Greenpeace

Last night, the BBC aired an interview with former BP CEO Tony Hayward where he admitted that BP was “not prepared” for the disaster in the Gulf, describing their initial response as “making it up day to day." As Allison Kilkenny says, Oh Really?

Yet the beleaguered Hayward says that we should all let bygones be bygones on that one. This is because the real tragedy was the intense media scrutiny occurring afterwards, leaving poor Tony feeling “demonized and vilified.”

But Tony doesn’t stop there. No, he feels the need to reiterate that his ONLY fault was his poor handling of the media. In fact, he has the gall to say that he thinks he “may have done better” if he had gotten a degree in acting instead of geology.

Reports like these aren’t the only ones where BP puts the onus squarely on the media though. In fact, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg straight up said that the only reason Hayward was ever removed as CEO after doing such a “great job” was simply to help rebuild the BP “brand and reputation”.

That’s just the problem: it’s working. BP is rebuilding their image by chastising the media for hurting their feelings. By extension, they are masking the truly sociopathic mentality that is at the heart of corporate environmental abuse.

Dirty energy companies have yet to change their corporate policies that reward managers for keeping costs down above all else, and are preventing a real public accounting for the entirely avoidable deaths and destruction. Until this nihilistic mentality is exposed, it won’t be changed, and the blasts, spills and deaths will undoubtedly continue.

Now, since the real causes of the oil spill aren’t making the headlines, we have to work even harder to counter Big Oil’s spin ourselves.

So, even if it risks demonizing and vilifying the likes of poor Tony Hayward, how about Taking Action to Stop the Next Drilling Disaster!