“Burn Baby, Burn!”
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A fiery reminder of our continued addiction to fossil fuels lit up the sky fifty miles off the coast of Louisiana yesterday when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. After 36 hours the 396-foot-long, 256-foot-wide rig sank; its leasors – British Petroleum – insisted that pollution from the fire would be minimal, since most of the oil would simply burn off. I wrote about the accident at length at Take Part’s The Current.
The timing – on the eve of the 40th Earth Day – is an impeccable reminder of the real-life impacts of the oil drilling which many Republicans, and some Democrats in Congress regard as our best way towards “energy independence.” The hallow chant of “Drill Baby, Drill” must now be followed by “Burn Baby, Burn.” Nighttime images of the fire, which killed at least eleven oil workers, resemble a Satanic ritual afloat in the heart of the ocean.
