FINALLY: some intelligent thoughts about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Decades after the Exxon Valdez spill, the technology used to clean up spills is virtually unchanged: barges, booms, burning, dispersing, scrubbing. The problem with that is, these methods weren't effective then, and they aren't now.

So if cleanup is costly, ineffective and potentially harmful, then aren't we just doing it for appearances? (And not actual appearances, but, worse, political appearances?) Indeed, if we can just get over the way it sounds, "the cost of doing nothing" might actually be far less than the cost of doing something.

While we’re at it, why not try to make ‘doing nothing’ - or more precisely, doing little - profitable? As the C.W. Roberts folks suggested at the end of their video, recover the oil-soaked straw, dry it, and use it for fuel.