In which I argue with our collective conscience.

Everyone’s pissed off at BP.

They’re so mad they want to put the company out of business right this goddamned instant. At protests, their posters say things like, “BP gets rich, the people and the planet pay the price” and “Seize BP’s assets!” ⁽¹⁾

The heartbreaking images of birds covered in muck stir them to a seething rage. They’re instigating anti-BP groups all over the net⁽²⁾. They’re pissed off, and they want you to do your part and boycott BP stations beginning right freakin’ now.

I humbly submit that these people are all being ignorant asshats.

What? What?! You’re wondering how I, your friend and previously non-insane person, could possibly think that? Well here’s the deal, people:

BP is our fault.

A 42-gallon barrel of oil⁽³⁾ only produces about 20 gallons of gas. The rest of the barrel is used to make virtually everything in your home. And I mean everything: umbrellas, pillows, thermometers, Scotch tape, snorkels, ear phones.

Poker chips, insulated boots, Q-tips, prescription glasses. Bubble bath. Coffee pots. Glad Ware.

Vacuum bottles. Patio furniture. Garden hoses. Caulk. Brake fluid. Crayons.⁽⁴⁾ I don’t care how crunchy and “green” your life is. If you’re in society at all, you use oil every single day of your life.

So this BP disaster is our fault, because BP exists to obtain the oil we need to make the items we buy every day. We buy a lot of toothbrushes and Crayons, because we’ve increased the world’s population by over two billion people in the last forty years⁽⁵⁾. BP didn’t make us do that.

This event is not only a terrible environmental disaster, but it’s arguably the mother of all public relations problems. BP is losing money hand over fist, something I feel safe assuming they don’t like to do. This was an accident, not a calculated insult to the world’s ecology.

Most sadly, it’s simply one more accident in a long, long list of horrible accidents⁽⁶⁾ that we’ve all ignored.

The reason us rich white folks are galvanized right now is because this disaster is in our rich, white backyard. We don’t even know that Nigeria is a toxic wasteland due to our endless need for oil⁽⁸⁾.

The insult we’re perpetrating on the world, in my opinion, is that we’re not even smart enough to use our extensive education and wealth to do this indignant reaction thing right, we’re just slapping up toothless boycottbp.org websites and feeling smug about our FB groups and about how committed and pro-active we are, and then we go on using all the petroleum-based products we always use, and don’t even bother to learn that they ARE petroleum-based products or what they cost the rest of the world.

People are standing around in their clothes made of oil derivatives in their houses made of oil derivatives with their oil-derivative toothbrushes in their mouths screaming, “Fuck BP, those motherfuckers, look what they’ve done! They’re evil!”

Well, they’re not evil. Greedy, maybe, and lazy, and rich, but they hardly did this on purpose. They’re a big goddamned nasty clusterfuck of companies, sure, but what they’re doing is getting oil out of the earth so you can live the way you like. Your sputtering outrage and indignation makes you look foolish, don’t you see, because you choose not to understand that you’re culpable, you yourself. It’s not a them-versus-us issue here: BP is not the villain in some kind of thin little morality play. WE’RE ALL THE VILLAIN, everyone who buys pretty much anything, ever.

Of course we didn’t mean it, of course we didn’t mean to destroy 120 miles of gulf coast, but it happened. Of course we want to do something about it. But. Boycotting BP is a horrible idea because it lets people believe that they’re making a difference when they most assuredly are not. Boycotters will buy their gas across the street from their local BP franchise, and then they’ll go shopping at Walmart, not even knowing that most of what they’re buying has some oil-derivative component in it. Then they’ll go to bed at night feeling smug, while small franchise gas stations have to lay off their staff. What steps are we taking, with this boycott, to reduce or oil consumption? Um, none.

The salient point is that BP doesn’t even own the majority of its gas stations. They’re all franchises⁽⁷⁾. Come on, people, you’re boycotting your community members and neighbors. During a recession. In what universe does this even make sense?

The screamers and the outraged ones seriously need to go home, shut up, and take an honest look at how oil affects their lives. If they want to give up all that stuff, fine: they need to find a way to do so and thereby change the market. I’m all for that. If they don’t, they need to knock off the bitching and vitriolic language and figure out grown-up ways of expressing their grief over the gulf, like getting trained and going there to help, or helping to draft new safety regulations and responsibility caps, or deciding where not to drill, or giving their money to brain trusts who can figure out how to replace oil’s ubiquity in modern life.

I don’t have the answer. I don’t know how to fix it. I live as lightly as I possibly can: I don’t own a car; I consume less than the typical amount of resources most Americans do; I don’t eat 200 lbs. of animal flesh every year; I reuse my baggies and Ziplocs and even take-out containers… that’s what I do. That’s all I know how to do. But most people don’t live like me [seriously, I don’t blame them]. Most people need Crayons, and insulated boots, and refrigerant, and Glad Ware. Who the hell am I to take it away from them?

Nobody. That’s why I don’t try to. Besides, it’s not like I don’t have a netbook, and earphones, and CDs and DVDs and prescription glasses and contact lenses and toothbrushes myself.

Yes, it’s a mess. We all get that. Now: since we’re done with our silly “Boycott BP” thing, how do we fix it?

¹ BP Oil Spill Protests
² Boycott BP
³ Barrel
⁴ A partial list of products made from Petroleum
⁵ Total Population of the World by Decade, 1950–2050
⁶ Oil Spills and Disasters
⁷ Punishing BP Is Harder Than Boycotting Stations
⁸ Nigeria’s agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it