It’s not as if there is something inherently evil about off-shore drilling for oil. What is evil is the choice to underplay the risks for the sake of profit. It’s cheaper to lie, and pay others to lie, about what constitutes prudent precautions, and to bribe those who are supposed to check on them, than do what’s right. The result is the massive oil slick off the Gulf Coast of Louisiana.
And it’s growing, faster and larger than anyone can currently guess. We’ve seen what it does to wildlife and shore ecology on the smaller scale of previous spills, but we are now about to see what it’s like on a regional scale.
I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say tourism and sea life harvesting will soon be dead, perhaps for the entire Caribbean Sea. For a great many years. And this slick could easily spill into the Atlantic, and spread to near global proportions. Have you ever smelled raw petroleum? Touched it? I have. You don’t associate that with the idea of “harmless.” I don’t know any animals which think it’s a normal smell; they all seek to flee that nasty stuff. Their instincts tell them it’s toxic.
Not that I’m green by any means, because I have no qualms about reaping the benefits of petroleum extraction. I’ve worked closely with major companies in the past, and some of them are run by pretty decent people, at least at the levels I encountered. I have no sense about BP as a company, but I do know for a fact that drilling platform was shoddy all the way.
This will be an added crimp on the faltering global economy. Not just the US, nor other Caribbean shore nations, because the entire world is intertwined economically right now. Greece has economic indigestion and our markets puke.
Ugly political opportunism has already reared its head. The ruling elite will never miss a chance to add one more means of theft and coercion. Look for some really evil stuff coming down the pipe from DC on this. It seems almost tailor made for it, even if the proper term is “an act of God.” God lets stuff like this happen because we have asked for it, have begged for breakneck material progress at the cost of our souls. We have no grounds to pray for His help.
