The Gulf States Economic Catastrophe: 9000 days and a dying economy

06-01-2010 • TheAutomaticEarth.blogspot.com

The five affected US Gulf states alone have, between them, a $2.2 trillion economy. Cut that in half, which could easily happen if there’s oil all over the place, and you have a nationwide economic disaster, coming on top of everything else. Throw in a hurricane, or two, or ten, and see where you get from there. How about if 50% or more of Florida's tourist industry is wiped out, or if beach side properties there lose another 50% or more of their value due to tar balls forcing beach closures? How about Georgia, the Carolinas, how about closing Chesapeake Bay as well as Galveston Bay? Alarmist? Maybe, then there’s no end in sight to the spill. And that too is just the start. There’s a serious threat that the entire Mississippi watershed and river will have to be closed for -much of its- traffic. You can’t have a zillion ships a day drag oil residue all the way up to St. Louis or beyond. Oil is sort of toxic. If it would come to that, the US have a real serious problem. Anyone still wish to argue that the BP/Macondo/Deepwater Horizon karbunkle is not a disaster? Or that it isn't one for president Obama? After the Top Kill failure (was that ever a serious attempt in the first place? how hard is it to gauge upward vs downward pressure?), there’ll apparently be another brilliantly engineered $multi-million inverted flowerpot theater-piece later this week, but now that we're down to the next in line ever less likely to succeed genius ideas, maybe it’s time to see what for instance the bookies are offering.