The BP Oil Spill Disaster: A One-Act Play (Or “Coast of Dystopia”)

Maybe you’ve heard about this minor “Whoopsie” that happened off the Gulf of Mexico, wherein an offshore oil rig owned by BP leaked, and kept leaking, and kept leaking, and is still leaking. And is still leaking. And is still leaking. And its spill is now the size of Connecticut. And is still leaking. Here’s what’s happening:

The following video comes from Al Jazeera English, and more people would probably watch it if it began with the words PREVIOUSLY, ON LOST:

[Mind you, we’re already past the “robot submarine” phase, which was described as “like doing open-heart surgery at 5,000 feet, in the dark, with robot-controlled submarines” by the president of BP America, Lamar McKay.]

Enter the players on stage..

President Barack Obama: Assholes! This one is all on you. Pay for that shit and get it cleaned up.

BP: What, us? It’s only our oil, it’s someone else’s rig. I guess, if we have to, even though we really shouldn’t, fine: This one’s on us.

The New York Times: Here’s a fun media angle: You know that Marine Biologist from the Gulf of Mexico Foundation that we quoted in our piece on just how awful (or maybe not awful) this thing is? Yeah, turns out the Gulf of Mexico Foundation gets money from Oil People and has Oil People on their board! Whoops.

Rush Limbaugh: [Spoken with a mouthful of Cheetos] Obama’s going to tell people to stop offshore drilling! He’s “getting even with his country.” [Spits Cheetos everywhere, throws bag near trash, misses.]

BP: Hey! Look! We capped one of the three leaks!

Sheldon the Snapping Turtle: GURRGUGLGLGLGGLGLGLLELLELEELELEELE. [Sheldon dies.]

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs: We gonna stop offshore drilling? Yeah, maybe, one day, we might have to stop with this offshore drilling shit. “I wouldn’t rule it out.”

Meanwhile, this thing — which is not a spill, which is not a mess the same way one makes a “mess” when they break an egg on the floor — is a fucking geyser. It is spewing 200,000 gallons of oil a day. It’s coming toward the Florida Keys to ruin them, and then, it’s going to creep up the Atlantic. And despite however many Drill Baby Drill proponents there are in, say, Savannah, Georgia, when their beachfront property begins to look like Escape from L.A., they’re likely to reconsider their position, assuming they haven’t been able to sell their summer homes in the last few days.

And now, BP and our government are looking towards Plan B, a cofferdam. You’re going to hear this word a lot soon. It’s a gigantic dome they’re going to construct and pull over the mess, designed to trap the oil that’s spilling out, which they will then try to suck out. If you really want to know, here, this is a cofferdam. In the meantime, 60,000 gallons of dissolvents are being dropped into the ocean each day, which, of course, have their own level of toxicity.

A fishing ban is still in effect from the Florida Panhandle on up to the Mississippi River. And there is still a giant geyser of oil, of toxic black goo that remains beneath the earth’s surface before humans pull it out for a good reason, spewing oil into the Gulf Coast. It is wrecking our ecosystem, and it is killing things and causing such massive ecological destruction at such a rate that, if it keeps going as it is, will result in our children never getting to experience time on the same planet as some creatures we generally consider commonplace right now.

[End scene.]