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Deepwater Horizon is not Hurricane Katrina!
By Lauren | June 16, 2010
As oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico from the damaged Deepwater Horizon oil rig, too many commentators are calling this disaster “President Obama’s Hurricane Katrina.” At first glance, it’s an obvious analogy. After all, both events were disasters affecting the Gulf coast, particularly New Orleans. But while the analogy is easy to draw it’s fundamentally false, and a red herring that can provide undeserved cover for the real culprit in the current situation.
Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster. It was an unusually strong hurricane that did exceptional damage, but it’s the sort of thing that happens frequently, nobody caused it, and the federal government should have been prepared to deal with it. (That’s why we have FEMA, right?) By contrast, Deepwater Horizon is a manmade disaster, caused by a corporation that failed to take adequate measures to prevent its equipment from malfunctioning. British Petroleum, not the federal government, ought to have stockpiled the specialized tools and supplies to mop up a major offshore spill.
Deepwater Horizon is much more like the chemical spills covered by the federal “Superfund” statute. That law rightly requires corporations to clean up environmental damage caused by their operations. I wish the federal government had moved faster to put more pressure on BP to contain the Deepwater Horizon spill. But make no mistake about it - this is BP’s disaster, and it’s BP’s responsibility to clean it up.
Topics: Business Ethics, business communications, corporate responsibility, ethics |
June 17th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
Yes, it does get me that supposedly the oil spill is “Obama’s Katrina”. And according to the media, the underwear bomber was Obama’s Katrina. H1N1 was Obama’s Katrina. Haiti was Obama’s Katrina. The GM Bankruptcy was Obama’s Katrina. The Ft. Hood shootings were Obama’s Katrina. Even the Kentucky ice storms were Obama’s Katrina. Hasn’t the right wing ever heard the story of the “Boy Who Cried Wolf”? What’s almost as bad is that the so-called liberal media seems complicit in this spin.
I can’t tell you how many times in the past 57 months that I’ve heard conservatives scream that Katrina was something that should have been handled by the locals. This in spite of the fact that it was larger than 9/11, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Northridge California earthquake and the San Diego firestorms combined.
Now these same folks, many led by Rush Limbaugh are saying that the oil spill, which is the fault of a PRIVATE corporation IS suddenly the responsibility of the Federal Government. How hypocritical can they get? And to think in 2008 how many right wing media members lied that Katrina didn’t cause any oil spills and therefore we should be expanding oil drilling in the Gulf.
Paul Harris
Author, “Diary From the Dome, Reflections on Fear and Privilege During Katrina”