An appropriate response to BP's actions would have been to claw back the last five years of bonuses for all executives in the chain of command regarding Deepwater Horizon, dissolution of the corporation, and the placing of all assets in a trust charged with fulfilling pension and health care liabilities to employees and paying for the damage caused, with any excess going to fund cleanup of other fossil fuel related environmental damage. The criminal charges should have resulted in the piercing of the corporate veil and the prosecution of individual executives for the damage their actions precipitated - in a better world.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."