The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico brought home the true cost of the fossil fuels.

‘An upside-down faucet, just open and running out.’ That's how an oil-spill expert at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute described the massive release of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico that began on 20 April 2010 at the British Petroleum (BP) Deep Horizon oil rig off the coast of Louisiana.

The disaster opened an information faucet, too: every day, more truth about the real costs of fossil fuels emptied into public view. Desperate efforts to control both spills quickly were underway.

After its 450- ton blowout preventer failed, BP tried burning the oil slick, creating the macabre spectacle of the ocean on fire. The company then tried using chemical dispersants to reduce the amount of oil reaching the surface, a strategy that helped to create enormous underwater oil plumes as much as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick. The dispersants themselves are toxic, but their impacts on marine ecosystems are poorly understood because the chemical recipe is a proprietary secret.

In exploration plans filed with the US government's ethically challenged Minerals Management Service in February 2009, BP claimed it was ‘unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities’, and that if this happened, ‘due to the distance to shore (48 miles) and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected’. Three months later, oil had washed onto 65 miles of Louisiana's shoreline, penetrating more than 10 miles into coastal marshes that account for 40 per cent of the wetlands in the continental United States. Fishing had been banned in 19 per cent of Gulf waters under US jurisdiction–a devastating blow to local livelihoods.

Containing the truth spill proved to be as difficult as plugging the gusher. In the wake of the spill, BP CEO Tony Hayward launched a public relations campaign to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of the people. A predictable apologist on Fox News claimed that natural seepage puts more oil into the ocean than accidents, and radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh assured his audience that oil is ‘as natural as the ocean water’. The New York Times reminded its readers that ‘America needs the oil’.