Last week an oil rig called Deepwater Horizon exploded and sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 and triggering a leak that’s spilling an estimated 42,000 200,000 gallons of oil per day into the ocean. Greenpeace and Discover explain why it’s ecologically disastrous, but I think that this comment on the Times does a great job of framing this catastrophe in a broader context of ill-considered human behavior:
From that pathetic photo of the boat attempting to lasso the oil, it would appear that the oil companies have spent billions researching how to extract oil and bupkis researching how to clean it up. This is a disgusting way of life for all of us to directly or indirectly support through this selfish, short-sighted culture. We are destroying the only known life in the universe so that a few people can get their kicks pretending that they are wealthy because a hard drive which converts electrical impulses into a pattern on a magnetized screen displays numbers which symbolize the number of virtual pieces of green paper that could be extracted to show to other people who would trade them for goods that actually exist. Reality: if we ruin the planet, all of us are poor.
Call me crazy, but I think that we should have used the money which now lines the pockets of bailed out bank executives to retool the failed automakers so that they could build the wind turbines, trains, buses, and other infrastructure that we need to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels. My question is this: How many horrific catastrophes like this will we be forced to endure before we make the conscious decision, as a society, to change our ways?
One comment
Thanks for bringing this disaster to the attention of others. Living on the Gulf of Mexico, I feel like this has been underreported, and underestimated from day one. Something like this has never happened, an oil spill is one thing, this is an oil LEAK from a reservoir below the Gulf, with an unknown quantity of oil. It appears this is an open ended leak, that could devastate the environment, and with it (if all you can think of is money) the economy. It makes me ill to see the profits of BP (I believe it was reported at 6 billion this QUARTER) and the lame response to try to contain this leak. And to hear today that BP never had a contingency plan for a disaster like this. Who is watching the oil industry, that this is allowed to happen? Please make everyone you know aware of what’s happening here - because although this is currently a local event, due to the ocean currents, you may have this oil on a beach near you in the next few years.