According to Cain Burdeau of The Huffington Post, BP, the oil company responsible for the April 2010 oil spill, has released an ad to try to convince American's that the Gulf coast is back in swing. This ad, however is being considered "propaganda" by many in the Gulf region. Bays and fishing spots in the region are still closed and industries in the area are still down. BP is concentrating on cleaning up their reputation when they should be focused on cleaning up the remains of the 200 million gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf.
BP Propaganda
Iris Cross, a representative for BP said, "I'm glad to report that all beaches and waters are open for everyone to enjoy!" While it is true that most of the waters in the Gulf region are open again things are not as clean as BP leads customers to believe. I had a first hand experience with this this summer when I went to Gulf Shores, Alabama over a year after the oil spill. I was walking along the beach looking for seashells and picked up a strange looking,dark brown clump, I wasn't sure what it was but it left a stain on my hand that I could not get off, I rubbed my hand in the sand, whipped it on my towel, the stain was stubborn. I didn't know exactly what I had picked up until later that night when me and my family were walking along the beach looking for crabs. That night there were people out on the beach with flashlights and bags picking up clumps just like what I had accidently picked up earlier. We asked them about what they were doing and they told us that they were picking up oil clumps that still shower the beaches when the waves roll in. The clumps are caused by the Corexit 9500 that is shown in the video and the saddest part was that there were several workers on the beach with full bags, and all of this over a year after the explosion. I was horrified by the reality that fish, birds, dolphins, all of the life in the Gulf, were still living with the consequences of the explosion. Then I thought about the struggle I went through just trying to get a small stain from the oil off of my hand; imagine the animals that were surrounded and covered by the oil, imagine their struggle to survive. The animals were helpless to the effects of the oil spill. Birds can't fly with oil soaked feathers, fish can't feed in oil filled waters and dolphins struggle to breath with oil coated blow holes. It is clear to residents that the Gulf is not fully recovered, bays are still closed and harvest numbers are down.
How then, can BP release ads as if everything in the Gulf is great and oil free? They shouldn't. George Crozier, an oceanographer, said "They should be a little more apologetic and less triumphant." If BP apologized for the harm and destruction they caused to the Gulf ecosystem instead of lying to customers maybe their image could be salvaged. However, in my opinion this only makes their image seem worse.This "greenwashing" allusion is probably fooling few who have recently visited or lived in the Gulf and seen the remaining damage and affects. Actions speak louder than words, BP can not just brush off this incident, they should be doing everything they can to restore the way of life and ecosystem that they have destroyed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/08/bp-ad-campaign-gulf-oil-_n_1192600.html
