The greatest environmental catastrophe in US history continues to unfold while our cars keep guzzling and we, seemingly immune to the irony, continue watching in our oil fueled plastic worlds as the earth goes down the shitter. Ah, isn't it just great to be American?
Well, I'm sure Nigerians would agree.
The Niger Delta is one of the most oil polluted places on the planet (barring of course our tremendous un-ability to plug the gusher in the gulf with more hair). Somewhere in the range of 11 million barrels of oil have spilled into the Delta over the course of 50 years, since the oil companies first noticed the glittering potential in this coastal country. The US currently gets about 10% of it's oil from Nigeria, and many activist groups fear that with the current situation in the Gulf, that figure will rise, leading to more problems in the already plagued region. A Nigerian spokesman for Shell oil complained that many militant groups in the area have been busting open pipelines to steal oil, and keeping crews from trying to rectify those break ins and other spills that have occurred, leading to the five decade old catastrophe. So there you go guys, not their fault. And this rager in the gulf isn't BP's fault either. Some dolphin or something probably bumped into the line and sent the whole thing into may-day mode.
I can't really decide which is more disgusting: the fact that Nigeria has lived with an ongoing spill many times the size of ours and yet we couldn't give two shits about them as long as they give us oil, OR that we continue to guzzle as the gulf gushes, immune to the catastrophes in both places...
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