Worse Than Oil Spill in the Gulf … Did BP Spill Something Far More Hazardous?

In the aftermath of the largest oil disaster in American history, BP's CEO Tony Hayward, said he was sorry for the massive disruption the accident had caused the lives of people in the Gulf states. In a May 31st Fox News interview, Mr. Hayward said, "There's no one who wants this thing over more than I do; I'd like my life back."

As soon as those words left his lips Mr. Hayward found the public to be appalled at what they heard as his whinny audacity to wish his life back when ordinary people had seen their livelihoods go up in flames in a flash.

But why was nearly everyone so upset with Tony Hayward to the point that BP had to shortly hide their CEO from public view? Did he not have "freedom of speech" and "freedom of expression"? Did he not have the "right" to say what he said? Had he broken any "law" by what he said? Was he not within his "legal" boundaries to utter such words? Do modern virtues of "tolerance" and "diversity" leave no room for the diverse views of Tony Hayward in post-spill America? And when Mr. Hayward took off to enjoy his yacht in recreational style while ordinary people were lending their boats, time and sweat to clean up the oil that his company spilled, was he doing anything "illegal"?

The obvious answer to each of those questions is "No." Why then was Hayward roundly contemned and despised by a majority of Americans?

Could it be that the public outrage over Tony's seemingly callous remarks give people insight into the man's moral self, and a still deeper peak into what may have been an unmeasurable cause of the oil spill? Were people sensing something in the disposition of the CEO that might have contributed to the underlying cause of the disaster?

Tony's behavior struck a nerve beyond the legal grade scale. He left people thinking, "This guy's attitude shows there may be a character flaw that spills across his company's grid, and such a flaw enacted over time could have led to the oil spill."

There may be grounds for seeing such a link. Congressional hearings have uncovered testimony of BP's management cutting corners on safety guidelines, probably to prime profits. What's the problem with that?

The root problem may be corporate arrogance, and that's not a legal matter. It is ethics, and it remains one of the most potentially destructive flaws of multinational corporations (MNCs), which normally function as entities more powerful than the government of each of the host nations where they operate. These corporations function like a law unto themselves, and they easily get by with it. Why? Because governments are better at monitoring what's legal, not what's ethical. Specifically, as long as the behemoth MNCs pay their millions and billions in taxes, while contributing to the election campaigns of politicians, the government is just fine, never mind the tough rhetoric that spews from Capitol Hill whenever there is an accident.

It also works in the corporations' favor that millions of families depend on their industry for their livelihoods. Thus the corporations know they are indispensable to governments, spin-off businesses based on their operation, and families. Even while the oil was still gushing into the ocean, Gulf residents were demanding that there be no moratorium on offshore drilling. The same devastated families even took their cause before a federal judge who ruled in their favor against the President's six-month moratorium. And that's the heart of the MNC's impunity, if not their omnipotence, a power that has proven more potent than that of entire governments. With power like that, what hinders the CEO of a global company from exuding arrogance even when his firm has done such great harm?

The operators of the MNC have a very low threshold to meet: They only concern themselves with not breaking the law outright. They are more interested in what's legal than in what's ethical or moral. And since morality cannot be legislated the runners of these money machines have mastered the art of following the letter of the law that governs their operation without giving collective thought to what's moral. As long as they don't break any law, they are convinced they are doing just fine, until their legal operations produce disasters that kill, maim and destroy far more than their money can compensate for. It has taken BP too long to realize that the entire company could be sold for hundreds of billions of dollars and that would not suffice to "pay for" the damages done to people's lives, to animals, and to the immediate ecosystem of the Gulf region.

Such is the nature of ethical harm, which far exceed illegal behavior. It is likely that BP can prove in court that it did nothing illegal, but I doubt the company can prove in the court of public scrutiny that it did nothing unethical.

Isn't it time for America to engage the larger debate of corporations being moral entities and not just legal ones? A corporation is a very impersonal entity primarily concerned with making profits for themselves and their shareholders from quarter to quarter, but that same corporation is run by persons, and persons are moral beings. Just as personhood comes before laws and money, the management team of a corporation needs to do business with the awareness that they are persons first and legal wealth producers second. Putting the moral above the legal and the financial may be the best preventive measure against future disasters of this magnitude. It is either that, or unethical people driving super-power corporations that meet nothing more than their legal minimum will continue to pose a danger that we will always begin to fathom in hindsight. ~mogama~