The only thing irresponsible the government did as land owners was to allow private companies with nothing but profit as a motive, to drill it for oil.
If the company cared about the processes and the safety requirement that the government put in place, that they themselves claim to abide by and that the population as a whole deserves that they follow, the spill would not have happened.
About half of that is actually true.
One could also say that the population as a whole deserves that the .Gov not be enticed to overlook the regulations it had put into place in exchange for hookers and blow.
The absolute biggest factor to the spill was onsight human error by a couple of people not very high up (running a rig and running BP are worlds apart). The second largest factor, after the rig blew up, (as I originally thought) tons of pipe and rig sinking and jamming into the rams causing them not to function properly. IMHO, that is more human error because they could have closed the sheer rams earlier but instead relied on backups because once you close the sheer rams the well is almost always useless. The pipe that is still in the hole falls to the bottom and gets all kinds of twisted and bent which makes extracting it extremely difficult and often impossible (depending on the amount of pipe in the hole, depth of the hole, tools on the end, etc.). On the rigs I worked on the protocol was for the toolpusher to close the sheers right before he got on the boat (supposedly the last man to get on the boat, I would have to see it to believe it though) after the rig had been abandoned due to all friggen hell breaking loose. We didn't have half of the fancy shit they did tough, it was an actual lever right next to the ladder you used to get onto the crew boats with another one on the rig floor and sometimes another in the toolpushers/company mans office (all of them actually had levers for all 3 rams not just the sheers).
Bottom line is that it was a one in a bajillion chance caused 95% by human error on sight. Some asshole was probably trying to get an attaboy for getting the rig moving a day early after completing the hole. If they wouldn't have removed the mud prematurely I doubt we would be talking about this. That wasn't a decision made by the .gov and I highly doubt it was made by anyone high up in BP, it was likely made by the company man who was the guy in charge (employed by BP, not the rig owners) on the rig.
As far as the rest, are you suggesting that the .gov get into the oil drilling business or that private companies shouldn't be profit driven?
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