The Real Environmental Disaster

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The Real Environmental Disaster

Posted Jul 20, 2010 by Bill McKibben

So—whew—the bleeding seems finally to have been staunched, three months after BP stabbed its hole in the bottom of the sea. It’s disgusting that it took that long to stitch it up, but there’s every sign that after the first few weeks everyone was working it, stat. BP tried “junk shot” and “top kill,” skimming ships and low risers; the feds went with daily briefings, multiple Cabinet secretaries, retired admirals. Some 17,500 National Guardsmen, 1,900 ships. Twenty billion dollars. “From the beginning,” said the president, “we have worked to deploy every tool at our disposal to respond to this crisis.”

Which was only right—every day that passed saw more oil spew into the Gulf. Time was of the essence.

You don’t compromise with a blown-out oil well, and you don’t compromise with the molecular structure of carbon dioxide. They don’t do compromise.

But here’s the thing: Over that same period, if you add up all the carbon being burned in all the cars and factories and power plants, we had the equivalent of at least 5,000 Deepwater Horizons pouring carbon into the atmosphere, every minute of every day in every corner of the world. You couldn’t see it—CO2 is invisible. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less of an emergency...

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Originally published July 20, 2010 at The Daily Beast

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