Summary
If our emotional reaction to the death of an entire ecosystem is subdued, one reason is that we cannot see what is happening. Evidence is amassing that BP, with the help of local and federal officials, is blocking the press from surveying public beaches and marshes to report on the damage wreaked by the Deepwater Horizon blowout. In late May, a boat carrying BP contractors and Coast Guard officials threatened to arrest a CBS news crew that was trying to film an oil-covered beach in Louisiana. Also in Louisiana, local deputies kept journalists from reaching the Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge. "BP's in charge because 'it's BP's oil,'" a company representative told a Mother Jones reporter in the group.
I posed the Big Question _ to the oracle. "What if they can't stop the spill?" I typed into Google. A few Yahoo, com threads came up. One respondent said, "The oil spill will most likely be cleaned," but "worst case is it kills our oceans." Another sage advised readers we'll be OK if we stay on dry land.What dougr envisions is pressure being transferred from the ineffective "cap" to the "down hole" below the seafloor, "undermining the foundation of the seabed in and around the well area." As the foundation erodes, the 450-ton "blowout preventer" will fall in, too, and this "will collapse the well." After that, "it won't be too long [before] the entire system fails," leaving "a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more."See the full content of this document
Extract
Deepwater Delusions
Among the many and contradictory criticisms of Obama's handling of the BP catastrophe is that he has failed to show enough emotion.
But what emotion should he show? Eighty-seven percent of respondents to an Associated Press/GfK poll last week said events in the Gulf were personally very important to them, trailing only the economy in salience. The environment, according to the poll, is now very important to almost three-quarters of those surveyed, a b...See the full content of this document
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