{"id":579525,"date":"2010-05-26T12:27:01","date_gmt":"2010-05-26T16:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/climateprogress.org\/?p=26076"},"modified":"2010-05-26T12:27:01","modified_gmt":"2010-05-26T16:27:01","slug":"will-eco-disasters-destroy-obama%e2%80%99s-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/579525","title":{"rendered":"Will eco-disasters destroy Obama\u2019s legacy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"That’s the headline of my new piece in Salon (click here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The president is in now in genuine political trouble over the BP disaster, some of his own making, some not.<\/p>\n

Here are my thoughts — as always, I’d love to hear yours:<\/p>\n

<\/span>The truth is that there’s not much more that President Obama can do to stop the eco-disaster now hitting the Gulf of Mexico. But his response to our fossil fuel-driven crises — so far — can still be deemed grossly inadequate.<\/p>\n

That’s because the Gulf spill is actually one of two environmental catastrophes now unfolding, and Obama doesn\u2019t seem to understand how they are related.<\/p>\n

The milder but more imminent of the two is the BP disaster. It’s now clear that the Gulf Coast will be ravaged, that the impact will be felt for at least a generation, and that we will probably be testing seafood from the area for decades. If the Loop Current entrains a significant amount of the oil and dispersants to the Florida Keys, America’s great coral reef might suffer irreparable damage.<\/p>\n

Most of the blame rests with BP — and with Big Oil’s powerful supporters in Congress, who have created the voluntary, “trust us” self-regulation we now have. Some of the blame also resides with the Minerals Management Service, which became absurdly cozy with the industry under the Cheney-Bush administration.<\/p>\n

Because BP and Big Oil deluded themselves (and everyone else) into believing that such a disaster was unthinkable, nobody was prepared for it. The Rube Goldberg contraptions that BP is slapping together now is proof of this. If a single major oil company had thought that any of BP’s jury-rigged solutions made sense, they would have pre-built and prepositioned them a long time ago.<\/p>\n

With its reckless cost- and corner-cutting and efforts to hide the magnitude of the gusher, BP has proven itself completely untrustworthy. As millions of gallons of oil and hundreds of thousand of gallons of dispersants cause their inevitable damage to sensitive coastal wetlands, fish, fowl and wildlife, frustration will boil over, a process that has already begun.<\/p>\n

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