Some days ago, a front-page diary on DailyKOS held a contest to name the oil gusher in the Gulf. I didn't care for any of the choices, but I wasn't quick enough to come up with this obvious entry: The Oil Age Hemorrhage.
There is a story behind this entry. In 1998, I had the privilege of hosting Berito Kuwaru’wa, chief of the U’wa Tribe from the cloud forests of Colombia, en route to his interview with the Goldman Foundation. Berito went on to win the Goldman Environmental Prize that year. http://www.goldmanprize.org/...
The U’wa then opposed oil drilling by Occidental Petroleum on their land, because they regarded underground oil as the literal blood of the living Lower World.
Drilling into those veins would be "matricide" according to the U'wa -– not because of some vague concept of "Mother Earth," as the belief has been misinterpreted, but because our literal ancestors have migrated to the Upper and Lower Worlds. Drilling an artificial hole between hemispheres could cause a cataclysmic hemorrhage between dimensions, they asserted.
The executives at Occidental didn't quite go along.
Obviously, the U'wa were prophetic, and to honor their continuing struggle, we should call the BP disaster in the Gulf the Oil Age Hemorrhage.