Has the Damage from the BP Oil Spill Been Exaggerated?

President Obama himself has been quoted as saying that the BP oil spill is the “ worst environmental disaster America has ever faced,” and well, so has just about anyone else asked what they thought about it. All sorts of different environmental groups are sounding the klaxons and screaming “catastrophe along the Gulf coast”, while the major news agencies such as; CBS, Fox, and MSNBC are all slathering “Disaster in the Gulf” into their main stories and reports.

Even Tony Hayward, the official fall guy for BP, after some early happy talk, has admitted that the spill was an “environmental catastrophe”. Rush Limbaugh, a rather obnoxious anti-environmentalist, has been on of the few which has argued that the spill, which he calls “the leak” – is not the disaster that everyone is making it out to be. He scoffs the apocalyptic claims of the vast majority of the various green groups.

It appears that Mr. Limbaugh has indeed got a point. The Deepwater Horizon explosion was a horrible thing to happen, especially for the 11 rig workers who died out there, and it certainly isn’t “a leak”; it is the largest spill that the US has witnessed to date.

It is also dealing some heavy blows to the economy and also the psychological well being of the coastal communities that depend on drilling, tourism and of course fishing. While it is impossible to know exactly how much damage has really been done as the event only took place some 3 months ago, it doesn’t seem to be doing any serious environmental damage.

“The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared,” explains Jacqueline Michel, a geochemist who also is a federal contractor who is involved in coordinating the assessments of the shoreline in Louisiana.

It is true that the oil spill has killed birds, but so far, it is less than 1% of the number which were killed in the Exxon Valdez oil spill out in Alaska 21 years ago.

Of course, we have heard all those horror stories about those poor oiled dolphins, however, it is interesting to note that the wildlife response teams have only collected three visibly oiled bodies of mammals. When the spill first occurred, there was a harsh restriction put on fishing and shrimping. After a few tests on the shrimp and fish in the area, it was discovered they were clean, and the restriction lifted.

Yes, Lousiana, it has been warned could experience a speeding up in the deterioration of their marshes, which is happening anyway…

So as you can see, the spill has been touted as being the worst ever.. But is it just being hyped up for public entertainment? I mean would as many papers be sold if it weren’t the biggest disaster in the Gulf Coast? So who benefits from all he doom and gloom? Or is this an effort to try and calm people and divert attention away from what IS a big disaster? We don’t really know at this point.. We may never really know.. But stay tuned, and hopefully someone will sort out this mess.