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Are Lax Environmental Laws and Safety Rules Partially at Fault for the Deepwater Horizon Explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and the Ongoing Gulf Coast Oil Spill Disaster? What About Consumer Demand?

By Andis Kaulins

Gusher!
5000 barrels of oil per day....

The ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an environmental disaster of possibly unprecedented proportions.

Could it have been prevented by better lawmaking and more stringent enforcement of environmental laws and safety rules and standards? How about consumers? Is it time for Congress to end the irresponsible gas-guzzling culture that has prevailed in the USA for decades?

Richard S. Dunham and Stewart Powell, Washington Bureau, write at the Houston Chronicle in Critics blame energy lobby for lax safety rules that:

"The massive failure ? or cascading series of failures ? that led to the debacle has shined a Capitol Hill spotlight on the massive amounts of money spent by oil and gas companies on political contributions and lobbying of Congress and federal regulatory agencies."

That lobbying is directed in large part to making it easier for oil and gas companies to do what they do, often bypassing the kinds of environmental safeguards that actually are necessary of implementation.

Certainly, the following can not be the solution that proper Congressional legislation would have required:

Next step to stop oil: Throw garbage at it - CNN.com

What amazes us is that the people trying to stop the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico are telling the news media that certain now planned measures to stop the oil gusher have never been tried before at 5000 feet, as if that were an excuse.

It would appear to this observer that drilling for oil at those largely inaccessible depths should be legally permissible only when absolutely dependable security installations can be constructed onsite -- BEFORE drilling starts -- installations that can immediately shut off any gushing oil in the case of an emergency like the one currently at hand.

The entire political machine in the United States as well as American automobile drivers also have to share a lot of the blame for this disaster, as the exploitation of petroleum and gas by energy companies tries to keep pace with the exorbitant demand produced by a nation whose environmental energy policies are recognized as insufficient everywhere else in the world and whose continued manufacture and purchase of gas-guzzling automobiles and much too minimal taxation of gasoline (petrol) use have contributed to the current demand situation.

When gasoline prices in the United States reached $4.40 a gallon in 2008, people in America started to think about energy consumption and some moved to smaller cars, a thought that was conveniently discarded again when those prices sank again to a low of $1.60 by the end of that same year. Most consumers are not "rational" -- they are selfish, and your average motor vehicle purchaser could care less about environmental concerns. "Drill, drill" is their philosophy.

When Detroit automobile manufacturers General Motors and Chrysler went bottoms-up in 2009, people in America started to buy smaller cars, but that stopped when the taxpayers bailed out the bankrupt companies. As written at the Chicago Tribune, car buyers returned to buying gas-guzzlers.

The Wikipedia writes:

"Environmental politics and related concerns regarding carbon emissions have heightened sensitivity to gas mileage standards and environmental protection worldwide. In a 2007 edition of his book An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore criticized the Big Three. "They keep trying to sell large, inefficient gas-guzzlers even though fewer and fewer people are buying them." For example, Japan requires autos to achieve 45 miles per US gallon (5.2 L/100 km; 54 mpg_-imp) of gasoline and China requires 35 mpg_-US (6.7 L/100 km; 42 mpg_-imp). The European Union requires 47 mpg_-US (5.0 L/100 km; 56 mpg_-imp) by 2012. By comparison, U.S. autos are required to achieve only 25 mpg_-US (9.4 L/100 km; 30 mpg_-imp) presently. Other nations have adopted standards that are increasing mpg requirements in the future. When California raised its own standards, the auto companies sued.^[103][104]"

And now America has a Gulf of Mexico filling with oil and a Gulf Coast that looks like it may suffer some of the most severe oil spill damage ever experienced.

At some point, the nation has to get the environmental message. Maybe the time has come.

Full post as published by LawPundit on May 09, 2010 (boomark / email).