The Miami Herald is reporting that oil is washing ashore. This is very bad news for residents of the Gulf Coast and for all the people who love to visit its beautiful white beaches. Its even worse news for the animals and ecosystems along the Gulf Coast and it estuaries.
Oil starts washing ashore on Gulf Coast
WASHINGTON -- With crude oil washing up Thursday night on the Gulf Coast, President Barack Obama stepped up federal efforts to help clean up the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, putting the Department of Defense at the ready and dispatching three Cabinet officers to the scene.
Among its other potential victims, the disaster threatens Obama's plan to expand offshore drilling in the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico and north Alaska, and complicates prospects for any climate change legislation that relies on a deal between advocates of more domestic oil and gas production and those who want to limit greenhouse-gas emissions.
Ironic that an oil spill could upset the horse trading necessary to cobble together a coalition to pass the Climate Bill. While most Republicans will cling to their drill baby drill meme, Republicans from the Gulf Coast
are likely to downplay their support for offshore drilling.
This comes from the Telegraph UK:
Oil slick threatens eco-disaster
A vast oil slick threatening the US coast in the Gulf of Mexico could prove to be the worst offshore spill in history, experts warned on Thursday.
When a failure of technological system threatens a disastrous result its usually prudent to put a back up system in place to insure avoiding that disastrous result. We build back up systems into a lot of the technology we rely on, with examples ranging from Nuclear Reactors and Airliners down to back up hard drives on our PCs and emergency brakes on our cars. Yet there was no back up system for the Deepwater Horizon's subsea Blowout Preventer, a system designed to cut off the flow of oil in case of an accident. Why the Hell Not?