These remote seeps will likely come to be revealed as a catastrophic problem. We are in an epic environmental catastrophe . “apocalyptic”? Ho Ho Ho.

Not to mention the idea that BP purportedly spent a million bucks a day drilling this well and it is obvious to me that they elected to take their chances on deferring liability as a result of our blithe acceptance of External Costs in order to let the oil spew while they cobbled together means to keep extracting the crude, while preserving the original investment. They knew the government was asleep at the wheel. They know we are like junkies when it comes to petroleum. A Nuclear Explosion would likely have too greatly complicated the preservation of their claim and opened the entire process up to a level of government intervention they were fearful of. External Costs have a way of sanctioning spectacularly poor decisions.

Thanks DW – great essay.

Hearing “Roxanne” with a full string back-up puts me in mind of the Lisbon Earthquake.

“The bottom line: BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling operation may have triggered an irreversible, cascading geological Apocalypse that will culminate with the first mass extinction of life on Earth in many millions of years.”

http://www.helium.com/items/1882339-doomsday-how-bp-gulf-disaster-may-have-triggered-a-world-killing-event

Smith,
You are a lefty with a sense of humor, a unique commodity and I am only so happy to don an Afro, sprinkle the patchouli and ride my Black Mule Satchmo into battle as General Dick of the Love Revolution.
My only requirement is showers however, with soap.

Artie,
I was not trashing Linneaus. I use the fruits of his work all the time myself, in business as well as reading the rich “language ” of the natural world while keeping an ear tuned to its mysteries. What I was castigating is the surrender to category and concomitant abandonment of a more comprehensive outlook that does not balkanize spirit, mystery, love, science and technology into separate armed and frequently antagonistic camps of caricatured parody. You can compare me to JHK anytime though, he’s a pitbull with an artists temperament. The Irony of this notion that someone or something might punish us for our sins is that we are actively punishing ourselves , day in, day out, like the most professional of Bowery Drunks. But, if you are never sure of what you just read after laboring through one of my rants, you ought to try getting a grip on it while writing it. Think a combination of Art Carny and Edvard Munch with a typewriter.

If a gushing oil well spewing millions of gallons of crude into the ocean as planes above dump toxins into the water to disperse it is not “apocalyptic”….well, one wonders what is for such a desensitized, “external cost”-centered society.

It’s not as if Congress didn’t know the risks. Its own research arm, which issues frequent spill-response readiness assessments, has repeatedly cited a 2004 Coast Guard study finding that its “oil spill response personnel did not appear to have even a basic knowledge of the equipment required to support salvage or spill clean-up operations.” Nevertheless, lawmakers failed to act aggressively to ensure adequate oversight.

Not surprising. But then the author, David S. Abraham (who “oversaw offshore programs at the White House Office of Management and Budget from 2003 to 2005″ and who “is an incoming international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations”), concludes with the usual fantasy:

But Congress should recognize its own role in undermining offshore safety and encouraging risky drilling — then act to make sure disasters like the gulf spill don’t happen again.

Make sure, eh? Good one!

p.s. You’ll never get Sabin to pass the bong.

I have to look at my own lack of outrage to assimilate this essay: The oil spew sickens me. It is so ugly I cannot look at it and look at my culture at the same time without retching. We obviously did not have the technology to drill that deep and in that deep of water is a safe manner. We pissed away a public resource for corporate profit. We condone this because we are too lazy, too greedy, too nearsighted, and too filled with self-loathing to change. An addict’s predicament to be sure. Like all addictions, at its core it is a spiritual problem. DW, you used “love” 12 times in your essay, this is a truer insight than most will admit.

Thank you.

Perkins…”perhaps a bit too apocalyptic”. Stick around, pay attention, nothing is too apocalyptic for this crass era. A species that ignores life budgets within a fixed piece of ground should not surprise anyone when it cooks the books on its fiat medium of exchange.