“Waiting for Miracle to Come”

Finally, on April 30^th, ten days after the burning and sinking of the BP oil rig in the Gulf Coast, the wire and news streams are ratcheting up the coverage of what will no doubt prove to be a singularly major man-made environmental disaster.  I, for one, have been freaking out about it since I heard that no one was able to shut off the oil tap under the sea. 

I’m no engineer; I’m just a stupid artist.  I work with my hands and I visualize.  And all I’ve been visualizing for a week now, has been black, putrid and dead, while all along the media has been wasting time bloviating about Goldman Sachs and immigration: purely social human constructs; one manufactured to foment populist sentiment, and the other which we bring out periodically to... god knows why we do it, since we are not interested in coming up with any real solutions to the problem... We showcase immigration issues when some politician or another is trying to woo one constituency or another... All this prattle for ten days while the physical world around us, the one I touch with my hands (and feet, and face, and yeah, soul) is about to change radically.  Thousands of animals and plants, together with very human ways of life and living are facing certain annihilation due to unnatural causes... assuming of course that human greed and short-sightedness are unnatural... which of course they are not...

Short sighted Petroleum enthusiasts keep clamoring for more “drill drill drill” when all I see coming down the pike (no pun intended) is more “spill spill spill”.   These same people advocate for the use of oil because of its physical properties (it is an extremely efficient source of energy) and “low” cost  of production.  Me, I’m no accountant and I have no actuarial skills.  Again, I’m just a stupid artist, but I know we are not pricing this stuff correctly.  What is the value of a whole coast line?!  Even given only an infinitesimally small probability of an unstoppable oil spill...   I guess this is the sticky point (again, no pun intended), value is a hard thing to nail down...  But what’s the point of having a gas-powered economy if the environment in which one can cheaply drive one’s gas-powered vehicle is not worth traveling through.  We need to diversify our energy sources; but we’re not going to.  We’ll forget this disaster too...