I’m trying to find a charitable way of understanding any explanation for 450 ton blowout preventers that fail to prevent a blowout. Such a device needing external robotic activation implies many failures of multiple redundancy that one would rationally expect of a device of such monumental importance. I’ll be very interested in how this catastrophic bit of horribleness gets explained, and how we make sure on a technical level that it never happens again.

As I’ve mentioned before I live near St. Babs and can see oil platforms from my window out in the channel, including the infamous Platform A. I like the platforms, I think they look beautiful at night and agree with the need for more domestic exploration while we transition away from fossil fuels for energy production. But the blowout at Platform A and the Exxon Valdez catastrophe play a big part in why any expansion of offshore oil drilling is politically no longer feasible anywhere on this coast. Now a huge part of the Gulf faces a real threat to its fisheries, coasts, ecosystems and air quality.