Probably closer to the truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
The oil's all gone, victims are fairly compensated, and the Gulf is just like how it used to be, right?
We
expected this problem wouldn't go away so smoothly, and unfortunately
we were proven right. BP seemed to care more about concealing their Gulf
spill rather than actually cleaning it properly. Remember how they heavily relied on chemical dispersants, such as Corexit
(sounds like maximum strength white-out)? Corexit is banned by many
nations, but is manufactured by Ecolab in the US, so it is still open
for business (most times, the burden of proof is not on the company but
on environmentalists/others to prove that a substance causes harm).
Other nations prefer to use oil eating microbes, but Corexit just
dissolves oil globs into smaller ones (out of sight, out of mind). The
hope was that sea life would digest the smaller droplets and the problem
would be solved (but what happens when sea life ingests the Corexit
too?). 4 years after the disaster, oil is still washing up on the Gulf
Coast. So maybe some of the millions of barrels of oil were digested,
but clearly a great deal was not.
So the dispersant strategy was partly ineffective, but
what about the side effects? Anything that chemically separates
aggregated hydrocarbons is probably not healthy for other organic
matter. When Corexit was used in Valdez and the Gulf, hundreds of
workers came down with respiratory issues (the chemical is sprayed out
of hoses and nozzles like Agent Orange, and can be easily inhaled).
Coastal residents also documented many cases of skin
rashes and boils. BP and the Coast Guard did not have its cleaning
crews wear any protective clothing or respirators. According to VICE,
they even barred people from wearing respirators because of the negative
impression.
Under the water, many studies have shown that Corexit+oil is much more toxic on some marine life than oil or Corexit alone. So the shrimping industry was heavily affected too. One business reported ~50% of shrimp exhibiting illnesses and deformities, often in the gills. They are obviously unsellable and possibly unsafe for consumption (despite the FDA quickly pronouncing Gulf seafood to be safe just 4 months after the blowout... but it takes them 10 years to declare a medicine to be safe?).
Clearly, this cautionary tale demonstrates the dangers of
(1) our dependence on fossil fuels, (2) our hubris that the latest
technologies will never fail and we can safely tap more challenging
resource deposits in more environmentally sensitive areas, (3) the
political influences of the petrochemical industry, and (4)
lax/incompetent regulation. Also, a destroyed city can be rebuilt, but a
decimated ecosystem may be irreversible (at least on human schedules). Under the water, many studies have shown that Corexit+oil is much more toxic on some marine life than oil or Corexit alone. So the shrimping industry was heavily affected too. One business reported ~50% of shrimp exhibiting illnesses and deformities, often in the gills. They are obviously unsellable and possibly unsafe for consumption (despite the FDA quickly pronouncing Gulf seafood to be safe just 4 months after the blowout... but it takes them 10 years to declare a medicine to be safe?).
BP should not only compensate victims of the blowout, but also of the "cleanup". Whoever authorized the use of Corexit at this scale (without sufficient impact study a priori and public oversight) should be fired and possibly jailed. If this isn't grounds for prohibiting a foreign company from doing business in the US (and hopefully nationalizing their assets), I don't know what is. "Corporations are people, too", but if we can drone-execute a US citizen overseas without trial, then we should be able to give companies a lifetime ban if the body of evidence is so compelling. We lock up poor minorities and throw away the key, and AFAIK they did much less harm to the US than BP so far.
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