{"id":64,"date":"2010-05-27T15:29:34","date_gmt":"2010-05-27T15:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omsweetom\/2010\/05\/will-top-kill-work-only-if-it-goes-deep-enough.html"},"modified":"2010-05-27T15:29:34","modified_gmt":"2010-05-27T15:29:34","slug":"will-top-kill-work-only-if-it-goes-deep-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2010\/05\/will-top-kill-work-only-if-it-goes-deep-enough.html","title":{"rendered":"Will Top Kill work? Only if it goes deep enough."},"content":{"rendered":"

The good news: BP’s  procedure to plug the oil leak — ominously named “top kill” — seems to be working. The not-so-good news: new estimates show that the spill has already surpassed the notorious Exxon Valdez disaster<\/a>. It is, officially now, the worst oil spill in U.S. history.<\/p>\n

Is there a paradox here? We’re probably living in the most ecologically-sensitive time in history. From the pulpit to the podium, from the classroom to the boardroom– everyone is keenly aware, now more than ever, that we can no longer take a cavalier attitude towards the Earth and our treatment of her. <\/p>\n

So why does something like the BP spill happen? How do we get here?<\/p>\n

Over at Huff Po, my friend and fellow Hindu blogger Ramnath Subramanium<\/a> thinks that the real problem is a glaring lack of responsibility from the top down: <\/p>\n

The unfolding of the entire oil spill episode has brought to the
\nforefront a trail of irresponsible acts that BP has engaged in, not
\nunknowingly. And the schemes to arrest the flow are being put into
\nplace without clearly assessing the long-term effects they will have on
\nthe ecology. The scheme to contain the spill with a dome has failed,
\nand among the next steps, one idea being seriously considered is to
\nshoot garbage into the gaping hole to plug the gusher. The remedies
\nseem as irresponsible as the actions or the lack of those that led to
\nthe oil spill in the first place. Statisticians from BP quote the
\nstrength of the probability models that predict such leaks. According
\nto them, the probability of such leaks happening was one in ten million
\nrigs. That sounds very promising, sure enough, but the probability
\nmodels do a poor job of predicting the extent of the damage that will
\nbe caused if a leak does happen. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Drawing on his reading of the Mahabharata<\/i>, Ram insists that the real solution lies in “plugging the integrity leak” by investing time and resources into character development:    <\/p>\n

The practical implementation of such a long-term solution is
\nundoubtedly challenging given the current economic and social system
\nthat we feed our younger generation into, but the change can start
\nsmall. The important thing is to start. The broader details are
\nimportant and will unfold in time, but not without the strong and
\nearnest desire to implement such a system, which must be at the
\nforefront in the mind of our nation’s administrative machinery. Without
\nthis essential training in character development, we will still produce
\ngreat corporations and powerful leaders, but we will still face equally
\ndevastating actions that will have widespread repercussions on the
\nsocial and ecological fabric of this country, not to mention the world
\nat large. The problem goes beyond the BP rig leak, and no ethical
\nsystems or probability models are foolproof to prevent such crises from
\nhappening again and again purely due to lack of integrity from our
\nleaders and decision makers.<\/p>\n

(Read the full post here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Lofty? Sure. Idealistic? Perhaps. But Ramnath is not alone in his sense that we need, desperately and urgently, to go deeper if we are going to hit at the root of this thing. Also writing on Huff Po, Katherine Jefferts Schori<\/a> (Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church), suggests that <\/p>\n

There is no place to go “away” from these consequences; there is no
\nultimate escape on this planet. The effects at a distance may seem
\nminor or tolerable, but the cumulative effect is not. We are all
\nconnected, we will all suffer the consequences of this tragic disaster
\nin the Gulf, and we must wake up and put a stop to the kind of robber
\nbaron behavior we supposedly regulated out of existence a hundred years
\nago. Our lives, and the liveliness of the entire planet, depend on it.<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Read the rest here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As tempting as might be to point fingers, the onus is on us. In the immortal words of Pogo, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”<\/p>\n

\n

  
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As a second-generation, Indian-American, Vaishnava-Hindu, Vineet ponders new ways of further hyphenating his identity.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/author\/vchander"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}