All Records Must Soon Fall

If you're asking while I am not doing any commentary on the local Philippine scenery all I will say is at the moment I'm sick and tired of it so I'm going abroad for a while.

That being said I guess the saying is true: records ARE meant to be broken.

Although when it comes to oil spills I doubt if anyone wants any record to be broken other than the fastest clean-up ever.

According to U.S. Government estimates the Gulf of Mexico oil leak has already surpassed the Exxon Valdez incident as the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska it only (and I use the word lightly) 11 million gallons according to scientist working with the clean-up.

The current oil spill has conservative estimates say spewed out 18 million gallons. And that, my friends, is merely a conservative estimate.

More liberal estimates peg it at almost 40 million gallons which is a lot but still 100 million gallons short when compared to the 1979 explosion of the drilling rig Ixtoc I.

Whoa . . . I don't think in either case it's not something to be proud of. Be it 140 million or 1 gallon it is not a good thing to spill crude oil at a very sensitive environment - especially one that has already taken a beating.

. . . And people wonder why fish prices are going up, there's less fish being caught and more dead fish are found floating or washed ashore.

. . . Why bother. We allow a scientific loop hole for people to kill whales supposedly in the name of science.

See I have a problem with that. Kill one or two whales is fine but to kill hundreds? Every year?

Where's the scientific value in that?

But that's another rant altogether. Let's get back to this one.

Where was the government regulation when you need it?

I guess the Minerals Management Service was not doing it's job what with agency staff members accepted tickets to sports events, lunches and other gifts from oil and gas companies and used government computers to view pornography.

Talk about your cozy relationship with the industry you're suppose to regulate and oversee.

Should heads roll?

Of course but a little too late.

Especially when the environmental catastrophe begins to fully manifest itself.

The sad part is people keep saying that tourism is dead or fishing is dead.

Why doesn't anyone say something about this planet is dead?