It was a week and a half ago that I reported on the oil spill in the Tristan da Cunha island chain in the South Atlantic Ocean. At that time, the oil spill had already been going on for about a week. International news today is filled with the oil spill again – because only now are birds from an endangered species of penguin, 40 percent of which lives in the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, starting to be rescued.
As for the oil spill, it isn’t even close to being cleaned up yet. After weeks of efforts, “it may take some time” is the word.
Thoughtful readers will remember that. A year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the procedures for cleaning up oil spills remain profoundly underdeveloped. That’s the “wisdom” of the marketplace for you – oil is a remarkably cheap form of energy, until all of a sudden, it isn’t.
