Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Drill, baby, drill? How about burn, baby, burn!

The “Drill Baby, Drill” crowd has been conspicuously silent in the week since the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank, killing eleven workers and spewing 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico.

As currents and tides move an oil slick towards the ecologically sensitive Louisiana coast, officials who don’t have the luxury of changing the subject are stuck trying to explain how this isn’t such a big deal.

"It's premature to say this is catastrophic,” said Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry. “I will say this is very serious."

Well thanks, Mary. You might want to visit the burn unit where some survivors are still listed as being in “very serious” condition, or maybe send a condolence card to the families of those dead oil-rig workers.

Meanwhile, a last-ditch effort to prevent oil from hitting environmentally sensitive marshlands and valuable oyster grounds seems like something from a bad Hollywood movie: corralling thousand gallons of the thickest oil on the surface, towing it to a remote area, and burning it.

"When you can get oil ignited, it is an absolutely effective way of getting rid of a huge percentage of the oil," said Greg Pollock, head of the oil spill division of the Texas General Land Office, which is providing equipment for crews in the Gulf. "I can't overstate how important it is to get the oil off the surface of the water."

Thanks Greg; there are some of us who can’t overstate how important it is to not put that oil in the water in the first place.

Meanwhile, there’s no word on whether or not Sarah Palin – who make a big deal of brining camera crews along to show what a hard-working family she has, fishing in the frigid waters off Alaska – will be going rogue and helping to clean up the mess that “drill baby, drill” has caused.

Comments:

Blogger Watchout5 said...

You have a typo, it's actually closer to 210,000 gallons of oil per day, 5k barrels of oil, BP was underestimating because they're incompetent.

1:27 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home