A group of British scientists said Monday that the BP (NYSE:BP) oil spill would have been better if it had been left alone by the government, rather than attempting to solve the problem, which probably made it worse.
Past oil spills, according to the scientists, have been proven to be better left alone than interfered with, and responses can make it worse than the oil spill itself.
They say it would've been better to allow the oil to "disperse and evaporate" naturally than to flare the oil and spray dispersants on it.
The only thing they see as being valid intervention would be to keep the oil away from the shores and out at sea while natural forces worked on it.
"One of the problems with this spill is that it has gone from the environmental arena into the economic and political arena, so if you ask how bad it is, that depends on which perspective you're coming from," said Martin Preston, an expert in marine pollution, earth and ocean sciences from Liverpool University.
"Economically, clearly the impact has been very large, but environmentally the jury is still out. One of the tensions between environment and politics is that politicians cannot be seen to be doing nothing, even though doing nothing is sometimes the best option."
This is also similar to the ongoing intervention in financial markets, where a significant number of economists and analysts believed it better for it to work itself out rather than the outrageous spending, which has exasperated, rather than helped the problem.
The issue is the government socializing people to believe they have the answer to everything, rather than people taking the initiative to solve challenges themselves. So when events arise, government action is expected and demanded because of that unfortunate mindset.
According to Simon Boxall, an expert at Britain's National Oceanography Center, experiments since the Exxon Valdez oil spill have concluded it's better to let things take care of themselves naturally, once the spill has happened.
"The chemically cleaned up areas have taken the longest to recover and they are still damaged," Boxall said. "The areas that were left alone actually recovered much quicker."
Concerning the specific BP spill, Boxall added that the oil coming out of it is light crude, and it's much easier to evaporate and break down as it comes to the surface of the Gulf.
Media-created hysteria and the government positioning itself as the savior of mankind seems to have brought things to the place where action is required and expected, and for better or worse, until that changes, we'll continue to be victims of that political ideology.
Liberals, aka, socialists or progressives, have jumped on these types of crises in order to attack free markets and businesses in order to impose a government-run market upon us.
The truth is their ineptness and interference in almost every circumstance makes things worse rather than better, and it's time for us to begin the process of limiting government and realize they're not the answer to these type of things, but part of the problem.
1 comment:
Politically motivated crap. Yes, natural processes will ultimately degrade the bulk of the oil. The rest will sink to the bottom and (eventually) be sedimented over. However, the efforts at containing the spill have been directed at preventing large amounts of oil from washing ashore, particularly in the estuaries and wetlands. These are fragile ecosystems, particularly given their role in the reproductive cycles of many marine organisms. In addition, the effects of the oil on decimating the vegetation will accelerate the erosion and coastal loss. The Exxon Valdez spill is not a valid analogue, since the coast in the area of that spill is mostly rocky beaches which are easily scoured by the violent winter storms. In contrast, as noted above, much of the coast in the Gulf is wetlands, marshes, and estuaries, with significant flora and fauna to be impacted and much less water movement to clear and re-expose the oil.
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