Yes, there is natural seepage. It is nothing compared to the ongoing spill in the gulf. Quit being a bitch and admit it. Everybody involved in this discussion has made math mistakes, so quit being self righteous over it.

Even with the exceedingly cautious estimates that BP is using to calculate the loss, we have already surpassed the Valdez spill, which, despite what you might think, nature has not “taken care of itself” and the environment has still not recovered. In the years to come, many businesses that relied on the already fragile fisheries of the gulf will go under.

And BP will keep going on, spending more on advertising its green initiatives than it does on its green initiatives.

Your information is fairly off. The Pacific garbage patch is the one full of hype. There are no islands of plastic, just areas with an increased content of small bits of plastic. Photos of the patch have been misidentified and become part of an urban legend.

Ixtoc was potentially horrific, but much of the oil sank to mix with the benthic sediment. The portion of the Alaskan coast affected by the Valdez has not recovered, and it will be a while before we can draw a verdict. The fishing industry is harmful, but that does not excuse BP. A fishery that feeds and employs people a few more years before collapse is better than one that is gone now or has its life cut even shorter. I’d rather see a chance to manage a resource than see it eliminated.

The media have been fast to point fingers, and good on them! Yes, we consumers are real rat bastards (I bike and freely admit that most cyclists in my area are douchebags that don’t know the rules of the road), but BP did skirt safety precautions, did lobby to limit regulations and oversight, did not build a safe well or maintain a safe drill site, left a failed failsafe in place and did not add a second failsafe because of an expense that was inconsequential to their operating costs. Their failure to do the right thing made this kind of accident an inevitability, not the consumer’s need for petrol.

Do consumers bear some responsibility? Yes, but are they liable? No, and that is an important difference that you are missing.