Recently, my brother Mike, totally exasperated with the prospect of oil washing ashore on the western coast of Florida, where he lives, wrote on his Facebook page "Boycott BP!!!" Seems like a no brainer doesn't it these days. I wrote back, "I'll add this to my boycott of Exxon."
As the Exxon Valdez fiasco played out from 1989 to their termination of clean-up activities in 1991, leaving hundreds of miles of coast still devastated by the 11 million gallon crude spill, even this skeptical writer could not have imagined that 20 short years later Exxon would post nearly $20 billion in annual earnings, down $5 billion from the year prior. Exxon must indeed be grateful for our collective short-term memory as American consumers.
No doubt there are many of us who will never purchase Exxon or BP products again if it can be helped, and neither company will notice. One reporter said last week that BP earns nearly $24 billion annually, and that the worst case scenario would be that BP spends 1 1/2 year's earnings on clean-up.
Last week, Carly Fiorina the ex-CEO of Hewlett Packard said of incumbent Senator Barbara Boxer (Democrat of California), who she is trying to unseat, "Barbara Boxer does not understand that families are more important than fish. Of course we all want to protect our environment, but common sense tells us there must be a balance." (The complete NPR story can be read here.)
That is why this sort of boycott really won't work, not yet anyway. Many of us saw sad compelling photos and videos of countless birds, sea otters, fish, and a myriad of other wildlife struggle and die in oil saturated water and beaches of Alaska 21 years ago. It wasn't enough to get us out of the SUV, commuting less to work, swap the bicycle for the car on close errands, buying vegetables from farms close to home instead of those shipped across country via truck... families are after all, as Ms. Fiorina stated, mor important than fish. Perhaps Senator Boxer recognizes that the balance may lie in our unchallenged family values.
Bill McKibben a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont and author of Earth: Making A Life On a Tough New Planet, explained it this way in Living on Earth, "The reason we're not getting further in Washington, the reason that we're making bad compromises with industry on these bills is because there's not enough public outrage, and not enough public action."
Perhaps, like in many parts of Louisiana, the fish are vital to the family, and just as important. There was not enough public outrage 19 years ago when Exxon abandoned a woefully incomplete clean-up job it had botched from the moment the Valdez ran aground spilling 11 million gallons of oil. There may still not be enough outrage as we watch nearly half a million gallons per day leak into the Gulf, and fall prey to the same lies told to consumers, affected residents, and legislators by corporate oil executives seeking to "get their lives back." If there was enough outrage, we might take the money saved from a couple SUV tanks of BP or Exxon gas, purchase a US-made bicycle, and pedal with the family to the local farm stand, or to shop downtown at a local store.
Oh yeah, we'd boycott BP (Amoco)and Exxon products.
As the Exxon Valdez fiasco played out from 1989 to their termination of clean-up activities in 1991, leaving hundreds of miles of coast still devastated by the 11 million gallon crude spill, even this skeptical writer could not have imagined that 20 short years later Exxon would post nearly $20 billion in annual earnings, down $5 billion from the year prior. Exxon must indeed be grateful for our collective short-term memory as American consumers.
No doubt there are many of us who will never purchase Exxon or BP products again if it can be helped, and neither company will notice. One reporter said last week that BP earns nearly $24 billion annually, and that the worst case scenario would be that BP spends 1 1/2 year's earnings on clean-up.
Last week, Carly Fiorina the ex-CEO of Hewlett Packard said of incumbent Senator Barbara Boxer (Democrat of California), who she is trying to unseat, "Barbara Boxer does not understand that families are more important than fish. Of course we all want to protect our environment, but common sense tells us there must be a balance." (The complete NPR story can be read here.)
That is why this sort of boycott really won't work, not yet anyway. Many of us saw sad compelling photos and videos of countless birds, sea otters, fish, and a myriad of other wildlife struggle and die in oil saturated water and beaches of Alaska 21 years ago. It wasn't enough to get us out of the SUV, commuting less to work, swap the bicycle for the car on close errands, buying vegetables from farms close to home instead of those shipped across country via truck... families are after all, as Ms. Fiorina stated, mor important than fish. Perhaps Senator Boxer recognizes that the balance may lie in our unchallenged family values.
Bill McKibben a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont and author of Earth: Making A Life On a Tough New Planet, explained it this way in Living on Earth, "The reason we're not getting further in Washington, the reason that we're making bad compromises with industry on these bills is because there's not enough public outrage, and not enough public action."
Perhaps, like in many parts of Louisiana, the fish are vital to the family, and just as important. There was not enough public outrage 19 years ago when Exxon abandoned a woefully incomplete clean-up job it had botched from the moment the Valdez ran aground spilling 11 million gallons of oil. There may still not be enough outrage as we watch nearly half a million gallons per day leak into the Gulf, and fall prey to the same lies told to consumers, affected residents, and legislators by corporate oil executives seeking to "get their lives back." If there was enough outrage, we might take the money saved from a couple SUV tanks of BP or Exxon gas, purchase a US-made bicycle, and pedal with the family to the local farm stand, or to shop downtown at a local store.
Oh yeah, we'd boycott BP (Amoco)and Exxon products.
