Do you all remember back in April when the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia collapsed killing 29 miners or the criminal investigation that followed? Is this the clean coal I have been hearing so much about? Even if you were able to capture all the carbon made from burning coal you still have to deal with the mining processes. We have mountain top removal, failed coal slurry retention, coal dust sullying the world outside the mines, not to mention the inside of miners’ lungs. So, I’m not too keen on this theory of clean coal.

And of course this doesn’t even begin to deal with the 29 miners that died from what appears to be negligence bred by greed and deregulation. Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey—owners of the Upper Big Branch Mine, has gone on record several times, saying things that make it all too easy to conclude that he is far more interested in profits than the safety of his miners.

Now we are dealing with the oil spigot in the Gulf. It seems that, again, greed and deregulation has led to the deaths of more workers. The Deep Horizon oilrig exploded; killing 11 workers, sinking the well, and causing the well to begin spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. While the executives and bosses want to dispute it, many of the workers were concerned with the safety of the well, they were essentially told “oil pays the bills.”

Since the rig sank and oil began spilling into the Gulf, it has been an ever-expanding disaster. All the fail-safes that were supposed to stop this catastrophe failed. The blowout preventer didn’t prevent the blow-out or seal the riser pipe. Perhaps, because it had been broken during the process of setting up the well and no one with authority did anything about it. Each successive attempt to stem the flow of oil has failed miserably.

After the malfunctions of the fail-safes began, the American coast was subjected to a Three Stooges-esque series of utter blunders to attempt to staunch the flow of crude oil into the Gulf. Sadly enough, it appears that while the technology of drilling has increased dramatically over the last decade, the technology for containment and clean-up has not kept pace. We can drill deeper and deeper in the ocean, but we still don’t know how to stop the failure of a well or how to clean up the oil spilling from such a failed well.

The “bottom-line” thinking is what bred both the Upper Big Branch and Deep Horizon disasters, and that thinking has so thoroughly infected the clean up and containment efforts of the mess in the gulf. BP has a vested interested in consistently low balling the estimates of oil springing from the well, especially considering that they would be charged a per-barrel fee by the EPA if the agency and the Obama administration were to actually use its teeth. If it weren’t so devastating the dance BP has done around estimating the flow of oil would be almost comical. BP released an estimate of 5,000 barrels and, then, when they begin to capture what they estimate is 5,000 barrels and oil is still spilling into the Gulf they realize they can no longer keep using such low estimates. Now that BP has attached the containment cap to the sawed off riser pipe they are capturing more oil than they can conceivably handle and have to start burning off oil until they can bring in tankers from all over the North Sea. Anyone remember all the people saying there was no need to estimate the flow?

And to all the people who say we should just figure out how to plug the leak and not figure out what happened until after that, I say, “Bull.” Congressional hearings have nothing to do with stopping the leak. Even having the CEO there doesn’t impede the guys trying to cap the well. Mr. CEO is not stopping the leak himself. If we delay the investigation we just give BP more time to try to obscure the evidence.

Since BP seems to have far more interest in protecting the livelihood of shareholders than they do the livelihood of residents of the Gulf, I have a plan. I just need someone with a good deal of excess cash and abundance of heart to buy up a bunch of shares of BP stocks and give them to the Gulf residents. It shouldn’t cost too much since BP stock is plummeting. I know the Right has an issue with regulation, but had BP and the Deep Water Horizon been properly regulated this could have been avoided.

To all those people screaming for deregulation: this is what deregulation looks like. I know we have lots of regulations, but none of them are really enforced. These corporations were given free license to do as they see fit. While I know the knee-jerk reaction of politics dictates that we should regulate the hell out of the industry right now, I would like to ask that, instead, we actually enforce the regulations we have now. Why make more rules for the corporations not to follow? Obama needs to stopping looking for asses to kick unless he is going to start with his own for not cleaning out the regulatory agencies when he took office. He should have cleaned house when he came into office, especially in the Mineral Management Services. Here’s a brilliant idea, Obama: Fire people. If the regulators are too corrupt or incompetent to do their jobs, then there are plenty of people looking for work—perhaps some shrimpers. Can we just bring back the idea that incompetence is a fireable offense. The BP safety plan for the Deep Horizon oil rig included warnings about protecting the walruses and sea otters, lists the wrong phone numbers for experts, and listing one expert who has been dead for several years. (In case you were unaware, those species don’t exist in the Gulf.) Obviously BP just cut and pasted an old Artic plan and submitted it, knowing that it would be rubber-stamped. If anyone had taken a few moments to read it, they would have seen such glaring issues and maybe done something.

We can blame the companies, we can blame the regulators, but really these two disasters rest on our shoulders. We citizens of this United States have elected these corrupt politicians that don’t have the drive or ability to reign in the corporate interests. We demand cheap fuel, no matter the actual cost. We waste energy as if there were no consequences. You want examples. Next time you’re stuck in traffic in town/city look in your car. How many people are riding with you? Look in the cars around you? Is there just the driver? One person, one car is a lot of what I see on the road. We have become addicted to the convenience of personal travel, even though that convenience has become inconvenient. And I’m not even talking about pollution. Think of the time you sit in traffic behind several cars waiting for the light to change. What would happen if more folks were car-pooling. Everyone would get through that light faster. Hell, what if more people walked or biked. Granted, I’m guilty of these things, too, but I have taken steps to change. I walk to and from work most days now. It’s two miles, so it’s doable. I fail, occasionally, to wake up early enough or I have to head from work to somewhere out of walking distance, but I’m still trying. If you work further out, try getting together with neighbors or co-workers. Sure, it requires more forward planning, but if we are going to change how we do this, it is going to require some sacrifices. Every time new legislation is proposed politicians say it can’t be done, and they are right. Legislation can only go so far. We, as Americans, are going to need to step up. We need to be the change instead of hoping for a politician to do that for us.