Deepwater Denial

Here’s an eco-themed mix.

For ten days or so I’ve been in something akin to a state of denial, or perhaps a better term would be extreme wishful thinking. I was sorry to hear people had died when Deepwater Horizon blew up in the Gulf of Mexico. I wished the workers who were missing would be found alive, but that didn’t happen. I wished the leakage of oil would prove to be minimal, but that didn’t happen. I wished efforts to contain the mess would be successful, but so far no luck there either.

Most of all I wished this would turn out to be a false alarm, a not so big deal in the big scheme of things. It is clearly a disaster. I hope it doesn’t turn out to be a catastrophe. But it is looking more and more like that.

Now a smell pervades the area. I can’t quite detect it myself, not having a good nose, but they say it smells like diesel fuel. Mind you, we are quite some distance from the Gulf here in New Orleans. That’s how big this thing is.

We are concerned about the health effects of breathing hydrocarbons. I’m concerned about the health of our child. But what are we going to do? Evacuate?

It’s not an oil spill, technically. It is like an erupting fountain of oil deep, deep under the water. A “wild well” might be the proper term. A river of petrochemicals, gushing into the water of the Gulf at an astonishing rate of 5,000 barrels a day — maybe more. That’s almost a quarter million gallons per day. As big as that number is, the most important part of that phrase is the last two words — per day. This has been going on for something like ten days already, and the really bad news is no one has any way to stop it any time soon.

At least this will shut up the “Drill Baby Drill” idiots for a few moments. That’s not a partisan swipe at Sarah Palin, by the way, since we all know Republicans and Democrats have tended to promulgate reckless environmental policies, and that Obama has recently championed more aggressive drilling.

We seem determined to suck every last bit of oil out of the Earth, to feed our rapacious hunger for energy — and then what? Every school child knows that fossil fuels are a nonrenewable resource. So when we run out — then we’ll develop alternatives. Is that the plan?

What are we waiting for?