Month 5, Day 31: Too Tired To Write A Clever Headline

Hadn’t written to USA Today in a while, so I went over there and found an AP article on (surprise!) BP’s incompetence, which by now calls to mind a phrase from Ken Weaver’s Texas Crude: “Dick-fingered,” defined as “stupid with an undercurrent of malice” — or, put crudely, “what he can’t fuck up, he shits on.”

So I wrote ’em a letter.

Is anyone surprised that BP CEO Tony Hayward disputes scientific evidence of undersea oil plumes, or that he cites a study by his own company while refusing to disclose any details? It is by now glaringly obvious that British Petroleum had no workable contingency plan in the event of a catastrophic failure. Not one. Nada. Zip. Which raises the question: why entrust our nation’s energy future to a company that rewards incompetence?

In 1962, President Kennedy gave us a goal: put a man on the moon and bring him back safely, and seven years later Neil Armstrong’s small step became a giant leap for the world. It’s time for another giant leap: we need to get off fossil fuels entirely, and it needs to happen by 2030. The probability of more catastrophic spills and the certainty of devastating climate change starkly illustrate the necessity of ending our reliance on oil and coal.

Warren Senders