Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
You’ll notice I haven’t said much about the little problem BP (spelled Beyond Prosecution) caused in the Gulf.
I haven’t because it’s some pretty unsettling stuff. But I suppose now is as good a time as any, so here goes.
First of all, I don’t think we’re being told what’s really happening down deep. Aside from the same recycled gusher video we’ve all become familiar with and a few stock images of idle fishing fleets, you don’t really see much footage from the Gulf itself.
Which isn’t surprising, because people who take cameras down to the beach are being met with implacable ‘security’ types who seem to have forgotten a few things about Freedom of the Press and a long-standing tradition of Americans being able to take photos of land, sea, and sky pretty much at will on American soil.
The networks have even run afoul of BP’s strangehold on media in the affected areas. I’m not really sure when the Coast Guard started getting their pay from BP (spelled Billion Pollutants), but that’s certainly what it looks like.
Next, there’s all the news about hydrogen sulfide and the equally amusing VOC (volatile organic chemical) benzene. Both are deadly in small concentrations. Both are being spewed from the leak in quantities that are potentially more dangerous that the crude itself. But of course you know that, since it’s been all over the news.
Oh? It hasn’t?
Bit of a shock, that. All we heard for months last winter was how H1N1 was poised to strike us down like wobbly dominoes, unless we were vaccinated now, now, now! You’d have thought corpses were being stacked head-high along the streets, such was the panic in the news stories. Even when people resolutely failed to die in droves from the virus, it was called ‘pandemic,’ right up until the term became a joke and coverage of it finally faded after a surly ‘Yeah, but next year, it’ll kill millions, you’ll see!’
But now we’ve got millions of cubic liters of absolutely deadly organics pouring from a hole in the seafloor, and in the way of hard-hitting journalism we get blow by blows of World Cup soccer?
The benzene really scares me. It doesn’t kill you all once. You might get a headache, feel a little nausea. Maybe you go to bed a little early, take a couple of aspirin. Then you get better.
Until you die a couple of years later from half a dozen simultaneous cancers. Yeah. It’s that nasty.
Benzene gas is heavier than air. It’s colorless. Odorless. And it settles in low areas, such as, let’s see, what’s a major population area on the Louisiana coast located in an area of low elevation? Ring any bells?
New Orleans just can’t catch a break.
My sources claim the pressure at the ruptured wellhead may be in excess of 75,000 PSI. Which means BP isn’t going to cap it, today or tomorrow or next month. Even if they did cap it, at those pressures, there is already evidence (denied by BP) that crude is beginning to burst from the seafloor.
Which means it’s officially unstoppable. Dropping oddly-shaped concrete hats onto holes in the Earth isn’t going to do anything but waste concrete. My own solution to this crisis, which I’m sure would work, unfortunately requires the participation of the Justice League and the X-Men, and is thus difficult to implement – and it’s STILL a better plan than anything BP (spelled Big Problem) has conceived. Golf balls? Shredded tires? Really? Were tapioca and yarn next on the freaking list?
Benzene. Hydrogen sulfide. Crude oil. Dozens of other toxins, maybe a billion barrels worth. Maybe more.
See why I haven’t mentioned this?
I’m not touching seafood right now. The dispersal agents might as well be labeled ‘CANCER,’ right on the containers. In most countries, in fact, they are – but here in the US of A, where BP (spelled Benzene Please) executives have close ties to the corporate giants that make the dispersal agents, they’re not only safe and effective but tasty and less filling.
As long as I’m engaging in nut-case fringe speculation, I’ll go out on a limb and predict an evacuation of parts of the Gulf within six months. And despite the sunshine and rainbows picture being painted by the current administration, which today said the Gulf would emerge from this ‘cleaner than before,’ I’ll wager the Gulf of Mexico is going to have more in common with the Dead Sea than the Caribbean before winter.
Sorry to be so gloomy. But there are enough people trying to put a happy spin on the worst ecological disaster since – sheesh, I can’t think of one to even use as a comparison. Chernobyl, maybe, though frankly I think it’s small potatoes compared to what we’ll see in the next several months.
But let me not forget the real tragedy in all this, which isn’t the loss of sea life, or the destruction of the Gulf, or the wreckage of thousands of livelihoods on the Coast. No, let’s not forget poor BP chief Tony Hayward, who hasn’t enjoyed a decent game of polo since this whole mess started.
Chin up, Tony. Your troubles will all be over once all the crude is floating atop the Gulf, ready to be sucked up and refined without all that expensive drilling.
Who needed sea turtles anyway?