Environmental Question of the day....

The oil spill disaster in the Gulf brings up a question: how will the ripple effect of this oil spill affect humans? Political interests put their spin on this disaster for ideological purposes, and that is something I am not addressing by asking this question. This is not an anti- or pro-oil question.

Fossil fuels are a fact of life. Oil is global power (notice I did not say "Oil companies are global power"). Right now we are at Level 0 as far as civilizations go regarding energy consumption (see: http://mkaku.org/home/?page_id=246 ). That means we will rely on fossil fuels for a long time no matter who controls the oil companies.

However, the ecological system must be taking a huge hit from this spill. In turn, this will affect other ecological systems. In short, how will humans be affected in the short run and in the long run?

Political spin is no help.

From the left: oil companies are evil.

From the right: oil companies are victims.

Political spin does not answer my question (yes, I realize I am over simplifying things). So, I suppose my real question is this: how will humans be actually affected, removing the politically motivated spin from evaluations of this event?

In reality, I don't know that the public has access to this honest type of information. Still, we will feel the effects of this spill, whatever those effects turn out to be in the future.