We have been in Miami for the past couple of days, and today we went to Dallas. On the way, we flew over the oil rig. You know the one. I took pics, but the windshield glare screwed them up - maybe that's for the best, you probably wouldn't sleep too soundly tonight if you saw what we saw today. The oil slick is huge, and it's everywhere. There are clouds all around the rig, but they aren't real clouds, it's smoke. The rig itself is on fire, presumably burning some of the gas that's being funneled to the top. The scale of the oil slick is terrifying to see from the air - from 36,000' we can theoretically see 233 miles until the curvature of the earth cuts off our view, and from 36,000' I could see a ribbon of oil all the way to the horizon. And that's only the stuff we can see - I have read that most of the oil is still underwater, being taken by various currents all around the coast. I saw a computer simulation yesterday that says the oil will be up the east coast of the US and Canada by the fall.
I don't have anything funny to say about this - not even gallows humor. It's just too awful.
6 comments:
Hopefully someone goes to jail over this catastrophe, people need to start being held responsible for these kinds of environmental disasters and the horrible responses by their companies!
YYC Dispatcher
especially when you think about the amount of money these people have made.
Humans are pretty smart, but not quite smart enough.
Let's look at our track record: Nuclear power - Chornobyl.
Coal power - mine disasters...you pick one.
Large airplanes - Tenerife.
Oil wells - BP.
We know we're going to screw up, but we do this stuff anyway.
It's just human nature!
Our addiction to light sweet crude makes up culpable too. I am not apologizing for BP. They should be jailed and the profits shared with all those whose lives have been diminished. ANd the creatures should also be saved with BP profits. As Rich says we keep undermining our own best intersts with insane behaviour.
So I guess we can safely assume none of you drive, use A/C, fly or heat your homes? Because if you do you're just as responsible as those do the work of supplying the energy so you can do those things.
So which people should go to jail? I assume you mean the people actually working on the rig or someone from the Federal gov who made the decision not to require BP to install the additional safety shutoff that would have probably prevented this.
I'm just as responsible for the disaster as those who work in the engergy industry, because I use fossil fuels? Very distasteful comment, and it's time we all stood up against this absurd nonsense.
If I (God forbid) crash the jet I fly, is it the passengers fault because they use the airline's services? Heck, no.
Drilling Engineers and Managers cut corners and reduced safety margins on their procedures to save money because they were over budget. BP took a safety risk and they and many of us will now pay a huge price because of it.
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