By Jeffrey St. Clair
Transcribed by Andrea Hektor
Socialist Worker
Jeffrey St. Clair is co-editor with Alexander Cockburn of the muckracking Web site and newsletter CounterPunch–where he has written extensively on BP’s Gulf catastrophe and other environmental issues. At the Socialism 2010 conference in San Francisco, he described the conveyor belt between the executive suites of energy companies and the offices of government agencies that regulate them–and how this incestuous relationship set the stage for the BP disaster.