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Antonia Juhasz's new book Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill explores the devastating impact of the disaster at the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico.

An interview with Antonia Juhasz about the book is here

A video of Antonia Juhasz talking about the Deepwater explosion and her book is here.

Carl Safina on the catastrophic consequences of the Deepwater Horizon disaster

 A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout  by Carl Safina

Twelve months after the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico which resulted from the explosion at the BP's Deepwater Horizon more books are appearing that chronicle the catastrophe and its terrible legacy. Carl Safina is a renowned marine ecologist and expert on the world's oceans.

The extract below is from Douglas Brinkley's* review of Carl Safina's new book on the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe  and the terrible legacy for the planet:

In “A Sea in Flames,” his newest installment, Safina investigates the impact of the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout......

His kinship is with two tribes of people: gulf fishermen and marine biologists. “Crucial mistakes, disastrous consequences, the weakness of power, unpreparedness and overreaction, the quiet dignity of everyday heroes,” he writes. “The 2010 Gulf of Mexico blowout brought more than oil to the surface.”.................

Back in 2008 around 300 exploratory wells were dug in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico. Very few Americans questioned the environmental damage inherent in such activity. “Our everyday use of fossil fuels is changing the atmosphere,” Safina warns, “ruining the world’s oceans.” He garners credibility by being evenhanded. Doing some complicated math, he argues that the mixing of millions of gallons of BP oil with the Gulf’s 660 quadrillion gallons of water allowed the oil to easily dilute. But the carbon dioxide we’re emitting into the atmosphere, he scolds, isn’t being diluted. It’s building up in an extremely toxic way.

Safina suggests that the oceans are Earth’s lungs and they’re smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. Sea water is getting more acidic due to carbon dioxide. This spells dire consequences for oceans, which are losing habitats ranging from glaciers to tropical reefs at an astonishing rate. “Because we’ve bet the house on burning oil, coal, and gas,” he writes, “our atmosphere’s concentration of carbon dioxide is a third higher now than at the start of the Industrial Revolution.” 

At the end of “A Sea in Flames,” Safina is desperate to close the deal against fossil fuels. His previously steady and nuanced prose turns polemical. He reminds us that oil is making undemocratic countries like Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia powerful. Petro dictators, he charges, are stoking anti-Americanism all over the world. If we don’t get behind a Marshall Plan-like program for renewable energy, it seems, China will surpass America as the world’s superpower.

Carbon dioxide, the killer of Earth, can be slain only by consumers who are aware of how hideous oil, coal and gas truly are to the atmosphere and oceans, Safina argues. The smartest way to respond to the Gulf disaster shouldn’t have been cleaning birds or picking up turtles or spraying 1.84 million gallons of Corexit 9500. Instead, an infuriated citizenry should have pulled the subsidies out from under Big Petroleum. Tax the oil conglomerates out of business. It’s still not too late. Better to be, as Safina puts it, “shocked at the pump” than dead in the water. 

* Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history at Rice University. His most recent book is “The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom 1879-1960.”

The deception continues: Obama White House deliberately underestimated the amount of BP oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico

So now we know that the Obama White House intentionally underestimated (lied about) the amount of oil gushing from the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Truth Out reports that the Obama White House prevented Government  scientists from making public their estimates of the worst case scenarios of the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Despite having the  information about the amount of oil gushing from the damaged well, the White House allowed scientists to only use the lower estimates in public and kept hidden from the public the Government's own worst case estimates.

Continuing deception in the Gulf of Mexico by BP and the US Government

images courtesy of Erika Blumfield








Dahr Jamail's reports and Erika Blumenfield's photographs from the Gulf of Mexico continue to provide evidence of the ongoing deception by BP and the US Government about the extent and severity of the disaster in the Gulf. 

BP and the US Government are claiming that the Gulf is free from oil and safe for fishing and swimming.  Jamail and Blumenfield show that evidence from laboratory tests of soil and water from various locations in the Gulf  shows extremely high concentrations of oil in both the soil and water. There continue to be examples of massive fish kills. 

Another rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico

If the Deepwater Rig catastrophe is not bad enough,  news this morning of another rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

The catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico continues

image by Erika Blumfield

If you want to know the truth about what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico follow the groundbreaking reports from journalist Dahr Jamail and photographer Erika Blumfield who have been documenting the catastrophe as it unfolds.

Their most recent report, which can be read here, makes a mockery of claims by the Obama administration and BP that the majority of the oil has been cleaned up and the situation is returning to normal in the Gulf.

Jamail writes:

Thousands of lives along the Gulf Coast are being devastated by this disaster. This is merely the beginning of yet another toxic epoch for the Gulf of Mexico, all the humans that live along the coast, and all the marine life and wildlife that make their homes here.

What have we done? How has it come to this? Where do we go from here?

Cartoon on Tony Hayward's exit from BP

Cartoon from Slovakia on Tony Hayward's exit from the role of CEO of BP with a multi million dollar payout

image courtesy of Truth Dig

Catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico

Artwork Murder in the Gulf by visual artist Sue Coe, Graphic Witness

Mr Fish cartoon

Image courtesy of Mr Fish/Truth Dig

Yes, he did actually say that!!

images courtesy of the Boston Globe

" It turns out by the way that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills. They are technologically very advanced"

US President Barack Obama, on March 31 2010, three weeks before BP's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, announcing that he was permitting the greatest expansion of offshore drilling in half a century.

Criminalize corporations not civil society

It is telling to compare the way the US Government uses the full force of the law against civil society groups and whistle-blowers who try to hold it and corporations to account, with its complete inaction against recidivist corporate criminals such as BP who in their reckless disregard are responsible for the deaths of workers and the destruction of ecosystems, environments, livelihoods, and industries in the Gulf of Mexico.

The US government has arrested and imprisoned, without trial, a whistle blower who leaked to WikiLeaks a video showing US forces murdering 100 people, mainly children, in Garani Afghanistan. The video, which showed a US army helicopter gunning down civilians, was released by WikiLeaks early this year and caused outrage around the world. The soldier who is alleged to have released the video has been arrested and detained in an US army prison in Kuwait. The Australian founder of WikiLeaks has been forced to leave the US and go into hiding in response to a "manhunt" by the US government keen to arrest and prosecute him.

WikiLeaks collects and publishes evidence of human rights abuse and illegality by governments and corporations.

But when it comes to recidivist corporate criminals such as BP, Massey Energy or Goldman Sachs there is tough talk about criminal charges but little action. There is no serious attempt by governments to hold corporations, corporate executives, and shareholders personally and criminally responsible for the company's crimes. Laws are rarely used or enforced against corporations and the responsible individuals. And if charges are laid they are usually against low level functionaries and, as in the case of the corporate killings by Union Carbide in Bhopal, it takes 25 years before anyone is legally held to account.

Robert Koehler on the crises of civilization

The American journalist Robert Koehler has written a searing and heartfelt essay on the ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and its deeper political and corporate antecedents. As Koehler points out the villains are many, primarily BP and the other corporate and government institutions and leaders.

However, we in the developed world are all implicated. As Koehler points out, this is a crises of civilization, bought on by a corporate economic system built on exploitation of the planet, endless growth and dependence on oil. And we all are part of that system and we must all act now to reverse the destruction.

And let's not forget that the same corporate driven economic system is responsible for more serious ecological disasters away from the prying eyes of the Western media (Earlier pieces on this blog highlighted the environmental catastrophes unfolding in the Niger Delta and in China).

Extracts from Koehler's piece are below and the complete article can be read here.

First Do No Harm

by Robert Koehler, Huffington Post

As Planet Earth continues to hemorrhage crude oil from its wound -- with a worst-case estimate of as much as 100,000 barrels a day -- we grope, beyond our anger and guilt, simply to imagine what damage we have done in the pursuit of human empowerment.

This is bigger than BP, blameworthy though the company may be. This is bigger than any sort of "us vs. them" scenario we can think of. It's a crisis of civilization, which means all of us.

If we drive, use energy, buy products wrapped in absurd, throwaway plastic -- if we live at all -- it cuts across our lives. The roots of this disaster, and, God help us, the ones to come, are political and corporate and governmental, and they are also intensely personal. We all collude in society's "addiction" to oil, or what I would call its sense of entitlement: This is our planet. We're the boss.

What we're truly addicted to, or at least inextricably caught up in, is what my friend Jim Oberg calls "doomsday capitalism" and its need for reckless, unlimited economic growth. With this system operative, we trend toward war, empire and exploitation.

Maybe, as we look at the graphics of this disaster -- pelicans, for instance, covered in black goo -- we begin to grasp our immaturity as a species. Let's say we do survive ourselves and create a sustainable, eco-harmonious way to live and prosper: what we're presently churning up in our clumsiness and techno-entitlement is a warning to the future of how not to be. We're scaring up a whole new mythology, and new definitions of sacrilege.

I know nowhere to start except here. And I know of nothing less to reach for than... salvation.

I use this language not to promote existing religions, which far too often collude in the problem, but to reach deep into the human core, into the raw material of existence, to find new commonality with one another and to discover new -- or perhaps I mean to rediscover ancient, uncompromised and uncorrupted -- principles to live by.

The rebuilding of human society cannot be superficial. It must begin with a realization that those in power mostly have no idea what they're doing; they operate with crippling short-sightedness, in a context of eerily limited self-interest.. .......

Knowledge that this is the case leads either to despair and cynicism or translates into a deeper, more profound sense of personal responsibility. I opt for the latter, understanding that present-day U.S. democracy is comfortable with a spectator citizenry: entertained, isolated and disengaged. We don't pursue the sort of awareness that would propel us into troubled discontent, and we're not supposed to. But it's our only choice. And while this sort of awareness doesn't translate into easy or obvious action, maybe that's OK.

First, do no harm.

What if that phrase, which is the byword of many professions, became a sort of operating principle with which to proceed, individually and collectively, into the future? Even if it's an impossible standard, wouldn't we be far better off attempting to live by its implications, or at least reflecting on them and debating them, than by mockingly dismissing them?

Our most destructive enterprises all depend on moral relativism and a suspension of this value, allegedly in service to a greater good, which generally fails to materialize. I submit that the "greater good" argument is a convenient scam, pulled out of a hat time and again by those intent on gaming the system for limited, self-serving ends.

Yet it springs eternal -- certainly as the ultimate argument for war, but also for anything that might generate a profit.

..........The crisis is upon us. Our paradoxes have come home to roost, and they're covered with oil.

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.)

© 2010 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

Mr Fish on the evil of BP and our dependence on big oil

image courtesy of Mr Fish and Truth Dig

Such a profound cartoon by my favourite American cartoonist Mr Fish

The sounds of the Earth crying

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

These shocking and distressing photos are from a series of photos in the Boston Globe that show birds affected by oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

The New York Times also has a remarkable photo gallery of images of the unfolding catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

When I see these images I am reminded of the comments of the Vietnamese Buddhist peace activist, poet and philosopher Thich Nhat Nanh who was asked "what do we most need to do to save the world?". His reply "What we most need to do is to hear within us the sounds of the Earth crying".

All these photos are absolutely heartbreaking. A shocking reminder of the evils of the "corporate economy" and the fossil fuel industry. But these disasters are neither accidents nor uncommon. They are a natural consequence of the way the industry operates.

Nor should we forget that other oil companies cause similar ecological catastrophes in other parts of the world, away from the prying eyes of the Western media. In Nigeria's oil rich Niger Delta the oil company Shell has leaked an estimated 9 million to 13 million barrels (or 1.5 million tons) into the ecosystem over the past 5 decades. This is equivalent to an Exxon Valdez spill in the Niger Delta each year. Daily blowouts devastate livelihoods, destroy environments and contaminate drinking water.

I am currently reading the book Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta which shows the catastrophic devastation caused by Shell and the oil industry in the Niger Delta.

Then is of course there is Chevron, the darling of the Western Australian government for its Gorgon Project, who faces a $27 billion dollar liability for environmental damage caused by Texaco a company Chevron acquired in 2001. Texaco has admitted to dumping and spilling billions of gallons of toxic waster and oil in eastern Ecuador Amazon rainforest between 1964 and 1990.

And here in Western Australia we await the release of the Report into the Inquiry into the 2009 Montara West Atlas Oil Spill off the Kimberley Coast that caused such environmental devastation in the Timor Sea and destroyed ecosystems, marine life and the livelihoods of Indonesian fisherman. We also had the explosion on Varanus Island which caused such economic and environmental damage. Even the pro mining and resources industry newspaper The West Australian carried a report in its weekend edition about the likelihood of massive oil spill off the West Australian coast. After all the West Australian coast is littered with offshore oil , petroleum and gas drilling facilities.

I was talking to someone on Friday who works in the resources industry about the spill in the Gulf of Mexico . He said " We have rigs up and down our coastline. What if that happened here" A very good question!!

Worse!! What could be worse in the Gulf of Mexico

image from the NCAR computer model of the flow of the Deepwater Horizon oil from an article in Common Dreams

News about the environmental crime occurring in the Gulf goes from "catastrophic" to "even more catastrophic".

Let's be clear here. This is no "spill" or accident. It is criminal conduct, the inevitable result of a series of of deliberate decisions by a serial recidivist corporate criminal with a long history of criminal convictions.

This is one of the most radically destructive acts of corporate criminality in history. A catastrophe of such proportions in one of the most productive eco- systems on Earth, including America's most bounteous seafood region.

The US Government is planning to initiate criminal and civil proceedings against BP but don't hold your breath. Remember that criminal charges were filed against Exxon in the Exxon Valdez disaster but nothing happened. The corporation simply dragged it out for over two decades of appeals and delays and eventually was fined a pittance.

Exxon were only prosecuted for minor offices and the lawyer who ran the case against Exxon Valdez holds little hope for prosecution of BP. He said that criminal prosecution in such cases is almost non-existent He is quoted in a recent interview that appears in the Corporate Crime Reporter.

“Exxon pled guilty to some minor violations – the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Clean Water Act, a couple of other things – but they were minor,”

“The federal government and the state of Alaska settled the claims against Exxon for a relatively modest amount because they didn’t think they could go to war against Exxon.It would have been too expensive, too time and personnel consuming.”

“I don’t think that there is ever going to be a strong federal or state criminal presence in any of these oil spill cases.”

“Oil is strategically too important. Oil trumps fishing. Oil trumps safety. And that’s just a fact of life.”

“The cozy relationship between the big oil companies and the federal government and many of the states is pretty much the same whether it is Republicans or Democrats.”

Already BP, Halliburton and the other responsible corporations are lining up their legal teams to delay, obfuscate and obstruct the investigations. BP and Halliburton are also using their political and financial power in Washington to to stymie investigations into their actions. BP has also hired a press secretary to former Vice President Dick Cheney to head its PR efforts.

Despite all sorts of promises and claims BP has failed to stem the gushing of oil. There are predictions that the oil will continue to gush from the BP's Deepwater Horizon rig until December- yes for another 6 months.

Hurricane season has started and forecasters are predicting an unusually high number of storms over coming months. The result will be to disperse the oil over a wider area and push it deeper into highly sensitive marshlands and inland areas, making the environmental catastrophe even worse.

Computer modelling from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research is predicting that oil from the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico is likely to extend along thousands of miles of the Atlantic coast and into the open ocean as early as this summer (as shown in this computer model).

BP , with the aid of the US coast guard, is also blocking efforts by journalists and photographers to document and photograph the effects of the catastrophe

I reported in an earlier piece the views of Michael Klare that this has become the greatest ecological disaster in human history. This is the world foisted on us by fossil fuel corporations.

The greatest ecological disaster in human history

"....whether or not the immediate trigger of the explosion is ever fully determined, there can be no mistaking the underlying cause: a government-backed corporate drive to exploit oil and natural gas reserves in extreme environments under increasingly hazardous operating conditions........ To ensure a continued supply of hydrocarbons—and the continued prosperity of the giant energy companies—successive administrations have promoted the exploitation of these extreme energy options with a striking disregard for the resulting dangers"
Michael Klare, The Relentless Pursuit of Extreme Energy

Writing in the Nation Michael Klare believes that the catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico from BP's leaking oil rig is likely to be the greatest ecological disaster in human history. Michael Klare*, who is Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, is one of the world's leading analysts of global energy and resource politics.

Although BP continues to minimize the amount of oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon rig, Klare estimates that the amount of oil spilt is equivalent to an Exxon Valdez spill every 4 days. The destruction is catastrophic and probably irreparable.

The Gulf seafood industry, which provides much of the seafood consumed in the US, has been destroyed, perhaps forever. The oil has poisoned the water of the Gulf, depriving it of oxygen and killing entire classes of marine species and living creatures. Whole marine and coastal landscapes have been destroyed, likely to never recover.

Klare identifies a host of actors who bear responsibility. BP is the ultimate villain. BP, whose environmental and safety record is appalling, has used its financial and political power to protect itself from regulatory oversight. It has bought off political and regulatory bodies and avoided all forms of accountability and scrutiny. Its response to the spill has been inept.

Various contractors- Halliburton, Transocean, Cameron International- as well as government instrumentalities such as the USA Minerals Management Service, have all breached legislative and regulatory requirements

Ultimately though Klare argues, responsibility for the catastrophe lies with the Bush and Obama administrations. Klare writes

"...there can be no mistaking the underlying cause: a government-backed corporate drive to exploit oil and natural gas reserves in extreme environments under increasingly hazardous operating conditions"

Klare believes that the world has entered an even more dangerous period where disasters like this one will occur more frequently and will be more destructive. Klare argues that as long as the major resources and energy firms continue to rest future profits on exploring and drilling in ever-deeper waters and more risky locations—and governments collude with them in this—more catastrophes are inevitable. Worse, the oil and energy companies do not have the existing technologies to respond adequately to the new challenges.

*Michael Klare's latest book is Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy

Disasters wrought by "deregulation"

image courtesy of Stuart Carlson/Carlsontoons.com

A fervor for de- regulation has been the catch cry of conservative politicians and corporate and business elites in the US and Australia for three decades. This cartoon tells of disasters wrought by the deregulation fervor.

Thanks to the website No Caption Needed where I first saw the image.