Plus a must-see spoof TV ad: “Brown. It’s the New Green.”
Two new ironic ads on the BP oil disaster — though only the first one is intentionally ironic:
What follows is a Think Progress repost.
Since the disastrous Gulf Coast oil spill, BP and the other companies responsible for the tragedy have been beefing up their lobbying and public relations efforts. Today, the oil giant has full-page ads in the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today defending its response to the oil spill. From the ad:
Since the tragic accident on the Transcocean Deepwater Horizon rig first occurred, we have been committed to doing everything possible to stop the flow of oil at the seabed, collect the oil on the surface and keep it away from the shore.
BP has taken full responsibility for dealing with the spill. We are determined to do everything we can to minimize any impact. We will honor all legitimate claims.
BP’s ads come as a new poll finds that 76 percent of the American public disapproves of how the company is handling the spill. And BP is not taking “full responsibility” for the spill. In fact, officials have repeatedly tried to downplay the disaster and argued that attempts to accurately measure the rate of flow at the seabed are impossible and unnecessary:
- Tony Haywood, BP CEO: “I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest. It is impossible to say and we will mount, as part of the aftermath, a very detailed environmental assessment as we go forward.” [5/18/10]
- Haywood: “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” [5/14/10]
- Lamar McKay, President of BP America: “The volume estimates are based effectively on surface expression, because you can’t measure what’s coming out at the seabed.” [Senate testimony, 5/12/10]
- Tom Mueller, BP: “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.” [5/14/10]
- Doug Suttles, BP COO, Global Exploration: “Since the beginning, we’ve said it’s almost impossible to get a precise number. But ourselves and people from NOAA and others believe that something around 5,000 “” it’s actually barrels a day “” is the best estimate.” [ABC News, 5/14/10]
In Boston Globe op-ed today, columnist Derrick Z. Jackson hits BP for its ads:
It is difficult to conceive of a more resounding insult to our intelligence than BP’s full-page advertisements in the New York Times and USA Today about its response to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The most intriguing paragraph of the BP ad was, “This is an enormous team effort. More than 2,500 of our operational and technical personnel from around the world are working tirelessly in coordination with the U.S. Coast Guard, and federal, state and local government agencies.”
But until Deepwater Horizon exploded, BP’s idea of working tirelessly with government agencies was lobbying them to bypass environmental-impact reviews for well permits. Yesterday, the Times had yet another story on how drilling projects have proceeded with environmental waivers, despite President Obama’s so-called moratorium on permits. Deepwater Horizon received an environmental waiver last year and received another one just before the April explosion.
While BP will likely survive this tragedy because of its massive profits, these attempts to shirk responsibility are already beginning to drag the company down in the public’s eyes.
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What they neglected to say is that they have masses of lawyers trying to influence what full responsability means for the purpose of reducing it as much as possible. Also, their idea of clean up and containment does not seem to include most of the oil which is below the surface and no mention of their efforts to obscure the actual size of the gusher. I can just see lawyers in court at some future time saying please prove that the spill is as large as you say it was. Where is the evidence?. Oh you cant, what a shame.
BP is responsible for the criminal negligence that led to: the deaths of 11 oil workers, the destruction of the Gulf Coast environment, the loss of income to residents, and the destruction of Gulf Coast economies. They will be further responsible for health issues that will result from exposure to the oil and perhaps the dispersants. That is what BP is responsible for (I’m sure I have overlooked some things).
I understand that stopping the eruption of oil is the thing that must be done first. I understand that getting instruments in the flow to attempt to get a measurement is not the most important thing to do at this time. But when will they get to that little item? When the flow is stopped? Maybe they could try to work it in?
I’m not sure if this is Obama’s Katrina but maybe this can be the Three Mile Island for offshore drilling.
Is this what cover-ups are going to be like in the 21st century. BP is successfully running a cover-up operation in full view of the public, while the attrocity is still underway.
The only reason this is happening like this is because the company, (BP) Believes it can play down the damage and survive the consequences intact and continue operating as a busines. Its life is not at risk. They believe the people of industrialized society are just too addicted and to lazy to take action and run them out of town. They are playing us for saps. That and the fact that they believe themselves to be too important to really get into trouble.
Revoke their corporate charter like you would any professional that screwed up this bad. We need to turn this around and require companies that are given wide access to public lands (and in this case public waters) to prove that they deserve the public trust.
Why aren’t BP executives being arrested as terrorists? Al Quida couldn’t have caused this much destruction to the American way of life and American wealth with a nuclear bomb. As long as the oil corporations are doing this much destruction, who needs terrorists? We’re already terrorized.
Revoking corporate charters will get a corporation’s attention. This is like a death penalty for ‘corporate citizens’. Of course, in China they execute the responsible corporate executive. That probably causes other executives to try harder. We definitely need responsible corporate executives who try harder not to do any harm to any living thing in their pursuit of corporate wealth.
The public has figured out that these guys are total scoundrels. Now it’s up to the Federal Government to act on that knowledge, and apply the same standard to Exxon, Chevron, and Conoco Phillips.
This oil spill of gulf of mixico can be easly resolved in other words ther is a simple solution instead of using cement.
Dr.Mahmoud Elshear
Environmental specialist
Joe, is your ‘Re-name BP’ contest still open? Because after reading this post, I have some suggestions.
BP is no longer “Beyond Petroleum,” it’s not even Beyond Pretty. They are evidently laboring mightily under the impression that the rest of us are a bunch of dumb shmoos. Perhaps one of these names might fit them better in this new age of public relations:
Barely Plausible
Bilious Petulance
Bathe in Petroleum
Billowing Pipeline
Becoming Perfect
Beastly Performance
Beyond Penitentiary
Belch Peril
Berserk Peremptory
Binge Piffle
Blacken Plaquemines