Watch the widget and watch the waste

While this PBS Widget counter’s guest-imates of the oil blasphemy is interesting, the better estimate is probably 3 to 4 million gallons per day – that’s 35-45 gallons per second, and, unfortunately, that’s what it looks like to many independent experts. Maybe a widget for all the species dying by the hour. A widget for all the BP money pumped into campaign funds, slush funds, buy-off and green washing. It’s clear that the actual rupture is 16-17 times larger than BP’s lie of 210,000 gallons per day. The liability cap of $75 million – hmmm. Should be raised times 16 to 17 times. But how do you put a price on ecosystems and other countries’ toxic waters caused by BP’s negligence and lies? On people’s cultural values? On the future incomes of people? On all that ecosystem being fouled by dispersants and oil, under the direction of a company that tells the US Coast Guard and Obama administration to take a flying leap? Maybe live cams in those estuaries and along those shores and shoals? Live shots of the living biological lives being destroyed. A widget for the number of dragonflies killed? Catfish? Drum? In the next few days we’ll be reporting here at Dispatches from a Disaster, on more of Marc’s interviews with wildlife experts in Lafayette; with old timer fishermen and fisherwomen looking at the realities of dead fish; with the so-called experts estimating the real impact of the Disaster in the Gulf. Until then, here’s a site with some gritty photographs: www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/oil_reaches_louisiana_shores.html