The Martlet

Every day, an international audience is reminded of the oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. BP estimates that spillage is 100,000 barrels (15.9 million litres) per day.

The BP oil crisis is an economic and ecological nightmare with no easy solutions on the horizon.

However, the true crisis is less about oil, and more about the social permissibility of our so-called green consumerism.

The media’s round the clock coverage of the spill deflects our collective responsibility onto the usual suspects: the White House and BP shareholders.

The paradox is that, even though Obama cannot stop the oil from gushing, his search for someone’s ass to kick might be an effective solution because it de-politicizes the looming crisis of peak oil. The present oil crisis is not simply signaling an ecological crisis, inadequate administrative oversight, the multiple risks associated with oil extraction, and the greed of BP shareholders. The present oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico signals a terminal crisis in global capitalism. In the popular media, very little has been done to connect this oil crisis to the crisis of peak oil.

Popular media appeals to the naïve ideological desires of an international audience. It unites us in collective moral outrage thereby perpetuating the false belief that any White House administration could solve all problems emerging in the Gulf of Mexico.

Effectively, the crisis of peak oil is de-politicized through popular media coverage of short-term solutions to the incalculable ecological and financial losses accrued. The media is the unofficial accomplice to the officially labeled scapegoats.

Without the help of the popular press, BP and the Obama administration could not use the present crisis in the Gulf of Mexico to re-establish a basic trust in global capitalism lost in the first decade of the new century.

The easy moralistic game of finger pointing used by the popular press is a tactic that creates a false belief that a real plan of action looms offshore.

Surely Obama must show public concern about the immediate consequences of this disaster and BP shareholders must be made financially liable. However, it is dangerous to disconnect the acute oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico from the peak oil crisis looming on the horizon, and even more dangerous to assume that the worst has already come to pass.

It is possible that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is merely the tip of an iceberg. Just as the effects of the present crisis in the Gulf of Mexico will only be understood in hindsight, the point when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached will only be known in hindsight.

However, the oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico cannot be linked to the crisis of peak oil if we do not recognize that global capitalism is in a state of terminal crisis.

The Obama administration’s response to the ongoing oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico highlights the coming crisis of peak oil: a crisis that has no easy solutions under the parameters of capitalism or democracy.