Lisa Margonelli says there was no proximate cause of oil spill in the gulf:
As people who like simple narratives, the public and policy makers will be tempted to try to find one locus for blame -- whether it's BP or BOP's (blow out protectors) -- but that may prevent us from figuring out the deeper system of problems that lead to this accident. And we may determine that business as usual doesn't work for offshore drilling -- which leaves us unable to count on the 40 percent of domestic oil production we were expecting to get from the offshore industry in the next ten years. Rereading what's been written about offshore oil drilling over the last few years, it's obvious it was thought to be the methadone for our overseas oil addiction. Now what?
Image of "what it looks like, four thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven feet down, when oil gushes into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of thousands of barrels a day" from Amy Davidson.