"BP has failed in its latest attempt to plug the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico with mud and cement.
"BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said Saturday that the maneuver known as a top kill had failed. It was the latest setback for the company trying to stop the crude from further fouling waters, wildlife and marshland.
"The spill is the worst in U.S. history and has dumped between 18 million and 40 million gallons into the Gulf, according to government estimates."
"It's hard to grasp the magnitude of the ecological catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill. At this point no one is certain how much oil is pouring from the well into the surrounding ocean. BP, adopting an early government estimate, has claimed that it amounts to a mere 5,000 barrels a day, but some scientists say the amount is closer to 60,000 or 70,000 barrels. Taking the lesser of these estimates, that would translate into the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill every four days. Given that this has been going on for five weeks at the time of this writing, the gulf has by now absorbed nine such spill equivalents, with more to come. But picturing the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill—until now the largest in US waters—and multiplying by nine does not begin to convey the scale of the disaster. For the first time in history, oil is pouring into the deep currents of a semi-enclosed sea, poisoning the water and depriving it of oxygen so that entire classes of marine species are at risk of annihilation. It is as if an underwater neutron bomb has struck the Gulf of Mexico, causing little apparent damage on the surface but destroying the living creatures below."
"If one of the hallmarks of intelligence is the ability to learn from mistakes, we must not be looking very intelligent these days.
"Time and again over the past few decades we have been presented with the hard, brutal facts about the costs of our addiction to oil – health impacts from air pollution, wilderness lost to drilling, wars to secure oil supplies in the Middle East, vast sums of money paid to oppressive oil-dictators, and the growing and devastating impacts of climate change. And of course, oil spills. As a former oil minister in Venezuela dubbed it, oil is indeed “el excremento del diablo” – the devil’s excrement. Despite the destructive effects of our oil addiction, we still don’t seem to want to seriously change our use of it. We are all junkies looking for the next fix. As many observers have said, we need an overwhelming, clear signal of the costs of oil in order for the public and political leaders to begin to break our century-long addiction to oil.
"Today, as millions of gallons of toxic crude oil continue to spew uncontrolled from the mile-deep Deepwater Horizon blowout into the Gulf of Mexico, we are hopeful that this catastrophe will be the very catalyst we need. This may be looked at some day as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are to the nuclear industry. Indeed, the Deepwater Horizon disaster may provide our last best chance to hasten the switch to sustainable energy in time to avert global ecological and economic disaster.
"This spill disaster from the Deepwater Horizon blowout at “Mississippi Canyon 252” is like no other humanity has dealt with – it is historic in its size, depth, and potential offshore impact. Here’s what we know so far."
