There are those who continue to refer to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as an industrial accident.
This was no accident. This event was the result of corporate negligence in the extreme. Each day that goes by, we learn more about short cuts, lax controls, expediencies, decisions based on maximizing profits, minimal saftey concerns, poor choice of materials, and a degree of coroporate responsibility, or rather, the lack of it, that staggers the imagination. And, yes, men died. In the initial explosion. These were not miners, although they worked in what is arguably a mining industry, and I have no idea if they belonged to a union, although I suspect not because of the lack of safety concerns, but they died like miners, in hazardous conditions dictated by the man, deep in the bowels of an industry that gouges black carbon from the earth, an industry that wrings profits out of death, the death of ancient forests, the future death of forests wilting under the global warming produced by burning fossil fuels.
How ironic. Old forests killing the new. Fossil fuels destroying future flora. I have posted this poem before, but it bears repeating.
Writhing slimey slick snakes of oil
Around the Gulf of Greed now crawl
What we sought will consume us all.
What we sought was venerated
Our pristine world penetrated,
Virgin bodies violated,
Writhing slimey slick snakes of oil.
Citizen Poet 