The Nature of Things

Paul Krugman had a column in The Times on Monday with which I totally agree. That's hardly news because I usually agree with his columns - some more than others. He says things that I want to say but he says them so much more intelligently and persuasively. And he has a slightly larger audience than I do. Plus there's that Nobel Prize thing... But anyway, I thought he made a particularly cogent point about this awful oil spill that is consuming our attention. (It seems that we have little time for the flooding disasters that are happening in Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky , or the would-be bomber of Times Square because we are mesmerized by the sight of that gigantic oil slick sliding, virtually unimpeded so far, toward our coast.) And now that our attention is focused, let us hope that people who are concerned about the environment and who are concerned about the efficacy and safety of offshore drilling can make their points to the public. It seems that the public mi...

Last week a deep water oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, my backyard, exploded and sank. The reasons that this happened are still to be determined. Was it simply an accident? Was it sabotage? Was it an attempt at terror? Or is there even some other explanation that hasn't surfaced yet? Whatever the reason for the explosion may have been, the consequences are horrendous . First of all, eleven human lives lost, lives of people who accepted those risky jobs on the rig - as the dead coal miners in West Virginia accepted their risky jobs - to support themselves and their families and to try to make better lives for them all. The jobs were there because of our insane addiction to oil. But that's just the cost in human lives. The cost in animal life and in degradation of the environment because of the oil now spilling from that wrecked rig is incalculable and is ongoing. Where will it all end? Will the oil reach the Gulf Coast to damage the birds and turtles and other wildlife ...