I was tempted, yes, to entitle this murder most fowl, considering the number of birds affected by the oil dump. I think "spill" is too modest a word for what's happening in the Gulf of Mexico.
The science and news are so grim it's tempting to just turn my back on it and ignore it, comforting myself with the so false, and so alluring, thought that it's far far away and will never affect me directly. That coping mechanism isn't really working for me, but others have found clever and funny ways to skewer BP.
It's maddening, this tragedy. It's the result of greed and laziness, of lack of political will, lack of awareness, and lack of options (see lack of political will). It's being made worse by incompetence and poor judgment all around. There's no one reason why it happened (although I think two big culprits are corporate culture and what in law school we used to call agency capture) and there will be no simple or quick solution.
I can only hope that, as sometimes happens with tragedies, we get better rules coming out of it -- rules that are actually enforced.
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