http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100516/ap_on_re_us/us_gulf_oil_spill

The longer this story goes on, the uglier it gets, and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight. I don't know how long these gushers can flow before they eventually bleed out, and it is possible that this is an entirely new kind of phenomenon. I don't know anything about the properties of really deep oil deposits, this was not an option when I worked for an oil company. I didn't even know they existed, and this one is obviously below the continental shelf.
My guess is that the very fact they justify the expense of exploring this deep indicates the pools are huge. Maybe one of our geologists here can tell us what we are really dealing with here, or if we even know. Did this oil form down there, did it migrate there by geological processes? How potentially big is this pool?

The fact that the spill occurred I don't take too personally. I know there is enormous economic pressure to go after this oil, especially if it represents a new resource only now accessible to modern technology. Accidents are bound to happen when you explore at the very edge of the known world with new and untested technologies, as they are bound to happen in outer space; and what happened here is an accident, nobody planned this on purpose. This is just a risk we are going to have to balance against the benefits, as we do with nuclear power or other big planetary engineering projects, like big dams in wilderness areas, or massive flood control works.

What really ticks me off is the arrogance. How often were we told "nothing can go wrong", "the technology is tested and safe now", "we know what we're doing, trust us"; and of course, the political pressure brought to bear ultimately for reasons of purely private profit. How could we, as a society, properly evaluate the risks of this kind of activity when those most knowledgeable about them had every incentive to keep them hidden? Not only is there the unavoidable risk, we are only now learning about the AVOIDABLE ones; not learning from past blunders, the failure to properly exercise and prepare, to spend the money for the right equipment and to test it, not to mention the public relations effort that substituted for real readiness before, and true acceptance of responsibility after; all just to make money. And after the accident, the finger-pointing, the double-talk, the running from blame, the lawyers; ah yes, the lawyers.

Maybe the conservatives are right after all. Let the free market determine what happens and how, not regulations or government. Let the true costs of modern technology be paid by those who seek to implement it. Make the indifferent people and soulless organizations who stood to handsomely profit if this effort had been a success be the ones fully responsible for paying for the entire costs of its failure. Let us not tolerate that the victims of this disaster be the only ones to fully suffer its consequences. But you and I know that's not very likely to happen.

I am intimately familiar with these waters, I was raised on the Gulf Coast. I fished and sailed there as a young man, and I know their delicacy, their vulnerability and their breathtaking beauty. And even today, after decades of industrial neglect and abuse and over-exploitation, their startling richness and diversity of life. I write about them; so in a way I even earn part of my living from them and from my memories of them.

I want these bastards to pay.