Oil companies have bought out the technonogy since they would be out of business otherwsie
Oil companies have invested in renewable energy because they're not stupid. They know it's going to be the future - how near a future depends on what governments do but even if governments do nothing we'll get peak oil at some point. The oil companies want a piece of that because otherwise they're doomed to failure in the long term.
As for the OP:
What I want to address is how politicians, especially Obama, are handling this crisis.
Politicians should mostly keep their noses out. Right now they should be providing financial and other assistant and direction for the containment and cleanup efforts, and supporting BP if needed in stopping the spill.
Maybe the US government could call in someone other than BP, but really, the only other organisations with the resources and expertise
Once the spill is stopped, there should be criminal and civil legal proceedings against those suspected to be responsible. Questions of blame can be settled in the courts - that's what courts are
for - not by Obama's mudslinging which he only did to try and help his own approval ratings. Based on what is currently known I would suspect some hefty fines and if the law allows prison sentences.
From a technical perspective, the number 1 question is
why the hell didn't the blowout preventer work?. Until we have a satisfactory answer to this question (from a technical engineering standpoint not a finger-pointing legal blame one), I don't think any new drilling should be allowed, nor any operations like what BP was doing when the disaster occured. And if the US government has the power they should force all oil companies in their territory to run extra safety checks. The oil companies ought to do this ANYWAY - if I were a Shell or Exxon manager I'd be wanting to make damn sure the same thing doesn't happen to us.
Why is Deep Water Horizon out drilling so far into the sea? Because do-gooder environmentalists made it illegal to drill in much safer venues for oil.
Proof please. Name me one conventional on-shore or shallow-water oil field in the US that is estimated as big as the Deepwater Horizon field ('Macondo Project', 50 million barrels estimated) and that an oil company has been completely banned from drilling on environmental grounds. Not tar sands, because frankly the environmental impact from routine exploitation of them gives the Deepwater Horizon blowout a run for its money.
I believe that my biggest disappointment was that the company didn't have an "Oh, shit! Button." Not all worse-case-scenario's can be predicted but at the very least there should of been something that could of prevented or greatly limit the spill.
They do. It's called the blowout preventer. It didn't work. It's suspected that was due to it not being maintained properly.
BP should be bankrupted over this, and the managing directors should be put in an American jail for years.
And thousands of employees who had absolutely nothing to do with the disaster should lose their jobs, and whole towns lose their main employer and suffer terrible unemployment and deprivation for decades. That's what should happen is it?
I'm more offended that BP seemingly didn't have a plan than the government not executing one. But good point, yeah.
They did. In fact they had several. The plans just didn't work, because they were untested, because there's never been a blowout at this kind of depth before.
It's a very bad spill, one of the worst in America's waters. So, yeah, I think calling it one of the worst spills ever - it is one of them - is justifiable. And that data - wasn't it compared to the other big spills? (and the biggest - wasn't a war going on in the area or something?
To clarify - this spill is ONGOING. To say it's a small spill is like saying your beer is short measure when the bartender's still pouring it.
Also the eco-system will recover in time, its not the fucking apocolypse.
This is something we
just don't know. History has shown size of a spill relates
very poorly to environmental damage.
Attached are New Scientists scans of an article about the issue. I think Smogon is resizing them, so they're a bit hard to read sorry.
"BP" is convenient shorthand for a massive company consisting of thousands of people. When I say you should blame people more relevant, I mean the people involved in the particular leaking facility. Not BP, an intangible entity, and not its CEO.
Most legal systems allow bringing proceedings against a company. As for blaming the CEO - when someone accepts the job of CEO, they
willingly accept ultimate responsibility for what their company does. And they get paid a crapton to take that risk.