The only piece of human technology that might address this is a nuclear bomb. I'm not kidding. If they put a nuke down there in the right spot it might seal up the hole. Nothing short of that will work. If we can't cap that hole that oil is going to destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?
These statements may well be nothing more than hyper-exaggerated fear mongering, but it is more than enough to give one pause. The problem is happening thousands of feet below the surface of the sea, and stopping the spill is apparently going to take a spectacular feat of engineering. Until it happens, the spill will continue to spread, and an already battered Gulf region is going to take yet another savage pounding.
You have to figure President Obama is kicking himself, and his advisers, for making that ill-timed announcement about opening up offshore oil drilling. To his credit, he has put that little project on hold, and given the magnitude of this Gulf disaster, it seems safe to say we won't be seeing any new rigs appearing on the horizon anytime soon. If Noel is correct in his assessment, however, it won't matter one way or the other.
A third event took place in my own back yard this weekend that was not nearly as severe as a car bomb or an unchecked oil spill, but it chilled me to the bone nonetheless, and got me thinking long and hard about New York and the Gulf and the state of the nation itself. A few miles west of my home, a massive aqueduct broke and wiped out the water supply for two million people in the greater Boston area. The news was covered with warnings to boil water before drinking or preparing food. My wife and I have been doing exactly that, and we have had all the water we need.
A day after the water main break, however, the news became filled with stories of a darker nature. Apparently, people all over the city were getting into brawls in supermarkets trying to buy bottled water. I saw it myself at a Stop & Shop on Sunday afternoon when I went in to by paper towels; the place was stuffed with hyper-aggressive, panicky people pushing and shoving each other over bottled water they didn't really need to buy. They assumedly all had stoves and pots and taps and refrigerators in their homes, but instead, they dove into riot status and made a bad situation significantly worse.
It was sickening to behold, and says many things about our national character that are deeply uncomfortable to contemplate. An unknown person filled with hate tried to blow up Times Square. A shabbily-run oil rig might literally kill us all. A water crisis turned ordinary people into greedy, pushy animals right before my eyes.
The center cannot hold.
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