Random thoughts from the aft deck.
Tomorrow, Saturday, is World Environmental Day.
But it is also a day of downers with the big oil gusher in the Gulf still spewing with little promise of an end in sight, at least not right now for the sea creatures and the birds and the coastal marshes and lands, let alone the folk who live and work on those shores. Irresponsible criminality doesn't even come close to describing what lies behind (underneath?) this. Perhaps corporate hubris on a giant scale comes closer.
Looking at charts of the spill in far away waters, with little reference to scale, doesn't quite carry the devastating impact.
Want to make it closer to home?
Thanks to People for Puget Sound's Facebook posting, "Visualizing the BP Oil Disaster" you can do just that. Click on Location (just above the chart), enter Seattle (or anywhere else you'd like), then click on Move The Spill and you'll get a sense of what this would mean if it happened here (or elsewhere).
To be sure, a downer of a way to end a week. But for many Gulf shore folk, not to mention all those Gulf critters who use to fly and swim and crawl, this week has been their end, literally.
Wonder when we'll learn . . .
Photo: A seabird covered in oil wades in the surf at East Grand Terre Island along the coast of Louisiana, June 3.
Thanks to People for Puget Sound's Facebook posting, "Visualizing the BP Oil Disaster" you can do just that. Click on Location (just above the chart), enter Seattle (or anywhere else you'd like), then click on Move The Spill and you'll get a sense of what this would mean if it happened here (or elsewhere).
To be sure, a downer of a way to end a week. But for many Gulf shore folk, not to mention all those Gulf critters who use to fly and swim and crawl, this week has been their end, literally.
Wonder when we'll learn . . .
Photo: A seabird covered in oil wades in the surf at East Grand Terre Island along the coast of Louisiana, June 3.
6 comments:
Damn ugly sad picture. Damn ugly sad disaster.
There’s been a lot of commentary and, like BP engineers, much of it is making it up as we go along, grappling with the feeling of being finally humbled by a man-made disaster that technology can’t fix. One commentary noted that we learn by mistakes too well, and that we will set the new bar to prevent a big disaster like this one but that’s flawed risk analysis because the next ‘big one’ won’t be anything like the ‘big one’ we subsequently prevent. BP admitted that they had not anticipated a disaster like this one. “Low probability, large effect,” is, I believe, how the quote went. And yet, even if you take the example of Prince William Sound in the aftermath of Exxon Valdez, the industry instituted safeguards that will prevent another Exxon Valdez going up on Bligh Reef but not another ‘big one’ of ‘low probability, large effect.’ On top of that, the industry won’t institute the same PWS safeguards in other oil transit waterways like the Straits and the Sound here but go fighting tooth/nail on mandatory tug escorts, rescue tug, weather restrictions. What’s the lesson here? “What’s good for Big Oil is good for America?” Don’t think so.
Mike, I could not agree more.
It really is frustrating to see such large corporations doing damage to the US ecology.
Too true. It will be interesting if we learn anything from this that will result in change.
How sad. I work just a bit up from the coast on lake conroe but get down to the gulf coast often and this spill really has everyone down
Good to hear from one who actually sees the damage, not just from those of us who experience it from afar. Thanks.
Mike
Post a Comment