Naomi Klein: Gulf oil spill: A hole in the world

Obama cannot order pelicans not to die (no matter whose ass he kicks). And no amount of money not BP's $20bn, not $100bn can replace aculture that's lost its roots.

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Forging his way through the predictable UK media censorship: Dr Andrew Wakefield Responds to Measles Outbreak in Swansea
Obama cannot order pelicans not to die (no matter whose ass he kicks). And no amount of money not BP's $20bn, not $100bn can replace aculture that's lost its roots.
More often than not, the consequences of public policies, good or bad, are felt many years after they have been taken. The 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a good example. This disaster is, to a large extent, a consequence of the Bush-Cheney energy policy of 2001 and later.
There's no getting around it: President Barack Obama's speech on the BP oil disaster was an overwhelming disappointment. Despite confirming support for stronger regulation of offshore drilling and developing a national clean energy agenda, Obama failed to offer any policies to actually prevent the kind of catastrophe currently playing out on the Gulf, and refused to coalesce around any specific measures to wean the United States off of fossil fuels.
In a letter sent Sunday to U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral James Watson, BP said it expects to have the capacity to capture between 40,000 and 53,000 barrels of oil a day by the end of June. That compares with 15,000 barrels a day now, out of a flow of 20,000 to 40,000 barrels scientists estimate are coming from the well.
The Obama Administration and senior BP officials are frantically working not to stop the world’s worst oil disaster, but to hide the true extent of the actual ecological catastrophe. Senior researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive steps are undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy.