Title: Environmental Catastrophe

The CEO of BP finally admitted that the runaway oil well in the gulf is an environmental catastrophe.

That’s not a good sign. Oil executives have always minimized the effect of oil spills in the past.

What that means is that he’s heard from everybody on his team and they’ve arrived at the worst case scenario.

That’s not a good sign either. Because BP is a huge company with a big team to draw from.

If they’ve already given up, then that means the gulf is really screwed.

What this indicates is that the time of tough oil is upon us.

Tough oil?

It’s the middle third of the oil in the ground. The first third was easy oil. Now we’re into tough oil.

What’s the last third going to be called? Impossible oil?

Something like that. But there’s still a lot of easy oil around. It’s just under tough places.

What, hard dirt?

Politically unstable regimes.

So, because the people who control the easy oil are idiots. We have to go after the tough oil?

Yep.

Then the catastrophe in the gulf is partly the fault of the idiots.

Partly. But I doubt they see it that way.

Why don’t we make the idiots less idiotic?

We’re working on it. But cultural idiocy is the hardest to overcome.

The people in charge of that much wealth can’t be idiots.

No, but they aren’t legitimately in charge. So they tend to keep the general population confused with culture idiocy.

Like what?

Imaginary gods at war with the religions of other imaginary gods. That sort of thing.

But this is the age of reason.

You would think. There’s also the complete lack of responsibility in hope that a savior will come and fix everything.

What country are we talking about again?