Free "Prosecute BP" stickers

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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The Snowden Principle

Anonymous

Seriously, what is going on in the heads of the people shouting that everyone who drives a car is just as responsible for this disaster as BP? C’mon people, is your agenda of feeling superior for biking to work so important that you can ignore the straight facts. Car culture goes way beyond any one person. The whole structure of our society is set up so that suburban and rural people have no choice but to drive to meet their economic needs. Even in urban areas public transit is inadequete and overpriced. If you wanna change that maybe you should start taking some kind of actions instead of riding your bike around feeling good about yourself.

Sorry if I sound bitter but this comes from someone who has used bikes as his primary mode of transportation his whole life and lives in a city with one of the most active bike cultures in the Americas. We’re way more active than most, but there’s a lot of backpatting going on here and not enough action.

The real issues are 1) BP’s record of safety is beyond atrocious, which they’ve tried to offset with a furiously deceptive greenwashing propaganda campaign. 2) Our regulatory agencies have been continuously gutted in favor of the oil companies. Your man Obama put offshore drilling’s biggest fan Ken Salazer in charge of the Dept of the Interior, which directly controls the MMS. There’s enough malfaesance out in the open to prosecute a string of BP and MMS higher-ups, drain all their assets and dissolve their charter. Riding your bike is not going to change things, unless you’re on your way to some kind of direct action or show of resistance.

Ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and starting to dismantle the USA’s foreign military presence around the globe would reduce the need for petro more than all of us deciding to ride our bikes one day (unlikely)…
Anonymous

How about at the same time do some prosecute Union Carbide or The Dow Chemical Company for what happened in bhopul….
DogStarMan

My anger is great
But my apathy is deep
Bumper sticker rage
twinangel

Everyone needs to understand that not only is BP liable (up to the limits of federal law), but that the federal government, by law, plays a large role in preventing and responding to oil spills. Here is a run down of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 from the EPA’s website.

http://www.epa.gov/oem/content/lawsreg/opaover.htm

“…establishing provisions that expand the federal government’s ability, and provide the money and resources necessary, to respond to oil spills.”
TEKNA2007

Let’s not leave the people running Minerals Management Service out of this. They’re the ones who said it’s okay to open a hole in the ocean floor without first making sure we were able to close it.
Anonymous

……..We should also have stickers that read….

“Prosecute All War Crimes Participants”
thedarkharlequin

um…so these stickers are made from vinyl….

vinyl is made from oil…..
- robgotabingbang
  
  Yes, they are and the people who will eventually put them on their bumpers are equally conflicted and disingenuous. You can’t boycott them, you can’t even escape purchasing their oil. The best you can do is slap these bumper stickers on your car and get mad at the TV. They own this country and they’re in the pocket of every politician therein. Enjoy the summer, folks.
  - anansi133
    
    I’ve been wondering which logical fallacy this argument falls under. I think it’s the Straw Man.
    
    Start with the assumption that anyone who’s mad at BP is also a pure, bicycle-riding, zero-impact tree-hugger kind of person. So if anything they do in protest has any sort of connection with oil at all, then their message is completely invalid.
    
    Which also conveniently disregards a century’s worth of political scheming and power brokerage, well in progress before any of us were born. “Too bad” you might say, “If you’re an American voter then you asked for all of this”.
    
    To hell with that. I have an interest in surviving on this planet long term, so if I have to use some more oil in order to achieve that end, it’s still better than sleepwalking to the mall.
    
    There’s a fine line between rage and despair.
- EH
  
  is there any plastic in your computer? if so, you’re doing it wrong.
Anony Mouse

Are they bumper stickers? LOL Fail.
arkizzle / Moderator

Are you trying to say that the US public’s demand for cheap and plentiful petroleum products has nothing to do with the pressure to cut corners on oil producers and the tremendous rewards for doing so?

Yeah, kind of.

I’m saying that cutting corners for tremendous reward is an unacceptable trade-off; a view seemingly supported by a society that regulates the health, safety and environmental impact of industrial production.

As a product of both the various global governments’ involvement in industrial regulation and the various oil companies’ continued statements of green-standards and environmental concern, consumers put a certain amount of trust in the products they buy as being produced to a minimum standard of ethics, at the price offered.

We aren’t given a straight forward Bill of Ethics at the petrol-pump (or computer shop); there is no warning that the price offered might require us to be in ethically-tricky waters to sustain. But we are constantly reassured that the companies we patronise have the environment at heart.

BP is not a faceless operation residing in some far-away country with differing standards of ethics and human rights, they’re a multinational, branded corporation in constant dialogue with the public (and organisations keen on holding them accountable for their actions) and they consistently tell us their methods are green and safe.
arkizzle / Moderator

Huh?

So, as consumers of a commodity (in which individual branding means very little) we cannot complain about the behaviour of the producers of said commodity, without be shouted down as hypocrites for using it?

There was no reason (including the lack of government enforcement) for these companies to drill without an emergency plan to deal with this situation as it occured. As consumers of a commodity we can at least demand its production/collection be done in a sustainable (ha!) manner.
- Anony Mouse
  
  Are you trying to say that the US public’s demand for cheap and plentiful petroleum products has nothing to do with the pressure to cut corners on oil producers and the tremendous rewards for doing so?
  
  Put it this way, would you buy from an ‘ethical petrol pump’ if you had to pay, say, $9/gallon?
CastanhasDoPara

And just how do you think these oil based products intended (by majority default) for use on the bumpers of oil burning vehicles will get to where they are requested?

That’s right, on a truck, train or plane.

Nice catch-22 isn’t it. What a world.
robulus

I don’t see why you can’t demand compensation for negligence just because you use the product that is produced.

There are two separate points of view here, one that this could have been prevented by us not using oil products, the other is that companies who make massive profits from potentially disasterous mining projects need to be held accountable for ensuring those projects are carried out to the highest degree of safety possible.

You can be a consumer of oil products, and still be rightfully pissed off about the poor level of oversight and compliance that led to this catastrophe.
Ernunnos

We can always dream.
Anonymous

And lets not forget Obama for letting this happen on his watch while he fiddled…
Anonymous

How about nationalize U.S. assets instead? oil co-op. non profit. all surplus funds go to clean up. drive down the price.
Anonymous

I sure hope those aren’t bumper stickers!
Jason

@ the people balking at these going on car bumpers:

Should we also just call off all clean-up & capping activities because that burns fuel & oil? Your comments are narrow and ridiculous.

If you know anything about Sticker Robot their background is on the street art side of the tracks… I’m sure they are thinking more about the thousands of public places these (1.5″ x 8″) decals could call home, rather than moving down the highway at 70mph…
jennybean42

The Android commercial right next to it here that says “Slap MotherNature in the Face” is an unfortunate juxtoposition.
Endo

If a beef packing company has negligent inspection standards that cause people to die from E. Coli, can only vegetarians criticize them? Of course not. Criticizing BP for willful negligence != criticizing all oil production.
Daemon

I’m still in favor of throwing them into the ocean.
Anonymous

What do you think the Cops will do to anyone displaying one of these? Not fun, I guarantee.
- noah django
  
  Are you 12? “the Cops”? Yeah, they’re all shills for BP, because BP signs their checks? Ehm… no.
  
  Anyway, as noted by right-thinking contributors to this thread, putting one of these stickers on your car implies that you have a car, which implies that YOU are equally as culpable as BP. If it wasn’t them, it’d be some other motherfucker drilling the gulf to supply YOU with oil, so WHY DON’T YOU QUIT BURNING OIL IN YOUR CAR!!!!!!!!111!!!1!111!!ONE
  - Anonymous
    
    Also, I’m disgusted how many people were upset at bank executives for ruining the economy, when those same people were actually using money. Bunch of hypocrites.
    
    Even if you like using oil, why exactly does that mean you’re in favor of pouring it all into the ocean?
  - Anonymous
    
    no, they were negligent, not the first time either.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Compose yourself.
Anonymous

Of course the MMS had some responsibility to veto an unrepairable well site, but try to understand their difficulty in concentrating. They were really coked up at the time and had hookers/lobbyists lapdancing them.

Those folks party! And to think I wasted all that time trying to become a rockstar.
loroferoz

Those individually responsible should feel the weight of criminal penalty wherever possible.

But a corporation cannot be prosecuted. What better “prosecution” and punishment for a corporation that does wrong than

Full Liability.? Yes, everybody can sue you, and you have to pay in full. Run into the billions in damages.

What better prevention of future disasters? What better way to deflate the suits into humility?