BP Oil spill just keeps on gushing problems

I have a huge question in my mind. Have people suddenly become really stupid? This oil spill in the Gulf is the worst disaster I have ever seen. Not because of the initial impact, but because of the decades it will take to recover from it. We are not talking five or six years like the recovery from Hurricane Katrina, or Hurricane Ivan, or Camile, or Betsy. We are talking decades. Now there is An Event happening this weekend which goes beyond stupidity in my estimation.

I was going through my inbox and ran across this notice from Great NonProfits... Hands Across the Sand.

This Saturday, June 26, people all over the world will be joining hands on their local beaches in a show of solidarity against offshore oil drilling. The aptly-named Hands Across The Sand movement was founded by surfer and restauranteur Dave Rauschkolb in October of 2009, but the upcoming event may prove to be the largest event to date in light of the BP oil spill.

Hands Across The Sand is sponsored by many environmentally-minded nonprofit organizations, including the Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Defenders of Wildlife, Rainforest Action Network and Center for Biological Diversity.

The thing is not against unsafe offshore drilling... just offshore drilling. I wonder if these "thousands" of people truly understand what they are against?

First off, there is the $300 billion in bills that can't be paid by the offshore oil drilling company workers. This of course wouldn't effect any of those who are joining hands because they are activists in the environmentally-minded  nonprofit organizations. Their pay checks aren't being effected so it isn't any concern of theirs if families whose livelyhood come from offshore drilling don't have food on the table or electricity or clean water because they can't pay their bills because papa or mama has been laid off due to lack of work. (Praise God from Whom all blessings flow that a Federal Court judge had the gumption to cancel the ill-advised moratorium set forth by a president who acts first then gets all the facts.)

Secondly, no more offshore exploratory drilling would cost more than 20,000 jobs according to a Bloomberg report. The average oil rig worker salary is between $35,000 and $60,000 so the economic impact for losing more than 20,000 jobs is more than $970 million dollars. In an economy which is only now returning from almost complete devastation because of Katrina, that kind of economic impact is staggering.

I am astounded how many people in this world care more for animals than they do for real people with real economic problems. Again, since it doesn't effect their own paychecks or their A/C or food on their tables, it's okay to try to set in motion something that will eventually make the cost of gasoline skyrocket. But, they don't see that. Just like boycotting BP gasoline stations. That is another rack up on stupidity.

The BP stations are not company owned, they are locally owned. The gasoline going into the BP station tanks is not from a BP refinery but from some other refinery--which ever refinery has the best price the distributor can find! I have personally seen Shell tankers at an Exxon station filling their underground tanks. Distributors buy the raw gasoline from refineries and then put the Brand additives into the tanker as it is being filled from a Shell refinery, or ExxonMobile refinery, or whatever other refinery. The sheer cost of freight to transport refined BP petroleum from somewhere else in the world to your local BP station would make the cost of one gallon of gas rise to an extremely high, uncompetitive price.

Come on people, wake up! Ask God for some wisdom when reading news stories or listening to them. Ask Him to give you discernment to differentiate between truth and lies. Ask God to give wisdom in the kinds of causes that will be best for His people and to bring glory to Him.