To the editor:

Professional apologist Charles Krauthammer says blame for BP’s oil spill rests on environmentalists (!) and hardly anyone else worth mentioning (May 28 column). Well maybe BP a little; they lacked a backup plan for facing a “perfect storm” of “amazing … engineering lapses.” But no blame after the spill, because, hey, they have a higher incentive than anyone else to fix it. And, oh, the usual government failures at Department of Interior, which, under no influence whatsoever from BP, failed to foresee a perfect storm of lapses.

Krauthammer’s ignorance of economics and policy is either willful or astonishing. As it happens, BP enjoys a $70 million ceiling on potential liability, which they’ve already exceeded. That means they have no direct incentive to spend another dime stopping the spill. They do have indirect PR motives to look like they’re trying, but big oil knows all about short-term memories and getting good press for dirty energy.

As for government failure, it was fomented by oil industry influence over appointments, not to mention well-documented bribes to regulators.

As for unforeseen glitches, memos are surfacing showing some problems were foreseen and ordered ignored.

As for environmentalism, Krauthammer’s debater’s trick is to claim that limits on off-shore and wilderness drilling have “driven us” to deep-water drilling. In reality, the oil market is huge, has a single international price and has production sources mostly far from the U.S. Effects of U.S. drilling limits are too small to appreciably affect prices or change incentives for deep-water drilling.