Yesterday, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg gave a press conference after BP’s meeting with President Obama at the White House. Svanberg announced that the company would “…contribute $20 billion over a four-year period at a rate of $5 billion per year, including $5 billion within 2010.” The money will be used to pay back the victims of the massive oil spill who Svanberg also referred to as the “small people”
The exact quote was:
“We care about the small people. I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies or greedy companies that don’t care, but that is not the case at BP. We care about the small people.”
This brings up the important question of if we can really put a price on the ecosystems and natural processes that everyone rely on including clean air, clean water, and everything else that the earth provides for us.
I’m glad to see BP being held accountable for what has happened, but this only goes to act as a very painful reminder of the need to cut down our dependence on oil and make a transition to cleaner energy sources.
Of course there are costs associated by this transition, but as President Obama recently said on Tuesday in a National Address “…I say we can’t afford not to change how re produce and use energy—because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are far greater,”
I couldn’t agree more… and I’m just one of the ‘small people’.
