It’s hard to put a dollar value on a dead sea turtle. Impossible, actually. Estimates of royalties owed to the US taxpayer for the lost oil amount to around $35 million. Chump change. Lurking somewhere offstage is the specter of a liability cap. Seventy-five million dollars per oil spill? Still chump change.
The Deepwater Horizon accident will cause billions of dollars of damage and have incalculable effects on planetary systems. The reflectivity of massive oil slicks will shift the planetary albedo. The ecology of the Caribbean may be permanently altered. The economy of the gulf coast will take a hit as seafood supplies vanish and snowbirds take a pass on their winter trip to the redneck Riviera.
It all adds up.
BP management has assured us that they’ll ignore statutory caps on liabilities and pay all claims. BP shareholders have not been heard from on the matter of their management’s largesse. The best guess is that the shareholders will force management to an about face on any generous gestures made during this time of crisis. The legal beagles at 1 St. James Square are even now digging in for a protracted battle to protect their shareholders’ asses and assets. The Attorney General of the United States owes it to the world to freeze the assets of BP and any rogue corporation that ignores environmental and safety regulations in pursuit of profit.
Freeze their assets now. Seize them later when the total amount of damages is settled.
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Did you see that photo of those folks in their jumpsuits
shoveling off the top few layers of sand, placing a couple
of shovels worth into a big plastic bag, then getting
another bag to put a bit of oily sand in.
Guess it was part of the photo op for the Pres.
The petroleum used to make only 14 plastic bags could drive a car 1 mile.
In some parts of the ocean there are six pounds of plastic for every pound of plankton.
Each bag can take from 400 to 1,000 years to decompose but their chemicals residues remain for years after that.
Dare we ask which land fill gets all this “cleanup” waste?
Is there a better image of the futility of ‘cleanup’ efforts?
It’s so depressing.
The guys in the moon suits bagging the dinosaur slime were indeed temp workers hired by BP for the duration of the President’s visit. Here’s the Wikipedia story on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
The clean-up effort from Deepwater Horizon is futile. We’re just looking at what’s on the surface and washing to the beaches, but the ocean is three dimensional and there’s a lot more beneath the surface, spreading out and impossible to contain.