A remarkable lead from the New York Times:
The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.
I include myself first and most of all when I say that we’ve been negligent in covering the latest developments in the Gulf spill (as we speak, by the bye, BP is testing its latest and most promising top-kill procedure). I think we all got a little fatigued.
To be sure, many questions about the spill’s broader impact on the region remain unanswered — what is the interaction between the natural breakdown of the oil and the Gulf’s oxygen supply? What effect will the oil have on the eggs and larvae of fauna caught in the middle of the spawning season during the worst of the spill? And so on.
But this is good news.
I won’t go so far as to pull a Napolitano and say “the system worked” here, but it looks to be — all things considered — a tremendous testament to both the resilience of Mother Nature and the organizational and creative capacities of mankind.