Earth Day, April 22, 2015.  Who cares?
     BP's most recent self-congratulatory ad about the Gulf of Mexico, and how it's "come back" from it's environmental rape five years ago, doesn't mention the oil gush caused when the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up, killing eleven men and ceaselessly polluting the Gulf and its coast, a camera showing the broken pipe pushing out oil like an old engine's exhaust.  This BP-supplied image of the gushing pipe became a standard shot on cable news.
     Look, it's still gushing!  BP spokespeople don't have any adequate answers!  The U.S. government has abdicated its responsibility in guarding the environment from corrupt corporations!
     Later, President Obama showed his real concern and sympathy when he put the kibosh on the possibility of banning offshore drilling.  What's bad for the planet may be good for business, the oil business, but not the tourist trade, some feared in 2010.  Vacationers, it was believed, wouldn't want to visit the Gulf Coast for a long time, but the same species that's willing to step around beached hospital waste is also willing to ignore oil layers beneath the sand.
     During a family vacation in 1973 I played on the seemingly endless beach at Biloxi, Mississippi.  Like boys do, I was digging holes in the sand.  I dug one deep, far enough back from the surf to protect it from inundation.  About a foot down the damp sand blackened, a stratum three or four inches deep.  My dad was nearby, looking for interesting pieces of driftwood.  He walked over and looked at what I found.
     "Why is this black?" I asked.
     "It's from an oil spill," he said.  "A tanker probably sank in a storm, or had some kind of accident.  Go wash your hands."
     In April and May 2010, I saw people on TV walking on Gulf beaches, complaining of headaches from the overwhelming stench of BP's fuckup.  They wouldn't have wanted to wash their hands in that surf, as I did in Biloxi. 
     Look at the presidential candidates.  Do they grasp the nature of the peril that Earth will visit upon their descendants?  I heard in passing a statement from a scientist who claims 2015 and 2016 are the last years we can effectively do something to curb the intensity of future catastrophic climate change.  These years coincide with a score of American politicians trying to sit in the Oval Office.  Will any of them, Democrat or Republican, display and act on the courage it'll take to make a serious effort at not letting humanity get flushed down the toilet?
     Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, an obvious Republican, isn't running for president, but his mindset illustrates Congressional lack of urgency on the fate of life forms on this planet.  Addressing
a small number of his colleagues in a mostly empty Senate Chamber, Inhofe ridiculed climate change by producing a sealed plastic bag containing a snowball, "made right outside here in Washington."  He tossed the snowball underhanded to someone off camera, admitting it, I guess, into evidence that global warming, i.e. climate change, is imaginary.
     Look!  Snow in Washington in March!  If anything it proves we're getting colder!
     Or, Senator Inhofe, if you wait for the snowball to become a bag of water, you can try to imagine what's happening to Greenland, the glaciers, and the Polar Ice Caps.
     Some of the candidates, I suspect, even Republican ones, are not as stupid as James Inhofe, but I'd like to hear just one of them talk about the fate of the human race on this planet, and how corporations like BP expect us to clean up their shit, while never facing prosecution or the threat of prosecution from a President who has two young daughters who will see the disaster-ridden world to come.

                                                                             Vic Neptune