No Answers: Adorno & Horkheimer

The headline caught the attention of millions. ‘Oil,’ ‘spill,’ ‘gulf’ … words that carry significant meaning individually, but together can kill thousands of species and destroy a coastline. Being from Chicago, I literally had a geographic distance that separated me from the emotional and financial difficulties that arose from the BP oil spill. Sure, gas prices went up and there were countless boycotts of BP gasoline in my area, but at the end of the day people still went back to the oil giant in fear that if it went out of business, the mess would never be cleaned up. As impacted as we felt by the spill, it was not until I talked to my friends from Florida did I realize its true damage. My friends were the ones who were living on the coast, who had parents working in the fishing industry, and felt the strain of the incident. On Thursday, we talked about the quote “no one has to answer officially for what he or she thinks” and I cannot get the idea of the oil spill out of my head. No one ever stepped up to the plate and claimed full responsibility for what happened. They did not answer the questions of the fisherman who were jobless, the environmentalists who were watching hundreds of species face endangerment, or the nation that just wanted an ending date. It is said that by May of 2010, over 130 miles of coastline had been heavily impacted (New Orleans Time Picayune), 11 workers were missing due to the explosion (Huffington Post), $1.6 billion in costs as of June (Press Association). These are pretty big numbers to be tossing around as if they are arbitrary. BP did not take responsibility for what happened, they blamed everyone else, pointed their find in hundreds of directions and even released press packets that claimed that knew what they were doing and people needed to stop reacting so heavily. I’m sorry, but in my opinion we every right to react. It is our coast, our wildlife, our job market and the sad thing about the whole situation is we will not even seen the true impact for years, but I suppose by then BP will have moved on.