Like the rest of the country, I've watched the oil spill catastrophe unfold in the Gulf of Mexico for the last 2 months.
It's one of those nightmarish situations that defies description.
With the intellectual & physical resources available in this country, it's definitely shocking that the leak has just continued to spew into the Gulf for this long. Mankind is ultimately no match for Nature, but this is a localized engineering problem that has to be solved. Science, industry, & government should all be engaging at full force to contain the leak and clean the damage. It seems like
Kevin Costner's centrifuge separation technology has been approved & purchased by BP for the cleanup efforts. This is just one of many technological avenues that need to be pursued to mitigate the effect of this spill.
Most of the public's outrage has been directed at BP, aka British Petroleum. Although I find the whole idea of using fossil fuels & combustion engines archaic, at least BP had a
cool "green" logo that's actually derivative of a rotated & repeated
Flower of Life geometric pattern. This along with the whole "Beyond Petroleum" corporate branding was very effective. Now, that is all literally blown to hell, of course.
President Obama has visited the Gulf several times already, which is helpful to the efforts down there. Local leaders have said that his presence makes things start to happen, which makes sense. Unfortunately the magnitude of the disaster has people obviously looking to throw blame Obama's way, too. He's going to give a speech from the Oval Office in an hour, but that alone is not going to cut it. Unless he says he's taking some kind of drastic measures that can be visibly implemented immediately, this is going to continue to be a drag on his many agendas. Clinton's former Labor Secretary Robert Reich's opinion about Obama's potential responses seems right to me:
It's funny in a sadly predictable way how the ever-reactionary 'Teabagger' faction thinks government should get out of everything... until a disaster strikes & then they agree President suddenly isn't doing enough and needs to take control. They are socialists, but don't even know it. How insidious!
Even though Obama has said he's looking for "whose ass to kick", most of America probably thinks he should also
take Stephen Colbert's advice... & literally kick the ass of unbelievably arrogant asshole CEO Tony Hayward.
People have suggested there's a conspiracy or sabotage of some sort, but I wasn't down there in a sub so I won't even pretend to have a clue. If it were some kind of sabotage by a foreign entity or even a rival oil company trying to bankrupt BP, I'm not sure that would even make strategic sense. The most likely culprit is the source of so much other human calamity, good ol' fashion Greed. That, combined with hazardous materials in extreme environments has proven to be a volatile combination.
I'm trying to find a silver lining here, so hopefully there are a couple good things that may come out of this:
• The government will be forced to better handle it's important function of regulating this kind of mega-industry.
• This will compel everyone to dedicate R&D, capital, and effort to implementing alternative sources of renewable energy.
• We as a people will also have to to address the complex interaction between multi-national corporate interests & our
supposedly democratic government that should be defending the public's interests.
• On a more spiteful note- Sarah Palin has been forced to laughably defend her now
ultra-retarded mantra "Drill, Baby, Drill!" She is such an unbelievable dope. If I believed in a Heavenly Father, I'd say he's trying to specifically tell her to shut off her gushing stream of nonsense for once. It wouldn't save the Gulf Coast, but it would save many of America's brain cells.
