I would expect that this incident will sharply reduce the popularity of Sarah Palin’s “Drill Baby Drill” mantra in Louisiana — but I won’t be holding my breath waiting to see it happen either. People living even twenty-five miles from the coast are no more directly affected than I am at the north end of the Mississippi Valley. When gas prices are up, people feel their pain and want to drill, wherever. When shrimp and oysters are destroyed, not to mention whole fishing fleets put out of business, people want the drilling stopped.

“Drill, baby, drill” is going to be a very, very popular line when gas prices hit $ 4.00 per gallong. I’ll guarantee it.
Not everyone eats seafood. Almost everyone drives a car. YOU tell ME who wins when that particular conflict comes up.
Your servant,
Lord Karth

I work in a seafood rstaurant on the gulf of mexico. This impacts me more than someone living inland. Not only will I be losing income from our tourist industry I will also be paying more for gas. Their are thousands of people working on the beaches. This oil leak impacts more than commercial fisherman and people with cars.

You’re a brave man, Rod. And an honest one. Manlier than most, in that regard. Keep at it, dude.

Re Rod’s: “the sunny, green and green-friendly logo” of BP.
If you look closely, you will see that it consists of three rings of “petals” (dark green, light green, yellow). How many petals in each ring? 18
Now, the number 18 is clearly a reference to golf. BP drills holes for oil. Golf cannot be played without holes. You see where I’m going here.
The modern game of golf originated in Scotland, which became part of the British Empire and out of which British Petroleum emerged. The implications of this sinister linkage is so obvious, I’m not going to bother to spell it out here. You know what it is. As do I.
(Gotta run. I’m late for my local Conspirators Anonymous meeting.)

I don’t supposed this will make you feel better, Rod, but I’ve got a mother who won’t purchase anything from the grocery store unless the word “Smart” is in the product name.
Quiddity, although you are being facetious in your reference to Conspirators Anonymous, I’d bet the farm (if I had one) you’re not wrong about the logo. I hate to even mention the book Subliminal Seduction, since it was published in the 1970′s and, since then, we’ve seen and read a lot about the expense and effort companies invest in advertising in order to create desire for a product or a sense of good feeling in the consumer who purchases it. I’m a business major who had to study this in college, and it still amazes me.
I totally agree with Lord Karth about who’s going to win the battle of seafood versus oil. I’m not criticizing you, Rod, but from what I’ve read, you’ve done more than the average citizen’s share of traveling over the past few months – all completely necessary and some we all wish circumstances had not forced you to do. I don’t know if you’re critical of the dependence we have on oil. I do know that you’re a believer in Peak Oil. So am I, although I disagree on the definition of reserves Kunstler and other proponents of peak oil use. Still, whose place is it to dictate to you or to me or to anybody else under what circumstances we are going to use it and how much of it?
BP certainly deserves the blame, criticism, and penalties over this spill. With all the gazillions it spends on R&D and high tech offshore drilling technology, did nobody even consider the possibility of a fire so catastrophic as to devastate the structural integrity of the offshore platform and the effect of that devastation on the connection to the reservoir?
I don’t believe for a minute that BP intended this to happen, but intentions really don’t matter at this point. Sadly, it appears the engineering/r&d people didn’t work this through. And, yeah, as several have posted, when/if the damages become catastrophic, bankruptcy’s going to be the option.

re: 18
that’s 6+6+6
BP is clearly Beast Petroleum

I too, have been thinking about using British Petroleum. In fact my wife and I have a BP credit card that gives us 5% off the price of our gas purchases from BP. I can confess that the sunny “Beyond Petroleum” slogan has affected my purchases.
However, I have been aware of the refinery fire and the Alaska oil line problem. But I have so far preferred BP over Exxon-Mobil, whom I know funds the GCI deniers. In my case, my loyalty is older than BP though. My dad only ever bought Standard and then Amoco gasolines. His credit card was good only for those gas purchases back in the day.
So I mourn, lament, and examine again how I can reduce my use.
Peace,
Randy Gabrielse

[nb: the time of my above post is 10:18]
“… we are complicit in oil spills.”
yes, I am.
I also pollute the air with my car.
I also help to deplete the world’s remaining resources,
by buying cars and gasoline and new tires etc.
I also contribute to higher corn prices,
by burning some ethanol in my gasoline.
by the way, I just like to repeat that lately I have really been enjoying driving around in my car.
it’s not that I want to pollute, and deplete resources.
it’s just that in the next century, cars will be very rare.
you gotta appreciate what you got til it’s gone.

Me too, Rod. Me too. They don’t spend those millions for nothing. None of us are as immune to marketing as we like to think we are. We can easily recognize manipulation (and self-righteously call it out or shake our heads) when we are not the target market, but when we are, we often don’t even notice the marketing.

so if bp isn’t really the green oil company that their ad campaigns say, could that mean that walmart isn’t really your local neighborhood market?

I would expect that this incident will sharply reduce the popularity of Sarah Palin’s “Drill Baby Drill” mantra in Louisiana — but I won’t be holding my breath waiting to see it happen either.
Is Sarah’s injunction to drill a general one — always and everywhere true, or just a general guideline — we should, barring exceptional circumstances drill, or was it related to a specific plot of land ‘the size of LAX’.
If the third option — which I believe is correct as Sarah thinks not in abstractions, but in concrete terms — then we must ask: isn’t it a heck of a lot easier to contain a gusher on the surface of dry (or even ice covered) land than one with a source 2000 ft (or whatever) under a sometimes stormy sea? Then we must ask, what role did closing of ANWAR have in pushing exploration into the Gulf. I like tundra and caribou as much as the next guy, but I surely the Gulf is a more valuable, in human centric terms, ecosystem.

An oil advert from happier times.

I would expect that this incident will sharply reduce the popularity of Sarah Palin’s “Drill Baby Drill” mantra in Louisiana — but I won’t be holding my breath waiting to see it happen either.
Ms. Palin has announced she still thinks we should drill baby drill” as the more oil we drill the more prosperous Americans will be and Ms. Palin wants us all to be prosperous.
At least she’s honest – cause face it – this spill may wreck the Gulf’s economy and it may have disastrous environmental effects – but people want to drive those gas guzzlers and no number of disastrous oil spills will stop us from driving.
People will start to care when when environmental degradation has an immediate observable damaging effect in their neighborhood – and this effect has to be more than animals or lovely places being destroyed. People – at least many people – simply do not care enough to change their lifestyles.

The only gas-station sign I look at is the one with the price.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/were-investing-so-much-in-alternative-fuels-someti,11396/

Sometimes, I think I was born a sceptic. I just don’t see how anyone could have been taken in by the BP ads. I never was. The campaign had a stench about it that always comes with bs.
What also didnt surprise me was that BP is responsible for this disaster. I remember clearly how one of their pipelines burst in Alaska several years ago due to egregious neglect. I think there was some kind of huge fine involved.
I rememeber thinking to myself then “Now I know for a fact that they are full of sh**.” Obviously, tragically, they didnt learn a damn thing from that incident and noone was on the lookout for more from them. They should have been.
With any luck, BP will become a by-word for just how bad a company can tank in public opinion. I hope that for years to come, its fate will be referred to in corporate boardrooms in tremulous whispers as it becomes an object lesson for other companies to avoid the same fate.
Am I mad, hell yeah I am.