about safety, clearly in the offshore industry. i m not criticizing the coast guard, i think we have the best people on the ground and along the gulf coast. the question is,we rarely clean up more than 15% or 20% of a spill on a calm day, and we aren t seeing a calm day. yeah, and alongside, while you were talking about it, we re looking at images of the bird life that s affected directly, images in a have come out as early as yesterday. we also saw images of how people are being trained to try to scrub and clean some of these birds they are discovering already covered in oil. well, this is one of america s most fragile and beloved ecological treasures right here along the gulf coast. the seafood that comes from that water, and the visitors serving industries that make their living, as you mentioned in the earlier segment, these are all going to be impacted.
making sure that they re protecting the public. it is the oil companies who not only have to have safe equipment but have to have a culture of safety. and they have to be willing to have safety equipment and strong rules to protect the public. in the last ten years, the oil industry has done nothing but fight to have its own rules in place and enforce its own rules regardless of the impacts to the public. reporter: now as the job. assigning blame begins, the industry and the regulators will take a hard look at all the things they did and did not do to wind up with what may be the second worst environmental disaster in u.s. history. and it is still getting worse. joe johns, cnn, washington. all right. let s talk more about this. let s talk about accountability for the ongoing disaster and let s not forget something else. the 11 deaths in the initial explosion. joining us, retired generous he
for negligence say the company led first responders to think this wasn t going to be that bad. you can t blame the government officials. they were all there ready to work. first responders were there. bp told them that we got it under control. we have it capped. and people left. as to the cause, the best they can do is talk about the piece of equipment that obviously didn t work. tony heyward, the ceo, said the blowout preventer, these are his words, is the ultimate fail safe mechanism and for whatever reason, it failed to operate. he blames another company which oenlz the equipment that failed and operated the rig. a responsibility for safety on the drilling rig is with transocean. it is their rig. their equipment. their people. their systems. their safety processes. reporter: trans ocean won t comment, citing a federal investigation. keeping them honest, there are other issues that point not only at bp but also at the entire industry as well as the government. here s why. a d
and as was presented earlier, in the early part of the program, we re now finding out that shortcuts may have been taken in the safety valves that are being used. that has to work. and then the safety valve has to have a back-up to it. i don t think we can wean ourselves off that oil at this point in time but it has to be made safer and regulated. and talking about domestic oil production, specifically, as you know, president obama restated his commission to domestic energy production today. the political path going forward is not going to be easy, of course, but what do you think? how do you see this playing out? only 6% of america s oil is coming from offshore but a lot of our future is offshore. we have to make a difference between bp negligence and offshore drilling. it can be done safely. it is being done off the coast of norway and brazil and other places. let s not go after an entire offshore industry. this has been a big problem with british petroleum in alaska, in the arct
let s not go after an entire offshore industry. this has been a big problem with british petroleum in alaska, in the arctic and now in the gulf of mexico. this is their third major disaster in the united states from a foreign company over the last five years. and that s where you re saying who to hold accountable. there will be other companies that bp farm things out to, but that petroleum company has been grossly negligent in both alaska and now the gulf of mexico. moving forward, general, now what needs to be done. let s say you have all the resources to try to clean this up and try to protect the gulf as much as possible. what are your fellow louisiana residents saying? what does the response need to be at this point? i m headed down there this morning and the word i m getting back from fishermen in that area, and i live here now in louisiana, they re looking at a devastating impact on the shrimping industry.