BP Oil Spill Evidence of Need for Competent, Caring Leadership

The BP oil spill, which threatens to become the world's worst such disaster, continues to spread its sticky mess to an ever-expanding area of the Gulf of Mexico, leaving a wake of pollution and disaster at a cost projected to soar to multiple billions of dollars.

Crisis of incompetent leadership

It now appears that attempts to deal with the problem are in just as big of a mess, as government and industry leaders in affected areas charge the oil company and federal officials with organizational incompetence, red tape, chaos and disorder.

Billy Nungesser, president of Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish, recently lamented to a Senate subcommittee, "I still don't know who's in charge. Is it BP? Is it the Coast Guard?... I have spent more time fighting the officials of BP and the Coast Guard than fighting the oil." What is needed, he said, is someone "with the guts and the will to make decisions."

Similar problems and complaints were voiced regarding the handling of relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina. Some compare federal response to the BP crisis to its handling of Katrina: too little, too late—implying disengagement and incompetence.

Crisis of caring and concern

Yet another area of controversy has been the image created by comments made by BP executives. The reference to the citizens of affected areas as "little people" and BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward's remark, "I'd like my life back," have come across as cavalier, self-serving and uncaring—thus adding insult to injury.

Crisis of compounding problems

Experts continue to ratchet up estimates of the volume of oil gushing from the leak and the astronomical monetary cost of damages resulting from this ongoing crisis that is now projected to continue at least until fall. We can expect to be reading news reports about ongoing developments for weeks or months to come.

Newspapers and other news media are dominated by the bad news of mankind's ongoing problems of war, crime and pollution. The BP oil spill is one of many items of bad news that we are bombarded with daily and only one of the many challenging problems facing the United States and other nations around the world.

Many of these problems are frightening and overwhelming—how much more so the staggering combined weight of all of mankind's problems? Where are we headed? Are there any solutions? Who knows and cares enough to be able to tackle them? Or are we hopelessly rushing uncontrollably toward universal chaos and disaster on a scale that threatens the very survival of the human race?

Good news for the future

Is there any good news, anything to look forward to on the horizon? Or are we all doomed to perish in a dramatic collapse of civilization as we know it? Is there anything you can do to assure a positive future for you and your loved ones?

Some 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ addressed the threat of human survival. In the famous Olivet Prophecy, He warned that mankind's problems would escalate to the point of the potential destruction of all mankind: "In fact, unless that time of calamity is shortened, the entire human race will be destroyed." The good news is that Jesus went on to promise, "It will be shortened for the sake of God's chosen ones" (Matthew 24:22, New Living Translation).