British Petroleum can be accurately called many things: greedy, reckless, an environmental tyrant, aloof, and astonishingly bad at damn near everything they attempt. They are a success despite their numerous failings, a product of an industry propped up by the addictive properties of its merchandise. But “flattery” aside BP is also the employer of almost 100,000 people worldwide, and its likely most of them are not evil.

And that’s the point, BP is a company comprised of people, some with fancy suits and hidden agendas in desperate need of an indictment, and some with a mop and a broom or a cubicle and a ceaselessly ringing phone. These people have families, attend soccer games, and do all the things you or I enjoy in our thoroughly non-villainous lives. It’s these people though that are suffering a different kind of torture then the thousands and thousands of displaced fisherman and Gulf residents, the keepers of the Gulf Coasts disappearing majesty. A different torture, but torture all the same.

So why are we seeking to attack them? Our concern over collateral damage practically non-existent. It’s they who will be most affected if BP folds. They and us. You see BP has for better or worse been accountable. They have thus far spent the money, willfully supplying a $20 billion dollar escrow for the recovery effort, and they are handling the repair effort and the cleanup effort concurrently. Are they doing it well? No, but that’s another matter altogether. The point is they are signing the checks and if they suddenly disappeared then who would that responsibility fall too? The answer: you, me, and those fisherman, with our tax dollars that are already spread too thin.

Calls to ban BP from off shore drilling (but not Transocean?), from oil exploration of any sort within the US and its territories, and the cancellation of productive Government contracts are little more than efforts to aggressively punish a company that has angered and wounded us. No due process, no investigation, but rather a public flogging with no regard for what happens to BP, a company that could find itself morally and fiscally viable once more with the aid of a few well placed executive indictments. No concern for those people working the refineries, those people on the rigs, or working one of tens of thousands of jobs within BP that had nothing to do with this spill or the poor effort to contain it. No worry over the thousands of independent small business owners and near minimum wage workers that operate or work for BP brand gas stations across the US that are being hit hard by boycotts.

Still, some would argue that BP has operated consistently with little to no consideration for the potential or true damage done to the Gulf Coast, its innocent residents, and the other areas throughout the world where BP maintains a drilling presence. They would argue that the destruction of this company is what karma demands, it is just, and it is righteous, and they would not be wrong in light of the decimation, environmental and economic to the Gulf Coast. But in following that line of logic we forsake our system of laws, the means for which we attain actual justice. Something a mob mentality cannot achieve.

Indeed we can rip this company to shreds, we have that ability without question. We can disregard the damage that would bring in the name of blood-lust and smile broadly at the decimation. But applying our passion to those pursuits does nothing to improve the situation in the Gulf. It does nothing to ensure that something like this never happens again.

And so rather then embrace our base instincts, giving in to our anger we can In this fleeting moment of increased awareness and zeal, work to reform high consumption behavior, and push for true investment in alternative fuels and environmental protections. In this moment we can demand that our Government craft a new energy plan without the corrupting influence of industry. An energy plan that strictly and without fail regulates the energy industry while simultaneously investigating BP and lowering the full force of the law onto the heads of those guilty of corruption and negligence. It’s up to us to determine the course of our fire, up to us to move toward the productive or blindly tear apart a company, our misspent rage, and hollow activism leaving us with a bigger mess and a Gulf Coast still in tatters.