knows best. Perhaps the EPA, which is the federal agency charged with protecting the environment from toxic waste and pollution, knows better because, after all, this is their beat. I'd have to do some research to get even a layman's handle on this dispersant controversy. Knowing for sure is very likely entirely out of the question. I'd have to become a fucking chemist. And an environmental biologist. And an oceanologist. And maybe a geologist, too.

But here's something I do know right now.

When I first heard a BP spokesman on NPR a couple of weeks ago talking about how they were using dispersants in an attempt to break up the now massive oil patches in the Gulf of Mexico, I was very disturbed by how he used the phrase "just like the dish detergent you use at home" multiple times over the span of about a minute or so. It's like he was trying a bit too hard. Really, it brought to mind the kind of odd corporate propaganda that The Simpsons has satirized repeatedly over years. And now, it seems, the notion of weird-chemical-as-dish-soap has been picked up by lots of journalists. If this kind of language is, in fact, a sort of PR damage control thing, it appears to be having some success.

Here's something else I know. Corporations are motivated solely by profit, and nothing else. And that's not some liberal conspiracy theory: such legal entities are required by law to maximize their shareholders' profits. If corporate leaders behave in any other way, they are breaking the law. Unfortunately, when profit is your only motivation, morals and ethics are meaningful only in terms of how they help the bottom line. Consequently, if a corporation stands to lose less money by settling lawsuits over a dangerous product than they would if they recalled such a product, they'll take the litigation road, and too fucking bad for everybody else.

That is, concerning this environmental disaster, by law, BP's only concern is maximizing their shareholders' profits, not cleaning up their mess, or making restitution for it: we have absolutely no way of knowing if these dispersants are relatively safe, or if they even have a snowball's chance of doing what BP says they will. Indeed, for all we know, this is just an enormous PR scheme, or an attempt to get some leverage when it's all being figured out in court over the next twenty years.

Given this context, even though I'm not a scientist, I'm very inclined to be extraordinarily skeptical of everything BP says. And even though the ostensibly disinterested EPA has long been infiltrated by the influence of various polluting industries, or perhaps because the EPA is under such influence, I'm far more inclined to believe what they have to say.

That is, BP caused this fucking disaster; why do they have so much control over the response to it?

Anyway, here's some mid 20th century pro-nuke propaganda:



Not too terribly far from "Bovine University," huh?

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