As we come to the end of July, I wanted to look at the recent events around the BP Oil Leak fiasco. It has been an incredible 3 months dealing with this disaster, and there have been a bevy of events correlated to it that have changed the way the country looks at and thinks about oil forever. Here are what I see as the big issues that have changed the oil landscape:

@BPGlobalPR: Ok, maybe I’m a little biased because I live in the blogosphere most of the time, but the idea that someone used a free service to satirically taunt BP, expose what many of us were thinking all along, and in the end raise money from selling t-shirts to aid in rescue efforts is absolutely amazing. Keep in mind that it was just a twitter account- whoever owns that address spent a few minutes a day being funny and influenced, at last sighting, more than 188,000 people with their thoughts. Does Saturday night Live still get that many viewers?

Tony Hayward Fired: The CEO of what was one of the biggest oil and energy companies in the world just got pushed out. Was it for anything he did? Yes and no, of course- he didn’t mess up the oil well, but he is the Chief Officer in the company, and that means that he is the one who takes the end of the criticism. The difference that is newsworthy is that he lost his job for this, while nobody on Wall Street lost their job because of the credit default swap scandals. We don’t know who was ultimately responsible in that case the way we do with the oil spill, but there were plenty of lawsuits and enough blame to go around. Did anyone lose their job? Not that I heard about. They got bonuses.

Climate Change Bill: It is telling that the U.S. government talked big about the BP crisis but isn’t doing anything serious to get our country away from oil. I know it’s the Obama administration that is talking big, and the Congress that is dragging their heels on the whole legislation thing, but still. The government has done essentially nothing in response to this leak. It could have been a turning point, and while it still has that potential, it isn’t sparking an uproar in the halls of the nation’s governing people. Nor is it sparking anything near to revolution in the U.S. public.

Deepwater Awareness: In yet another blow to human-kind egos the world around, we have been reminded that we have no idea what we are doing with the Earth. We don’t know the ramifications of drilling for oil in deep water, we don’t know how to clean it up, we don’t know how to do it safely, and we don’t know what the long-term effects are going to be. Essentially, we know that we do not know now. We don’t know anymore than that. Whether we will- we don’t know that either. If history is a teacher, we won’t take much away from this.

Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks