This’ll fix things:
As for BP, it has taken steps to beef up its PR operation, in an attempt to limit the damage to its reputation. The company has recruited as head of the firm’s US media relations Anne Womack-Kolton, the former press secretary to Dick Cheney.
from this morning’s UK Guardian
True, the company’s public relations since the explosion have been terrible: suppressing and lying about things that will become known eventually anyway, and ridiculous efforts to play down the seriousness of the oil spill. Tony Hayward, BP CEO, “told Fox News sister network Sky News on Tuesday [May 18] that he is largely unconcerned:
I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest. It is impossible to say and we will mount, as part of the aftermath, a very detailed environmental assessment as we go forward. We’re going to do that with some of the science institutions in the U.S. But everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact of this will be very, very modest.
After BP has squandered any potential public credibility, the most silver-tongued revolving-door lobbyist-cum-government appointee (such as Ms. Womack-Kolton) will be hard pressed to reverse the tide. We all know which tide they really truly care most about, when it comes to the tide of financial-world and public opinion, vs. the tide of oil.
Young heron dying in oil-soaked marsh. Photo by GERALD HERBERT / AP. Copyright by photographer and AP, not used with permission.
nosleepingdogs 
I’ve lived through oil spills in CA albeit not like this one. Its a heartbreak to see those birds; the beaches are trashed for years afterwards with oil.
Although BP is terrible, let’s remember who is demanding all this oil. Prez Obama has a moment that he has not seized at all…he could press hard for alternatives and use this as an example and impetus for a new energy future.
A saying from long ago: We’ll have solar energy just as soon as they figure out how to put a meter on the sun.
Big money owns politics and politicians, sad to say. Both the Bush and Obama administrations failed to exert power over the oil companies. I don’t expect anything to change.
If you place any store in the fundament of reincarnation, put yourself there in the body of the egret. And now that we’ve discovered lithium in Afghanistan (who’d’a thunk it) and are armed against incursion from the Chinese and the defunct Russians, we can put battery operated Peterbuilts driven by opiated long haul truckers solidly in our future daymares. Hence we can blamelessly leave the killing of the seas to the Asians. What fun!