And I suspect I don’t have to explain which spill I’m referring to.
I suppose I’m not the only one out here who breathed a big – but tentative - sigh of relief when BP announced last week it appears to have stemmed the flow of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. No more images of brown crud pumping into what used to be blue, game-rich waters.
Man, what a mess.
There are so many places I could go on this one: the collective addiction to cheap oil that has us going for the stuff in too-sensitive places, the bureaucratic mess that will likely let this company get off the hook with a lot less penalty than it deserves, the livelihoods – and lives – changed forever by something totally out of their control.
Big enough subjects for adults, but what if you’re explaining them to a kid? That can get tricky.
The ODNR recently linked to a helpful site on this very subject. It’s located here, and I suggest you take a look if you’ve got a young one in your life who wants to understand what happened. Handle this situation right, because the stakes are high: the kids watching this unfold today will be the ones who chart our future course: toward or away from another such disaster, the path they take could well hinge on how we present the facts of this case.