Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee
Pretty sure an ecological disaster of this magnitude, you know, an oil spill that has now surpassed Exxon's Valdez in terms of ugliness, would be getting political attention no matter what country you're talking about.
This is now the worst oil spill in the the country's history.
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I think that the US administration's efforts should be on helping the locals whose industries and livelihoods will be destroyed while making sure that they don't create a worse humanitarian problem by rushing people out to skim the water and clean the beaches without adequate protection from the dangerous compounds floating in the Gulf. They need to make sure that the approach of mixing surfactants is the best approach, long term, because this will be a long term problem. They need to determine how to prevent this situation for next time. The government's focus has to be on protecting people now and long term first, how to minimize the total environmental damage second and how to clean up the mess in a safe manner last.
Appearing on TV mad about the situation, creating the spin that the Government is in control of an uncontrolled situation and staging photo-ops at a beach won't stop the oil from flowing and won't stop soon to be out of work fishermen from being poisoned by volitile organic compounds or feed their families.
From all appearances, the flow will not be stopped until the late summer so people need to prepare for double or triple or more of the Valdez spill. I read on another message board that this is the oil industry's Chernobyl and I thought that description was pretty apt. Perhaps this will be the event that marks the first real turning point in our eventual march away from fossil fuels. I work in the industry but I know that we can't keep drilling deeper in more remote areas while increasing consumption of a limited resource.
We will eventually end up converting to a different primary energy source - most likely nuclear supplemented with wind and hydro power, but those energy sources are all much less portable than oil (thus requiring a very large supply) and all take a long time to build. I hope that we will start now while we have the cheap oil to do it with.