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Friday, May 28, 2010

Economic Damage In The Gulf

We all saw this coming. Many livelihoods are dependent on the Gulf waters, clean Gulf waters. Fishing and tourism are huge in that area. One must assume that all of the peripheral businesses not even mentioned in the article will be adversely affected. The oil leak is an environmental disaster but it is clearly an economic disaster.

Miami Herald: Spill's economic fallout called long term
But there's consensus that the stakes are huge, with the seafood industry facing the biggest threat but tourism capable of delivering the most severe economic blow.


Summer home rentals are off a staggering 80 percent since the April 20 explosion...


Seafood restaurants across the country could see prices rise and demand fall if plants like Motivatit continue struggling for supplies or regulators declare Gulf seafood a health hazard.

3 comments:

Glynn Kalara said...

This is the bitter fruit of decades of lax to no regulation of this massively powerful Industry. They get what they want from the pols and the regulators and we get the results. The horror is they also will not pay even for the clean up because as the Exxon Valdez spill taught us they will send they're armies of high paid lawyers and lobbyists into DC and the courts and will fight any claims. They will also force us all to clean up after them and then just to rub the OILY mess in our faces they will ask us if were ready for more drilling and in even more dangerous regions like the Arctic sea where no fixes are even possible if u get a Blow out like this one. Do they care? NO! these are some of the worst environmental criminals on the Planet and when the Nuremberg trials of the late 21st happen, as the world fries in the rapidly increasing warming and millions maybe even billions begin to die from starvation and lack of water and spreading diseases related to this event, these people should be on the top of the list to be tried.

Jim Sande said...

I recall looking at charts seeing how the addition of oil into the human equation accelerated all types of advances including the number of people. We're talking last 100 to 150 years or so.

At this point the population growth is probably unsustainable right. There needs to be a type of leveling out movement, we are maxed out. The environment can't sustain the present population using the same quantity of resources at the expected or previously desired levels.

So we are witnessing what happens when we try to continually expand in spite of the inability to maintain present resource usage. I think this leak is part of this ongoing problem. We are so tapped out that they go 5,000 feet below the water to find oil, in a place that is virtually unworkable.

So we still arrive at the same problem. How do we all survive at least in moderate harmony.

As you point out, the center of the economic activity has become energy. They hold the biggest economic power and consequently in a time of material wealth as primary power, primary achievement, they hold the most power. They hold power over us, as the industry can also dictate needs and desires.

As individuals all we can really do is attempt to lessen our impact and try to bring as many others as we can onto that type of lifestyle.

Once again its also a matter of power. Our political parties are corrupt and useless in expressing the immediacy and importance of the above points because they too are pawns of the oil industry.

Glynn Kalara said...

Pawns indeed! I've told you I know one of these people ex-VP Mobil oil retired. They ONLY care about no. 1 and maybe their family. No guilt for the disaster they've brought on all of us, to the contrary they believe they are heroes.