Oil Spills

Anyone feel like a vacation to the Gulf Coast? No? I hear the weather’s great this time of year, the food is fantastic, prices are cheaper than ever, and the water is . . . well, okay, so that’s a bit of a sore point.

Sure, we all know that BP’s pipeline is gushing more oil than a McDonald’s french fry. And most things are old news after 2 weeks. But this has been going on for more than a month and it still glues people to the news.

So what’s going to happen? When and how is it going to end?

Apparently this thing is projected to cost BP around $6,000,000,000 when everything’s taken into account. That means the loss of the well, compensation for ruined lives, cleanup, etc. And that’s assuming one of their backup-backup-backup plans even works.

And they’ve got their best people on it, right? Washington just admitted that it doesn’t have the know-how to do the job. So it’s up to BP and their team of experts to save the day. Or is it?

I suggest doing the following:

BP should offer a one billion dollar (that’s $1,000,000,000 for those of you that like to see zeroes) reward for the best idea submitted to fix this busted pipeline. Now how does that sound?

You’d have the best minds in the entire world working on this problem day and night until they came up with something. It would end up saving BP money in the long run. And the Gulf of Mexico would be a better place.

I’ll admit, the difficulties they talk about seem pretty big. It’s a mile down beneath the ocean’s surface, it’s really cold, and, oh yeah, there are millions of gallons of oil spewing into the ocean. But do any of us really believe the answer is to just wait 50 years or so for the Earth to run out of oil? No, we all know it’s got to get fixed.

So why not one of us? With a billion reasons to work at it, I’d give it a shot. And if there are scientists out there who have some ideas, why not really motivate them?

Sure BP would end up having to wade through a million “interesting” ideas like “Hey, let’s, like, drain the Gulf of Mexico?” But it would be a small price to pay to have the entire intelligent population of the world working on the problem.

I guess BP’s going to try it their way for a while. But when the winning idea comes from out of nowhere, just remember, that guy’s owed some major bucks.

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