I actually don't think it is possible to clean this mess up.
This is our 7th Generation disaster - the one that wakes us up to realize that what we have just perpetrated upon the world will be with the world for AT LEAST 7 generations. With increasing life expectancies that is about 665 years...and I think we're talking about thousands of years.
But back to BP. They should be Beyond Petrified.
BP needs to transform their organization into one that from this day forward does good for humankind. It should be an organization that now takes its' upstream and downstream effects into its accounting. It should recreate balance sheets reflecting the debits of plundered natural capital. And, when done, the company will immediately be worthless in any current corporate sense of the word. And so it needs to transform.
I think it should take this transformation on itself because I am hoping that the people and the people's courts and the people's elected officials will do it...slowly and painfully...but they'll do it.
And BP has the opportunity that is so common amongst celebrities and reality show drop-outs: go to rehab, apologize and turn over a new leaf...but REALLY do it.
Change the articles of incorporation. BP should exist solely for the betterment of the planet. It can lead in the creation of a new kind of organization - the neo - corporation. There shouldn't be one cent of corporate profit that goes back to that company.
I do not mean to say that the good people of BP and their families should suffer. They should just all relaize that they need to be working for a different kind of organization. And I am not saying it should be without profit. It's just that the profit should go to those they have harmed, to do whatever can be done to mend the corner of the earth they have destroyed. Why can't they have a bonus structure related to "good works"...to "clean, green tech" and to divisions that do good and do well.
Business people love ratios and metrics. And there can be new ones created that reflect the good a company does relative to its' revenue, its intensity of production, per employee, etc, etc. BP should change all these to reflect the new kind of organization I have described.
The employees and contractors found to have avoided safety regs, greenlighted unsafe projects and lied about it should pay and go to jail. That's justice. And the next generation of justice will be for the company to transform into this neo corporate entity infused with sustainability.
