The oil and gas rush out of the pipe: a force we believed we could master.
The oil explodes into droplets, then reforms into gobs, then into droplets once again.
The oil rushes, then relaxes, and begins to move lazily in the currents. The lightest oil rises to the surface, forming a sheen that glistens in the sun. The heavier oil rises, or falls, or is swirled like heavy cream.
Deep down, the ocean layers move in patterns we cannot see, and do not know, intermixing, carrying the oil inward and outward, forward and back, now diffusing, now coalescing, the soft light of the sun barely reaching the layers on layers of temperature gradients.
The oil rushes on, and the borderless fish, and krill, and fingerlings, and shrimp, and algae, and plankton, and the sharks, and the whales, and the manatee don't understand, nor can they.
The clams, and the coral, and the starfish don't understand.
The darkened marsh grasses, and the black-matted herons and turtles and frogs, they don't understand either -- nor do the microbes and worms and larvae living in the rich muck of the wetlands.
The ocean doesn't care -- it just circulates. The mindless gusher doesn't care -- it just gushes on.
The oil industry doesn't care -- it just keeps on exploring for more offshore oil.
The economic system doesn't care -- though soon it will. It just keeps thinking it can grow forever, and that Nature will give us what we want, forever, endlessly forgiving, endlessly resilient.
Nature does not forgive, nor does she conquer, or vanquish, or master -- Nature simply adapts to what's given, and is never impatient. Resilient, yes, but only over spans of time we cannot understand.
We who hurry, we who are impatient, we who believe we are Masters to Nature, we are as small as the microbe to her. To Nature, our 10,000 years on this earth is just another eruption, another pimple, perhaps a scraped knee.
Nature doesn't understand, nor care. Losing the Gulf wetlands matters not a bit to her. There are wetlands everywhere, and over hundreds or thousands or millions of years, they will all become as lush with life as the bayous are now.
Even if the gusher continues for two months or two decades, Nature won't care.
But we, who are so small -- we who have convinced ourselves we can control things we barely understand -- we will care. We will suffer the suffocation of oil, the extinguishing of life, the collapse of the coastal biospheres. We will live with the consequences of our hubris.
The Gulf of Mexico may be lost to us for our lifetimes, and that of our our grandchildren. The consequences are so huge as to be nearly incomprehensible, and disbelieved. The end of commercial and sport fishing, of oceanside tourism, of viable local economies, of coastal quality of life, in state after state. The death of whole fisheries, wetland habitats, small coastal towns, flocks of birds. The death of the unique beauty of this grass marsh, that coral reef, those island sanctuaries.
All because we allowed ourselves to believe that riches are wealth, that money is power, and that we controlled the world. We allowed ourselves to believe that we were Masters of all we survey, and could do with it as we wanted.
We have taken the bounty of millions of years -- the oil, the coal, the natural gas, the forests, the topsoil, the aquifers, the biodiversity, the temperate climate -- and produced little beyond a desire for more, more.
"Nature has a way of helping the situation," said BP spokesman John Curry.
Yeah. But not because Nature wants to help us.
Nature just gets on with it, on her own timetable.
Nature's not in any kind of hurry.
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Can we use the Gulf catastrophe to rethink our economy, our society, our actions, and ourselves?
If we don't, we will deserve no better than what we get, and our memory will be forever haunted by the spectres of lost true riches: all we have squandered, suffocated, contaminated, and abused.
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Update: I fear my worst fears are being streamed, live: a new eruption may be opening up down there.