The Gulf disaster

"I hit a cloud so concentrated that 20 hours later my mouth and tongue still feel they've been burned by a hot liquid." - Drew Wheelan

The cloud is the toxic residue of the Macondo blowout. In her riveting report in the London Review of Books (5 August 2010, pages 28-31), Rebecca Solnit clarifies why we should be horrified not only by what happened, but also by the extent to which the oil industry has masked the damage and kept scientists and the press at bay, using the Coast Guard as its instrument. Even the cleanup is being done by prison labor, despite the ravages the blowout has had on a local economy. In 2008, we thought we voted the oil industry out of office. This report will make you wonder.