A big, black, gooey, mess.

I can't really adequately express how angry I am about the current Gulf oil spill. Mass media reporting (particularly in the beginning) seemed to show more ignorance of events than anything else and now serious voices are beginning to question how close the main body of the oil spill is to the Gulf Loop current.

Scientists watching where oil spill headed next - Yahoo! News

Of course once this mess gets sucked into the loop current it will flow through the Florida straits and then up the east coast (I've heard mixed opinions on how great an impact ocean currents and offshore winds will have on actual beach impact; at least as of yesterday, US Geological Survey seemed to feel Palm Beach and north was more likely). Of course one could get in extensive discussions on how this would best be mitigated and cleaned up (apparently beaches are easier than marshes). Still, the southern Florida ecosystem is a complicated, diverse wonder and I don't doubt the long term implications could be ghastly (both for the tourism business and the natural fauna and flora).

Although not very familiar with the particulars of deep sea drilling, it's pretty apparent the folks responsible for the operation of the Deepwater Horizon platform failed to meet minimum standards of due diligence with regard to both risk mitigation and verification of those systems necessary for the blowout preventer to function under the design conditions present at the wellhead location. I personally would like to see criminal charges levied against the organizations involved and their corporate officers.

What I'm interested at in this point of the situation (beyond limiting the negative environment impacts to the greatest extent possible) is understanding what can be done to preventing events like this from happening again. Instead what I see is the usual high level government investigations and threats of impending lawsuits for this event. In all of this I wait to see some claim of full corporate responsibility and admittance that individual employees pursued high risk activities which resulted in loss of life and property due to their lack of concern with proper process and reflecting a culture which devalued real ethical concerns if they impacted profit and loss. How do we fix stuff like that? Can a government regulator substitute for corporate responsibility? Can any individual acting in a professional capacity properly exercise his responsibility to the community he lives in if he thinks his job is just a paycheck and an opportunity for advancement?

We all want that cool, calculating professional next to us when the "black swan" event shows up, but I suspect there's more than standard operating procedures involved during those moments (particularly for the individuals at the scene). Anyway, here's hoping we can find "The Professional" when we need him.