Yeah. We're scrood. Tourism? Dead. Fisheries? Gone. Wetlands? Destroyed. Environmental impacts? Devastating. Health effects? Cancer, pulmonary disease and increased mortality. Economic consequences? Bleak. Prolonged regional depression on top of global short-term recession expected. Damages? Start at $2B and up. BP's limits on liability? $0.075B. Estimated cost of effective, proven preventative technology? Less than $0.001B. BP's profits for just the 1st quarter of 2010? $6B. And let's not forget 11 dead workers, and their families.

My prediction? The residents of the Gulf Coast and the American taxpayer will bear the lion's share of the costs, while the guilty parties, including the officers and executives of the corporations involved (British and Swiss foreign corporations, and the notorious Halliburton) as well as their bought-and-paid-for politicians (on which BP alone spent $16M last year), get away Scot-free with pockets full of cash. Watch and see if BP doesn't continue to post multi-billion dollar profits over the next several quarters regardless of this disaster.

I'm so angry I'm ready to string the guilty up from lampposts. This was, based on the available facts thus far, an entirely foreseeable and preventable disaster. It did not need to happen, and would not have happened, but for the greed and incompetence of the private sector and a failure of proper oversight and reasonable regulation in the public sector, as well as all of our ongoing addiction to oil.