Everybody is talking about it, but what are they saying really? It's the worst natural disaster in the history on the US. It's President Obama's Katrina. BP is corrupt and cut corners. All the different safe guards failed. The fishing/seafood industry in the South is in a state of crisis. BP blames Transocean for the accident. The people blame the government for lack of oversight. We are waging a "war" on a new natural disaster.

I think this accident or "natural" disaster is a symptom of a bigger problem. The fact that profits have become more important than general well-being and doing what's right. The responsibility or accountability for a problem like this seems to have been structured so that nobody can be held accountable. BP can blame Transocean, Transocean can blame the workers and citizens can blame the Minerals Management Service for lack of regulation. Sounds similar to the financial crisis or Enron. The problem lies with none of those organizations, but with our way of life.

Oil has allowed for many societal advances and made the industrial revolution possible over the last 100 years. We would not be where we are today without sucking oil from the earth. But oil is not a renewable resource and will continue to prove harder to acquire and process. Easy to acquire oil is running out. So what does that mean? Getting oil will become more expensive, difficult and possibilities for natural disasters will increase. We are drilling down through 5,000 feet of water and another 13,000 feet of seabed. That's a long way down. Deep drilling is expensive and can cost as much as $800,000 a day, or up to $100,000 million dollars to establish a single well.

People and industry don't want to pay more for gas/oil, so corporations like BP will continue to try and cut costs to keep margins high. It's just business. Although many people are complaining right now, I'm sure folks in Louisiana will still be pro-oil after it's all said and done. Oil and fishing are their two biggest industries. They need both. This spill is one of the costs we incur for our dependance on oil. Accidents happen, we can only try our best to prevent them. Where the anger comes from is that we did not try our best in prevention, we tried our best to be profitable instead.

Watching this media spectacle is rather entertaining. I feel for BP, as a company's brand is expensive to create, establish and maintain. In 2000, they rebranded themselves as "Beyond Petroleum" that sees a future past dependence on fossil fuels. They came out with a nice green logo that looks more environmentally friendly. Even then, Greenpeace came out with a print ad that mocked the rebranding.

With the oil spill, Greenpeace is at it again with a competition to recreate the BP logo in a negative light called "Behind the Logo." It's a brilliant negative PR campaign that should have all the oil companies motivated to start looking seriously at alternative energy. There are over 300 designs submitted so far and available to view on flickr. Here's one of my favorite redesigns.

Another entertaining negative PR campaign is the Twitter feed parody called "BP Global PR." Although it appears somewhat official, it's really not from BP Corporate. More than anything, it has become like open mic night at a comedy club with tons of funny one-liners about BP and the oil spill. Here's a couple of my favorites:

The last thing I'm going to touch on is the media trying to say this might be Obama's Katrina. Man this irritates me. Yes there are similarities, but two big differences in my mind. Katrina was a natural disaster that nobody could control. The BP Oil Spill was not a natural disaster that we couldn't control, it is a manmade disaster that negatively effects nature. It could have been prevented.

Bush was judged on how he responded to the disaster, which was slow and unorganized. In Katrina there was loss of life. It was a disaster we had faced before, just on a larger scale. It was a problem that the US Government had the tools and expertise to assist with. The BP Oil Spill did have some loss of life, but that was immediate. A slow reaction will not result in more loss of life, as it did with Katrina. The US Government does not have the expertise to stop the oil spill, nor does it have the resources to clean up or prevent the environmental disaster. It shows that both the oil industry and US Government has not advanced their clean up techniques since the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Just like Obama's overall presidency, it's too soon to judge. Time will tell.

I don't recall President George Bush Senior being blamed for the Exxon Valdez oil spill, nor held accountable for it's clean up. But this is my frustration with mass media. They are in a similar position as the oil companies, in an ever increasing difficult market, they need to generate revenue and profits. Controversy, crisis, disasters, corruption, and turmoil generates more web views, hits, comments, discussion and interaction with its audience, driving their sales. If they reported that Obama was doing a good job, that BP was doing everything in their power to stop and clean up the oil spill, then they would not make as much money either. Greed is the real story here.