Oil's Well That Doesn't End Well For This Oil Well, Part 7

As BP tries to save the universe from its own stupidity with the power of GIANT SLOW-MOVING CONCRETE BOX THING, HuffPo's Dan Froomkin talks to marine professor Rick Steiner and notes that the "I told you so" factor of this catastrophe may finally break the mesmerism of the environmental legislation deniers.

At moments like this, it's hard to see any silver lining here at all. But it's possible there is one. Many environmentalists say that the wrenching and omnipresent images of filth and death are at last providing Americans with visible, visceral and possibly mobilizing evidence of the effects that fossil fuels are having on our environment every day.

Rick Steiner is horrified at the damage. A University of Alaska marine specialist, he's watched cleanup efforts ever since the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, and has learned some bitter lessons.

"Government and industry will habitually understate the volume of the spill and the impact, and they will overstate the effectiveness of the cleanup and their response," he said. "There's never been an effective response -- ever -- where more than 10 or 20 percent of the oil is ever recovered from the water. Once the oil is in the water, the damage is done."

And most of the damage remains invisible deep below the surface, including the wide-scale destruction of essential plankton in the area and the wiping out of an entire generation of fish larvae. "This is real toxic stuff," Steiner said.

But the damage that is visible -- the vast and foul oil slick, the dolphins swimming through sludge, the birds coated in oil, the dead fish and sharks and turtles -- is enough to thoroughly disgust anyone paying attention.

And that, Steiner said, makes it a "teachable moment" that "will hopefully serve as a wake-up call that we need to turn to sustainable energy."

I'm hoping Steiner is correct, and that this becomes the impetus that finally banishes the Know-Nothings of the climate deniers and the climate cost whiners.  If this disaster proves it's too expensive NOT to reduce our carbon footprint, that may be something that saves us from a much larger disaster in the end.

I fear however that it's going to take a massive, sustained parade of environmental, economic, and social damage to the Atlantic shores to get rid of Drill Baby Drill for good.  After a decade of warnings that were ignored by Bush (and by Obama too) maybe now people will listen.  I doubt it.  There's too much money at stake.

There's a small sliver of hope, however.