Web Consultant Sydney - Brisbane, eCommerce & emarketing Web 2.0 and SEO :: Xavier Minali, saxophone player.

June 15, 2010 10:28 AM | by JACQUES ATTALI

Let's hope for once, that a disaster can be turned into good news.
Certainly, BP deepwater oil spill leak in the Gulf of Mexico is a disaster
for the ecosystem; it is also for the local economy, which will have to
interrupt uncountable activities; for President Obama, who has allowed the
drilling in deepwater for another 28 wells in operation in the Gulf of
Mexico, threatened to be shut.

For shareholders of BP (with millions of
British pensioners) whose assets lost $ 50 million, and should receive nothing
next June 27, while 10 billion dollars were due to be distributed. For the
company, which may have to spend 40 billion dollars to pay all the damages,
to borrow more than the U.S. $ 20 billion which its balance sheet allows to
easily find on the markets and even be threatened with political bankruptcy,
like Yukos in its time, in a context where no insurance company will accept
to cover, except at a prohibitive price and for the British government,
whose international image is tarnished by a company which does not though 
carry the name of the country since 1998; for deeply affected Transatlantic
relations, whereas in a symmetrical situation, in 1998, the British had not
accused the United States for the deaths of 167 people on a well in the
North Sea operated by an American company sorely deficient; finally, bad
news for Europe, which once again has no strategy, while its energy
independence is threatened by the reduction in investment of one of its
biggest companies, for the greatest financial and political benefit of the
Gulf countries and their national oil companies.
Yet the disaster could turn into good news if it was an opportunity to
 understand that as the subprime crisis, the root cause is not in the
specific negligence of the oil companies (after that of the bankers), but in
the collective unconscious to risk, in the absurd desire for Americans to
consume more than they can afford: as they have mortgaged the future by
going into debt, they are consuming 20% of the world's oil, while they
produce only 2% and they represent only 5% of the world population. And as
they yielded to their bank lobby, they obeyed their oil lobby.

We can then dream of seeing America and Europe understand that they cannot
leave to their energy producing companies, so fundamental to the future of
our countries, the whole weight of the repair of the negligent acts that
their governments asked them to commit. And they should initiate a radical
action to consume much less oil, and very quickly. In any case, this crisis
is like a final warning before the peak oil (expected by some in 2015, and
whose occurrence is accelerated by the slowdown in drilling in deepwater),
puts an end to cheap oil, making the fortune of oil companies and
precipitates the ruin of nations.

Source: http://blogs.lexpress.fr/attali/