Dwayne Monroe: For me, the most productive way to consider the massive disaster in the Gulf -- our ever growing hydrocarbon "hyperobject" -- is as an example of the way capitalist enterprises are, in the age of neoliberal degeneracy, steadily losing (or perhaps, with the aid of de-fanged regulatory bodies, willfully abandoning) the ability to manage dangerous substances and processes that demand our full attention. Then again, this is nothing new. I'm told that oil production in less media saturated parts of the world (Nigeria, for example) is routinely plagued with gigantic spills and ecological devastation.
.d.
Somebody: Yeah, I don't understand this way of thinking. How does one extraordinary oil spill demonstrate anything essential about a world economic system? It's being reported that on five separate occasions in the Soviet Union during the 1960's and 70's, nuclear blasts were used to stop subterranean oil leaks. Did those spills, and the use of atomic weapons to curb them, reveal something fundamental about state socialism? Maybe, but what strikes me is how similar all industrial societies are.
It seems like the Gulf oil spill has become a Rorschach inkblot test that people are interpreting according to their ideological dogmas and phobias. Anyway, prior to this disaster, the volume of oil spilled in U.S. waters had dropped from an average of 11.8 million gallons per year over the two decades prior to 1990, to 1.5 million gallons in the ensuing decades. Apparently, the Oil Pollution Act, passed in response to the Exxon Valdez spill, deserves a major claim of credit for this change. It'll be interesting to see a year hence what the full legislative impact of this calamity will be.