As the country and world have been glued to the day-to-day reports of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I couldn’t help but be totally disappointed in the way the disaster was handled.
First, there seemed to be a constant feeling that the company and government were falling farther and farther behind in getting the well capped, under the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Without using the word complacency, I didn’t sense that there was an awareness of what might happen. Aside from the fact that almost all of out oil reserves are gone, what happens when there is a cavernous space underneath the earth? Does the space cave in on itself?
While all of the talk centered around claims made by people whose lives were financially impacted by the spill, all I could think of was two things: “the cat has been let out of the bag,” and something I learned in a Physics class: the idea of Force + Momentum.
That is, the longer the oil floods from the underground well, the momentum will make it harder and harder to cap it. In addition, why does BP seem to refuse any outside help from others who are familiar with underwater activity? The expression, two heads are better than one, seems to fit here.
Unless something turns around soon, I think we will be entering a new phase of the unknown. We really shouldn’t push this problem to the back of our minds, until it is resolved.
