Deepwater Horizon

The name Deepwater Horizon will go down in environment history. It’s been 8 days since an explosion sank the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. First estimates were 1,135,600 litres of crude oil released into the water – every day. That’s 79,492,00 litres a week so even more than that is now floating in the sea and starting to come ashore on the Louisiana coast.  There are two tragedies here, the loss of 11 lives and the environmental disaster when this amount of oil is leaking from 1,500m below the water’s surface, making it impossible to reach.  The effects on the environment  and on wildlife  can only be estimated, based on previous experiences, and this disaster looks likely to be even greater. How many wake-up calls do the multinational oil companies like BP need before accepting that the harm they are doing to the planet will always ultimately outweigh the benefits they provide.