Socialist Party Co-Chair Makes Case for Public Ownership of BP

From Billy Wharton at In These Times:

If arrogant disregard for humanity and the natural world were qualities that triggered the seizure of assets, BP would have been under public ownership long ago. It still isn’t. But BP’s criminal act of polluting the Gulf of Mexico with an estimated 2.5 million gallons of oil per day—easily the worst environmental disaster in American history, and on the verge of becoming the worst ever in the Gulf—is only half the reason that U.S. assets of the global energy giant should be brought under public control immediately. The other is the increasingly desperate crisis of global warming triggered, in large part, by a suicidal dependence on pollution-producing fossil fuels. Public ownership is the answer to both the short-term crisis caused by BP and the longer-term threat to the ecological stability of our planet.