As I wrote in my column yesterday, a direct boycott of BP as a resposne to the gulf oil spill is badly flawed because it ignores the larger impact that oil has on society and that the oil industry has on the environment and the economy.
My friend Rob Stolzer, who lives in Wisconsin, commented to me on my Facebook page that the boycott also would have the unintended consequence of harming small businesses, the mom-and-pop owners of the service stations that sell BP gas.
But environmental columnist Jeff McMahon offers what seem like rational and potentially effective alternatives to a direct boycott, one that attacks BP but also the other oil companies while moving us toward a new paradigm of energy use.
McMahon (who quotes my blog in his piece) provides “Five ways to boycott without helping Exxon“:
- “Boycott bottled water,” which is responsible for the use of about 50 million barrels of oil a year “just manufacturing the plastic bottles for bottled water” plus an additional amout for transportation.
- “Avoid plastics and other petrochemical products, including chemical pesticides and fertilizers,” which are manufactured by BP and other oil companies.
- “Buy bulk foods and put them in reusable bags” — we could save 120 million barrels of oil worldwide annually by switching to reusable bags and loose produce, bulk items and nonprocessed foods use less oil.
- “Be a locavore,” which cuts down on energy used for transportation and the need for heavy fertilizer and pesticide use.
- “Boycott aluminum cans,” about a third of which are made by BP subsidiary Arco Aluminum.
And — this is his sixth suggestion:
Don’t buy something new just to boycott BP. Some in the green-lifestyle press have advised people to buy aluminum water bottles instead of plastic, unaware BP may have supplied the aluminum. Others urge glass food containers instead of plastic, or petroleum-free cosmetics, etc. The green-lifestyle press often falls prey to the consumerist impulse to buy, buy, buy. But unless it grew in your back yard, every new product arrives with oily footprints. If you use plastic containers now, replacing them with glass will only burn more fossil fuels.
These are sensible suggestions; follow them and stick it to BP.
- Send me an e-mail.
- Read poetry at The Subterranean.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Hank Kalet 
Sorry for being off topic but it is about BP.I was watching C-SPAN 2's airing of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig explosion investigation. The joint investigation was conducted by the US Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service in Kenner, Louisiana. The audio of the hearing was terrible at times, people not speaking directly into the microphones and a BP lawyer not even speaking into any microphone at all. The panel was interviewing Curt Kuchta who was what amounts to the captain of the oil rig. He was incredibly unresponsive and didn't seem to know anything.Some interesting factoids came out. The oil rig was considered as a vessel and it was stationed in international waters. The oil rig was registered to the Marshall Islands. You know, the Marshall Islands that we dropped more A-bombs and H-bombs on than any other place on earth. We obliterated atolls and whole islands testing our nuclear bombs. Why the heck would this oil rig be registered to the Marshall Islands? Sounds fishy and oily to me.
from guardian.com.ukBP oil rig registration raised in Congress over safety concernsDeepwater Horizon's registration under the flag of convenience of the Marshall Islands has been brought up in Congress as a safety issue.Political ripples from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster have travelled as far as the north Pacific, where authorities of the remote Marshall Islands have been found to be the ones technically responsible for scrutinising safety standards on the doomed BP rig.The rig, which was owned by Transocean, but under lease to BP when it exploded and sank on 20 April, is regarded as an ocean-going vessel in legal terms.In common with 34 other Transocean oil rigs, Deepwater Horizon was registered under the flag of convenience of the Marshall Islands, a country of barely 65,000 people halfway between Hawaii and Papau New Guinea. That status means the Marshall Islands' shipping registry was responsible for ensuring compliance with quality standards for construction, equipment and operation on the rig.The island nation is also obliged to investigate any accidents that occur on its maritime vessels, including the loss of the Deepwater Horizon, which caused the biggest oil spill in US history.At hearings convened by the US coastguard and oil industry regulators in New Orleans, the Marshall Islands is listed as the \”substantially interested state\” in the disaster. Questions have been raised in the US Congress about why Transocean registers its rigs in a country 7,000 miles from Washington with a gross domestic product of $133m – 700 times less than BP's market capitalisation.Jim Oberstar, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, suggested last week that the move was to scrimp on safety inspections: \”Coastguard inspection of a US-flagged mobile offshore drilling unit takes two to three weeks, but the safety examination of a foreign flag offshore drilling unit, such as Deepwater Horizon, takes four to eight hours.\”