The Nature of Things

Finally, some good news from the Gulf of Mexico. It seems that the latest device put in place to stop the oil gushing from the runaway well is working. The oil flow has stopped , at least temporarily. That is not to say that the problem has been fixed. Apparently, the only way to stop the spill permanently is with the relief wells. Work continues on them but they are still weeks away from being able to do what they are designed to do. In the meantime though, it is a happy thing to be able to see that live picture from under the sea with no torrent of oil gushing into the water. Of course, the relief wells and the temporary or even permanent stoppage of the oil flow doesn't do anything about all that oil and all the other chemicals that have been poured into the Gulf waters this spring and summer. All of that poisonous goop is still there in a place where it never should have been and it is still doing its damage to the food chain and to the environment of both animals and peo...

The latest storyline out of the Gulf oil spill is about how it is polluting relations between the United States and Britain. It seems that our "special relationship" hangs in the balance because Americans are mad at Britain over the spill. Really? BP may be "British" Petroleum but actually the company is as much American as British. I heard a newsman on BBC earlier this week in all seriousness ask his guest if Americans disliked BP CEO Tony Hayward because of his very Britishness. Well, no, it's not his Britishness that we dislike. It's all that oily stuff spilling all over the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. That's what we don't like. It wouldn't matter if Hayward spoke with a Russian, a Venezuelan, or an American accent. We just don't like his oil killing our Gulf and we want it to stop. Truly, Hayward is a public relations disaster for his company which compounds their oil spill disaster, but it's not because of his accent. It...

I am sick of pundits. I am especially sick of the ones who have been blathering on almost since the awful oil spill began about how the president isn't showing enough emotion about it. He needs to get angry, shake his fist, spit fire, punch somebody. This is what the pundits live for - something that makes good theater. Something that helps them fill their three minutes on live television. If I were the president, I'd definitely be angry about a lot of things, but perhaps the thing I'd be angriest about is the damned pundits who don't seem to have a clue about the real world. Theirs is the virtual world of the 24-hour news cycle and the "conventional wisdom" of the "inside the beltway" clan. The rest of us, including the president, live in quite another world. I'm not interested in a president getting angry and putting on a show for the 24-hour news guys. I'm interested in a president who is competent, intelligent, and thoughtful about...

One of the many by-products of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been the sense of inchoate rage that is building, not just on the Gulf I believe but throughout the country. This rage is further inflamed among many of us by the sense that this tragedy should never have happened. If the government agencies that were supposed to be monitoring and providing oversight of energy companies had not been in bed with those energy companies (literally, in some instances) and had been doing an effective job of policing, permits for this deep well drilling would never have been issued. It would have been obvious to an objective observer that the technology was inadequate and that there was no credible plan for what would be done in case of an accident. One of the most appalling things in this whole appalling affair has been the fact that BP did not really have a clue as to how to stop the spill, other than by drilling relief wells which takes months. They've been inventing strate...

I can't bear it. I can't bear to watch television images of what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico, my backyard, and on the Gulf Coast. I can hardly bear to read of it, only if I skip over the most excruciating parts, the parts about helpless animals caught in this man-made catastrophe. Anyone who cares about animals and the environment, for that matter anyone who cares about his/her fellow humans who are suffering because of this biggest environmental disaster in the history of our country, is being daily bombarded with hard punches to the heart as this unspeakable befouling of the earth continues. How did we ever let this happen? Why do we allow drilling for oil a mile down in the ocean when we have no effective plan for dealing with potential explosions and oil spills? Are we truly so addicted to oil that we have lost all perspective on what is important? Even a bird knows that its nest mustn't be fouled. Are we not as smart as birds? The president has reversed h...

So, Brit Hume of Fox News can't see the Gulf oil spill from his window in Washington or New York or wherever it is that he is based and so it must be no big deal . On Fox News Sunday he said: There's a good question today if you are standing on the Gulf, and that is: Where is the oil? ...It's not on -- except for little of chunks of it, you're not even seeing it on the shore yet.... But you know where the greatest source of oil that seeps into the ocean is? It's from natural seepage from subterreanean deposits. That's where most of it comes from, not from drilling accidents....The ocean absorbs a lot, Juan, an awful lot. The ocean absorbs a lot. I guess Hume hasn't seen the satellite pictures taken from space of the the oil slicks spreading out over thousands of acres of the ocean. He probably also hasn't seen the pictures of the dead animals washing up on beaches along the Gulf now. But even if he has, why should he pay attention to them? He works fo...

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...

( Cross-posted from Backyard Birder .) Our regular weekly roundup of news of birds and the environment is this week completely dominated by one story: The explosion of the BP oil rig in the Gulf and the subsequent gigantic and potentially disastrous oil spill. As thousands of barrels of oil continue to gush from the area of the rig every single day that the leak goes unstopped, the possibility of a true environmental catastrophe along the Gulf Coast grows hourly. Even now the first of the oil has reached the coastal areas and the first oil-soaked bird, a young Northern Gannet, has been found and is being cleaned by volunteers. There are several national parks and wildlife refuges that are in the path of the spill which could threaten the coastlines of four states - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Among them is the Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge in Mississippi, where mated pairs of cranes have just hatched their babies in April. These hatchlings would be part...