$20 billion is chump change for the death of a coastline

[XemaSab]

The Gulf Coast is dead. It's over. It's done.

The fishery is done. Fishing in Louisiana alone is a $3bn a year industry, so if it were just about the money, that's 7 years of lost wages for fishermen, but it's going to take more than 7 years for those jobs to come back. Yes, the fish populations might be called "recovered" in 10 years, and blessed as "safe," but I sure as hell won't be eating fish from the coast for 20 years or more. The fishermen may as well trash their boats, move away, and get different jobs.

It's not just about the lost wages, either. Louisiana provides 1/4 of the domestic seafood outside Alaska and Hawaii. Being able to produce food here in the United States--HEALTHY food--is a national security issue. Were we to be involved in a serious war or other national crisis we might not be ABLE to get food from overseas, or we might not care to buy food from overseas. We totally lost a great source of food there.

The marshes are dead. Not only do these marshes support the aforementioned fishery and a terrific abundance of other wildlife, but they also protect our cities from hurricanes. Obama talked in his speech about rebuilding the coastline, and while I am not a coastal geomorphologist, I have no idea how he thinks we're going to pull that off, especially with the death of the coastal vegetation and the continued confinement of the Mississippi. (If you'll allow me to wax cynical, some huge engineering firm is going to get a wad of cash for a small pilot project that will be promptly washed away and never mentioned again.)

The cultural loss is sad. A uniquely American culture and way of life has ended. Obama brought up the blessing of the fleet the other day, and who are we to say if this year was the last year? Will there BE a fishing fleet next year, or the year after?

The tourism industry is going to be suffering for years, but this might be the one resource value that rebounds sometime within the next 5 years. Or not. It depends on if the water is safe to swim in.

Everyone seems to be acting like this is something like a hurricane that we can just rebuild from, but it's so much worse than that. This is going to be an ongoing catastrophe for a decade or more. It's going to be a fundamental shift in our national geography.

We have three coasts in the mainland US, and one of them is OVER. $20 bn isn't going to begin to pay for our loss.

[ixion]

1. The coastline, the eco-system -- a singularly unique one, at that

Indeed, it's chump change, and I am unimpressed.

[indepat]

9. In tens years, $20 billion will have not hurt BP much at all, and the Gulf coast, the environment,

the marine life, the eco-system, countless lives et al, will still be devastated. Chump change indeed. When are a significant majority of Americans going to come to grips with the reality that the corrupt and venal corporatist Congress has given large corporations a virtual license to steal, rape, plunder, despoil, always privatizing their profits while the Congress stands by all too ready to socialize their losses giving Americans: a despoiled environment and an ever-decreasing standard of living and quality of life. :P

[havocmom]

2. Yep.BP really should be paying us for decades of costs relating to policy re Iran

THAT has costs America a bundle over the years, both in $ and the ill-will policies for oil over people have authored around the globe.

[joeybee12]

3. Recommend...and you'll note there's a new thread basically calling you

out...of course THAT one won't get locked, naturally.

[XemaSab]

71. I missed that other thread

:shrug:

[CBR]

4. It is so horrible... have you seen this website..

http://dailydeadbirds.com/

[Junkdrawer]

5. And the money ($5 Billion a year for 4 years) is in ESCROW.....

If BP fights and wins in court, they get the money back.

[Uncle Joe]

6. I agree, this is just a downpayment, but no amount of money

can replace the intangible magic of the Gulf, the rich culture or the species doomed to extinction from this catastrophe.

Thanks for the thread, XemaSab.

[zipplewrath]

7. To be fair

First, he admitted it was a "down payment". Secondly, it wasn't intended as much for the long term consequences, as it is for the short term ones. And there is a separate 100 mil just for lost wages in the short term.

It's a "good" start in the sense that people now have half a chance of getting some help right up front that they otherwise might have to wait a year or more to receive.

In the end though, as you suggest, we'll never "fix" this in anything like 2 years. There are other spill sites that have continuing damage and there's no reason to think the gulf will be any different. But that would be true with, or without, the 20 billion.

[MineralMan]

8. Oh, at least TRY to get it right once in a while, please.

The $20B is not the end of this. Are you just not listening, or are you being deliberately obtuse?

[Fumesucker]

10. Look at the Exxon Valdez spill for what is likely to happen..

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, Exxon never paid a fraction of the total losses from the Valdez spill.

This will be winding through the courts for decades, BP will fight it tooth and nail every step of the way.

[MineralMan]

11. Ya know, I'm an old veteran of oil spills. I helped clean up the

beaches of Santa Barbara in 1969. Perhaps you remember that oil spill. Of course this is a disaster. It will take years and years to clean it up well enough that we don't notice it any longer.

My objection is the untruthful claim that only $20B will be paid by BP. That is pure distortion of the facts of the matter.

It's a horrible disaster. That does not justify untruthful postings. Not in any way.

[Fumesucker]

12. We have no way to know what BP will pay..

It will be decades before this winds through the courts..

I'm willing to wager that BP will only pay a very small fraction of the actual damages that occur in the Gulf.

I used to live in Biloxi, MS, about 200 yards from the Gulf, I imagine that the beach I used to visit on a nearly daily basis is now covered with a heavy layer of toxic sludge, just thinking about it leaves me livid and shaking with anger.

[bvar22]

59. The "beach" in Biloxi is probably OK...

since it wasn't a real beach, but the backside (inland side) of a bay.
The real beach out at Ship Island and the other barrier islands about 12 miles offshore from Biloxi are the ones that will bear the brunt.
The sand on the "beach" in Biloxi and all along that stretch of Hwy 90 has been "trucked in" if I remember correctly.
.
.
.
but I could be wrong.
The Seafood industry and Shrimp Fleet will be destroyed, of course.

[Javaman]

36. You do know that BP was in charge of the exxon valdez oil spill clean up, right?

to date only 4% of it has been cleaned up.

[mike_c]

17. there should be UNLIMITED share-holder liability....

That would make the matter moot. No ceiling, no floor. Just whatever it takes, by seizure and forfeiture if necessary. That way, whatever the real costs turn out to be-- $5 billion, $ 20 billion, or $200 billion-- so long as BP AND ITS SHAREHOLDERS have assets remaining, they would be on the hook, sans "negotiation."

[MineralMan]

23. It's early days. We don't know what will happen down the road.

We do know that $20B is going into escrow for the near term. The rest we will learn as it happens. There's going to be some due process stuff going on around this. We still have laws that have to be followed.

President Obama knows this, and insisted on the $20B to go into escrow, and managed by a third party. BP agreed to those terms. That's a contract.

I agree with you that BP should be held liable for ALL damages. Whether they will remains to be seen. I think I'll wait a bit and see what the process produces. That seems like the rational way to approach it.

In the meantime, we have the $20B. Thanks, President Obama.

[flyarm]

64. It's not "early days"..it is 2 months of neglect into this..Bp and our Feds have been negligent

in every way!

The 3.5 million gallons of Toxic Chemicals into the Gulf..is way beyond criminal!

[Scuba]

45. That is what we have. What we're missing...

...is the integrity and courage needed in Congress to make BP pay. Legally, we could nationalize BP's US operations, sue their international branches in the World Court (assuming we were in the World Court).

The law's on our side on this. We just have to apply it.

[lfairban]

76. Can't do that.

An important feature of corporation is limited liability. If a corporation fails, shareholders normally only stand to lose their investment, and employees will lose their jobs, but neither will be further liable for debts that remain owing to the corporation's creditors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability_company

From my, "Sad but True" file:

It is actually in a way fortunate that a spill of this magnitude happened to such a large company. A smaller one would go bankrupt much quicker, leaving many people with legitimate claims SOL.

[mike_c]

83. that's why I said we NEED it....

Limited liability is a relatively new feature, at least historically. Shareholders were not always protected from the consequences of their company's actions as they are now.

[lfairban]

88. Over a century

LLCs are neither new nor strange to the business community in the civil law countries of Europe and Latin America. This business form has its origin in the 1892 German company law known as Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (GmbH).

from the above link

[mike_c]

13. error-- you cannot recommend a thread ten thousand times....

If I could, I would. I grew up on the Gulf coast and the mid-Atlantic coast. I cannot express the depths of my sense of loss-- and it's not even my home any longer. I can only imagine the despair of folks who live on the Gulf and who depend upon it for their livelihoods.

Beyond that though, the Gulf of Mexico, and especially the marshes and barrier islands, are national treasures that we've just pissed away for more oil. You're right-- they are trashed for much of the rest our lifetimes, and their recovery will only come at the expense of some other ecosystem's suffering. The oil has to go someplace, and it will take a long time to biodegrade. A LONG time (and trust me, we do NOT want microbial oil decomposers who work fast!).

I weep for the Gulf. It is one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and we've taken a big steaming dump right in the middle of the tablecloth. Now we have to live with that for decades or more. I hope that the right lessons are learned from this, but I doubt it.

:cry:

[XemaSab]

72. .

:pals:

[Greyhound]

14. Yes it is, but it's also far more than anybody ever got before from this parasitic industry.

And allowing them three years to put it together is a mistake in light of the fact that BP just divested itself of $10B in a dividend payment to alleviate the "investors losses".

[hunter]

15. $20 bn probably won't cover the medical bills of people the oil and dispersants sicken.

These are nasty carcinogens and toxins which will be around for a long time.

Or, if you'll allow me to wax cynical, maybe people exposed to this crap will die sooner and quicker than they might have thus saving the U.S. billions in Medicare and Social Security benefits.

[WI_DEM]

16. From what I understand the president said this is just the beginning.

I guess he could have just left it to the good faith of BP and not set up an escrow account with a initial $20 billion and left it to the courts, but then he would have been attacked for that too.

[CatWoman]

18. perhaps you need to shout this loud and clear 20 billion times

as a lot of people around here seem not able to grasp this part of the equation.

[Fumesucker]

22. We grasp that Exxon only paid a tiny fraction of the actual damages..

From the Exxon Valdez..

We are going by the lessons of history, BP will not pay anything like the actual damages to the Gulf..

[MineralMan]

25. Uh...there's a new administration in power in 2010.

Let it work. Stop undermining what's happening. Was there a $20B escrow account set up in the EXXON Valdez disaster? No? Well, there is one in this one. Thanks, President Obama.

[Fumesucker]

31. Don't worry, be happy..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9K4BKkLaCI

[MineralMan]

38. Don't think, be angry.

[Name removed]

41. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[MineralMan]

57. Actually, I see a lot of good thinkers here, on all sides.

I see a lot of people who react without thinking, too. Life's like that. I have no idea about the TSing. That's not my business. I don't own DU.

[CatWoman]

27. I stand by my earlier statement

my crystal ball is in the shop.

[Fumesucker]

29. Those who ignore the lessons of history..

Are doomed to repeat them..

I think we will be repeating some very painful lessons soon.

[CatWoman]

32. the same can be said

for people who stubbornly refuse to deal with the present.

[Fumesucker]

33. Don't worry, be happy..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9K4BKkLaCI

[FBI_Un_Sub]

19. It is chump change

for BP's Chernobyl - Bhopal in America.

[depakid]

20. People haven't grasped the extent or magnitude of the catastrophe yet, Xema

and likely won't or many more months- or perhaps even years.

It's nothing short of a life changing event for the majority North Americans (including the island nations and neighbors to the south).

[ClarkUSA]

21. There's no cap so BP can expect to pay much more. Some estimates are up to $40B.

The final cost will probably be much more than that. Also, there's a $100M fund to pay lost wages to oil workers and a $500M fund to cover healthcare for affected parties for the next decade.

[conscious evolution]

44. !00 mill for the oil workers?Fuck them.

Let them collect unemployment.
That 100 million should go to everyone else who have lost wages because of this first.

[Scuba]

49. $40B ?? How about $40 Trillion !!!

[KittyWampus]

24. Oh please. The Hudson River came back. It's not perfect but you can swim in it again.

It'll take time and EFFORT. Effort from more than just BP. Maybe if DU'ers really were into participating in things, especially locally, more than just bitching on the internet things would improve at a faster rate.

[Fumesucker]

26. Don't worry, be happy..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9K4BKkLaCI

Hey, in the long run we're all dead anyway, right?

[mike_c]

28. it took decades, and the Hudson is not fully restored by any means....

One of the problems we often have when discussing restoration is the distinction between apparent, physical restoration and real, ecosystem restoration. The first is characterized by the return of clean, usable water and restoration of the physical elements of the ecosytem-- reestablishment of base flow regimes, cleaning up contamination, stopping pollution inputs, that sort of thing. On a smaller scale, this is the sort of thing that we do all the time when we "restore" waterways. Given time, most ecosystems can be "restored" in that sense, although the scale of operations requires that LOTS of time and money be invested.

One of the things my lab studies is the distinction between that sort of "apparent restoration" and real ecosystem restoration. The latter includes restoration of the ecosystem processes and services that helped maintain the original state. Restoration of the food network, for example. Restoration of nutrient cycling, biogeographic processes, like carbon and nitrogen balancing, and restoration of natural populations and ecological associations.

What we usually find is that "apparent restoration"-- for all its expense and complexity-- is often the low hanging fruit. With a lot of work and expense, we can usually accomplish apparent restoration. The Hudson River is certainly a good example. But real ecosystem restoration is pretty elusive. Arguably, our track record isn't very good-- beneath that beautiful restored stream, river, or coastline, invasive species often eliminate natural biodiversity and destroy ecosystem maintaining processes, or habitats simply are not properly prepared for functioning as they did previously, no matter how similar they appear. Such restoration is essentially arrested at an incomplete stage.

Time is probably the most important component of real restoration. Apparent restoration sets the stage and removes the ongoing disturbance, but it simply takes generations for forests to regrow, or for coastal marshes to reestablish, and so on.

[glitch]

34. Important, instructive post. Thank you. nt

[Mimosa]

52. K&R Mike C's post n/t

[Catherina]

54. Please shout that 20 billion times for those who stubbornly refuse to deal with the present n/t

[Stuart G]

30. Very important..........very important............K and R...

[LeftyFingerPop]

35. k/r

:kick:

[amborin]

37. zero hedge estimates $330 billion, minimum, for cleanup, alone....

[inna]

39. K&R - And the coastline is only a part of the damage.

[blindpig]

40. There is no amount of money to cover this..

This 'gift' will keep on giving and giving....

I fear the effect the killing of the marshes will have on the neotropical migratory birds, Spring may not be silent but many voices will be missing.

We must kill capitalism.

[mix]

42. k&r nt

[The Midway Rebel]

43. Some things are priceless.

I say an ecosystem in one of them.

[Segami]

46. Lets pollute the shores of England and see how many ' reparation pounds ' they demand from us.

[spanone]

47. The president assured the public that the $20 billion amount does not represent a "cap"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100616/ts_nm/us_oil_spill

[William Z. Foster]

66. right

That is an argument supporting that we continue to speak out about this, not an argument that we should be happy with anything.

[JoePhilly]

48. So, since nothing can be done ... let's give the 20 Billion back.

I mean, its over, done ....

[William Z. Foster]

69. the depth of this tragedy

Cannot people speak about their grief in peace?

I cannot fathom what motivates people to express ridicule about this.

Who said give the money back? Who said it is even about money, or about partisan politics? Why cannot a person express "it is over" about this? WTF? What possible issue could anyone have with that?

How can there be any controversy about this? Why does every thread where people try to express their shock, grief and horror about this have to have people arguing "the other side?" WTF IS the "other side" anyway?

[Dr Morbius]

50. Yeah, it's chump change, but it's going to keep thousands of Americans afloat.

And chump change is terrific from the perspective of the alternative, which is nothing, nada, zilch.

[tranche]

51. The $20 billion is a fund so that monies can start being paid out immediately.

It is not a cap. This will help families in the short term financially, but no amount of money will ever replace what may be lost.

[Mimosa]

53. ITA, XEMA K&R n/t

[frustrated_lefty]

55. Took a while for people to realize this.

Katrina beat my home like a red-headed step-child. BP gave it the kill shot.

[kenny blankenship]

56. Compare that sum and BP's annual cashflow to the 1.9 million dollar judgment against Jammie Thomas

Flesh and blood person, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, was found guilty of sharing 24 songs on some p2p network. The Recording Industry Association of America as a corporate person sued her and won a judgment of 1.92 million last year. How long would it take her to pay that off? The rest of her natural life would not be enough, most likely. And what is the real market value of the 24 songs? At the going rate of iTunes, 24 dollars. The legal system has said Ms. Thomas-Rasset must pay the RIAA, who write and perform nothing, eighty thousand times what the songs are worth. Now what does BP have to pay? We don't know what the law would say exactly, because BP worked a preemptive deal with the Obama Administration. Probably the law would be lenient with them - see the Exxon Valdez case for details. The original judgment was reduced over the course of appeals to a small fraction. Probably the law will find a way to be lenient to BP, too, as this nightmare unfolds. In any case, 20 billion is not something BP can't pay off, unlike the eighty-thousandfold judgment against Jammie Thomas-Rasset. BP nets that much after taxes in a single year. Corporate person "BP" will not be forced to pay eighty thousand times the value of what they have destroyed. Jammie Thomas-Rasset destroyed nothing by downloading and sharing. What BP have destroyed, however, is beyond price. It would be selling cheap to charge BP a trillion dollars for what they've done.

And if you believe they will end up actually paying out the whole 20 billion escrow amount, you'll believe a big fat dick can sprout wings and fly.

[Fumesucker]

65. Excellent point, thanks for posting .. n/t

[quaker bill]

58. Hysterical a bit?

The damage is bad and the pictures of it worse, but the notion that the "Gulf Coast is dead" rather overstates the case. Nature is a powerful healing force. I do not say this to defend BP, they deserve everything coming their way, and perhaps a bit more. I say this as an actual real life environmental scientist that has done environmental restoration work, in wetlands, for 20+ years, for a living. Yes, there will be bits and pieces that will be horribly damaged and take a decade or more to restore.

However, little else has the natural capacity for productivity and restoration inherent in estuarine marshes. Ecologically, these are one of the easiest environments on the planet to do restoration work in. It is two natural factors of these communities that make the work relatively simple. First, they are highly productive, which means things grow quickly. Second, these communities are adapted to quickly recover from natural perturbation, like hurricanes that move entire islands. Get the oil out, put clean sediments in place at the proper elevations, and mom nature will just about do all the rest.

[kurtzapril4]

62. I have a degree in Natural Areas Management.

Please reveal to me how you get oil out of wetlands? Without trampling them, which will destroy them?

Chemical poisoning is a whole different thing than natural perturbations like hurricanes. Chemical poisoning not only kills the vegetation above the soil, it kills it below the soil, too.

[quaker bill]

81. it is like this

You get it out pretty much the same way you get other industrial waste out of wetlands. There are conferences on the subject of wetlands restoration and have been for decades. I know, because I have presented at them.

The approach I took with PCB oil was to mechanically remove the top layer of contaminated sediment, to the depth required to remove the contaminant. In that case, roughly 6 inches, this material was stockpiled as hazardous waste and then incinerated per EPA protocol. The next process was regrading with native local clean sediments to restore grades to the natural elevations. Then the area was seeded with native seed harvested from undisturbed areas. In 3 years the area was clean and indistinguishable from undisturbed wetlands, both chemically, and ecologically, as confirmed by paired plot vegetation analysis and macro-invertebrate sampling.

I have also done wetlands contamined with several feet of dioxin laced wood pulp waste, explosive residue, several feet of clay slime mine tailings, and some that had been mined without proper permits. Most of these were freshwater systems, which are harder to restore than estuarine systems. The Savanah River Ecological Lab has plenty of papers on the restoration of thermally killed wetlands and areas contaminated with radioactive waste from weapons manufacture during the cold war.

Trampling does not destroy wetlands, they are really not that delicate.

[mike_c]

84. see #28 re: ecologicial restoration vs physical restoration....

I agree, salt marshes are highly resilient, but as I'm sure you're aware, the oil is motile and a difficult substance to remove. Its chemical effects are long lasting.

Most of my experience is in freshwater streams, but I've seen lots of "restored" streams that looked marvelous, but which were on biological trajectories FAR from those of reference drainages. That's not full restoration, IMO. It's green wash.

[XemaSab]

74. I am also a wetlands scientist

and I deeply suspect this is the last bullet in the head of Ol' Yeller.

I think getting the oil and toxins out will be impossible, and clean sediments will be hard to come by.

The thing that makes this exceptionally damaging is that these wetlands are in a long-term pattern of loss, so even if we put clean sediments in, anchoring them down will necessitate a reworking of the entire ecosystem.

I think leaving the coast alone would probably be a better option than trying to restore it with bulldozers.

Most restoration projects that I have seen are merely display gardens for public enjoyment, and unless there is an easy fix (such as the de-channelization of the rivers in Iraq) I think the wetlands there are screwed. But I would be happy to be proven wrong.

[quaker bill]

82. Relatively clean sediments

are coming down the Mississippi in massive quantites every day. The only reason these wetlands are in decline is because they have been robbed of the natural input of sediments through really poor engineering. ACOE water management projects created prior to the National Environmental Policy Act have a tendency to destroy wetlands. The agency I work for was formed to take one of these apart and in the process we have restored 250,000 acres of wetlands to the headwaters of a riverine system. Until the everglades project was undertaken, we had the largest environmental restoration project on the planet. Yes, bulldozers were used.

[XemaSab]

85. Those sediments are desperately needed in the delta

They're not free for the taking.

[bvar22]

60. I will give this a K&R despite an error.

Obama DID say this was only a start.
.
.
NOW, that aside,
I have the creepy feeling that the entire $20 Billion is just a bit of
Magician's Misdirection....just like the mythological Public Option that was NEVER going to be.
Something to keep the peasants distracted while the bailout is put in place.

"Watch THIS hand"...while I steal your wallet with the other!

Forgive my cynicism, but it has been earned...piece by piece.
You see, I have been watching the "Centrist" Democrats at work for far too long.



"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans."---Paul Wellstone



"By their works you will know them."

NOTE: There is no such thing as a "Free Market".
There is no such thing as "Free Trade".
There is NO Giant "Invisible Hand" that magically reaches down and "corrects" Free Markets.
The Ownership Class made that shit up and sold it to a gullible America.

ANY politician, Democrat or Republican, who professes belief in the "Free Market" or the "Invisible Hand" is NOT your friend if you Work for a Living.

On Edit:
I was born in New Orleans in 1950, and spent the first 45 years of my life in the swamps, salt marshes, and bayous of Coastal Louisiana and Mississippi.
This was a Man Made Disaster spawned by GREED. The Republicans and their friends the "Centrist" Democrats conspired to produce the "deregulation" responsible for both the Wall Street crisis an now this.

[Mimosa]

61. BVar you ARE like your avatar.

I totally agree:

"NOW, that aside,
I have the creepy feeling that the entire $20 Billion is just a bit of
Magician's Misdirection....just like the mythological Public Option that was NEVER going to be.
Something to keep the peasants distracted while the bailout is put in place.

"Watch THIS hand"...while I steal your wallet with the other!

Forgive my cynicism, but it has been earned...piece by piece.
You see, I have been watching the "Centrist" Democrats at work for far too long."

Some yammer about 'incrementalism'. I just don't buy it, and I'm not going to live long enough to see it if it were for real. But it's not.

[XemaSab]

75. Well put

:)

[Dover]

63. We're going to have to devise a new way to measure loss...

unless they actually use greenbacks to mop up the mess, is there any
amount of money to compensate for this disaster?

[IOKIYAL]

67. What Part Of No Caps Do You Not Get?

that amount does not trump individual or states rights/laws regarding liability/law suits and the oil company is still separately paying for the oil clean up.

[WeDidIt]

68. I KNEW some DUer would complain about this

A president accomplishes that which has never been accomplished in the history of the United States of America and I knew beyond any doubt a DUer would find some way to complain about it.

:eyes:

[Empathic_1]

70. No doubt you would chime in to chastise them.

:eyes: :eyes:

[XemaSab]

77. You and mammon have a nice life together, ok?

n/t

[Mojeoux]

73. Total Agreement! n/t

[Odin2005]

78. This is our Dust Bowl and they will be our Okies.

:(

[Art_from_Ark]

79. K&R

Ever since I was 14 or so, I had a fear of a huge environmental catastrophe, because of what I saw of the people around me, who seemed to be hell-bent on destroying the only place they could call home...
Damn, this is just so awful.

[jgraz]

80. $4300 /barrel -- don't forget that

And let's not let the White House forget it either. BP can set up their $20 billion, then we take them apart.

[treestar]

86. Stop with the hyperbole

Do you think oil spills have never occurred before? Then there should be other "dead" coasts, whatever that means.

[Mimosa]

87. It's not hyperbole

There was never a spill a huge as this. And it may well poison all of the Gulf of Mexico and render whatever creatures which may be restored into it unfit for human consumption. The oil residues will remain in the marshes and estuaries for decades.

The seafood, oil and tourism industries are the main support for at least couple of million people along the Gulf Coast.

I suspect Odin is right:

"This is our Dust Bowl and they will be our Okies."

Many people will move inland. One thing I don't think many people realise is how many Vietnamese-Americans have been involved in the Gulf seafood industry since they came to the US in the 1970s. They -like myself and many Louisianians- took a huge blow with Katrina. But that was a natural disaster. They were fast to get their boats back in the waters and fast to rebuild their homes, mostly without waiting for help from the government. But what shall they do now?

The government needs to quit subsidising outsourcing of jobs. There will need to be some replacement industry investment in Gulf Coast areas.