In more than a quarter century as an environmental lawyer, I’ve learned a lot about the mostly ineffective ways that government regulators do their jobs — and that learning curve definitely accelerated in those first few months after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Time and time again, I — and others in the environmental community here in Louisiana — watched in those...
The truth about the vanishing Gulf oyster: It’s worse than you think
Over the last year or so, an increasing number of articles have appeared — in widely read publications like Newsweek or the Guardian — bemoaning the sorry environmental state of the Gulf, more than four years after the Deepwater Horizon spill. To me, there’s no more important issue than this — it’s the very reason that I started this blog not long after the spill, so...
In-depth: The Gulf is still making marine life, and people, sick
Note: As promised, Part II of my in-depth report on the state of the Gulf. more than four years after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe: When the full extent of the Deepwater Horizon spill became clear in the spring of 2010, experts predicted the impact on the Gulf’s diverse ecosystem would last at least for a generation, if not longer. Unfortunately, they were working off a known template: The...
Three years after BP spill, the Gulf ecosystem is still collapsing
If you’re a regular reader of the blog, it will come as no surprise to you that the ecological health of the Gulf of Mexico in the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill is considerally worse than depicted in much of the mainstream media — let alone by the tens of millions on dollars of bogus PR spin that BP has purchased on your television screen. Over the last 36 months...