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Oh, please. The levees along the Mississippi were started in the 1930s to control flood devastation - decades before your "eco nuts" were even born. Nobody has ever accused the Army Corps of Engineers of overwhelming ecological sensitivity when it comes to flood control. The issues with bayou destruction are collateral damage that only became evident in the 80s and later. Had nothing to do with the oil spill.

The issues with the BP well could just as easily have occurred at 500 ft water as they did at 8000 - the problems weren't related to how deep the water was. However, they would have been easier to control in only 500 ft of water. Face it - BP wouldn't have been drilling there if the resource wasn't economical to develop at that location. That's capitalism in action.

NPR, PBS, USPS might not be viable as private enterprises. But I reject the notion that the only things worthwhile are those that make a profit. There's a lot more to their programming (NPR, PBS) than news and political commentary. And I don't think the American public really wants to pay FedEx or UPS rates every time they send a letter, pay a bill, or send a birthday card to Grandma.

There are numerous magazine articles from the 1960s, where the Corps warned that the levees could not withstand a direct hit from a significant hurricane.  They proposed a control dam on Lake Pontchartrain, that would have stopped the exact problem NOLA encountered.  It was, in fact, the early ecosimps who protested it would be bad for the aquaculture of the lake, and demanded more levees instead.  These articles are archived online in several places, if you wish to avail yourself of the resource.  PopSci had one, that I recall as did several others.

As an aside, in the 1980s it was Greenpeace who came up with the brilliant idea of painting baby harp seals with pink paint to "protect" them from hunting.  The paint solvents destroyed the oil in their fur so more of them froze, and made them very visible to the polar bear--the reason the seals are white in the first place.

The way to do good things for the environment is to listen to the econuts and do exactly the opposite.

No, that spill could not have happened at 500 feet, because that type of rig, drill and connection is not used at 500 feet.  500 foot wells are a very mature technology, and well-managed.  And by your own argument, if they'd had the type of problem that those wells do have, shutting them down is much easier, which once again make the problem much less significant.

Feel free to stop using that oil, however.

FedEx is prohibited by law from competing with USPS on domestic mail, and is even required to send local express packages to the hub for sorting, and then must return them--leaving them at the local station is deemed "unfair" by the USG.  They still manage to deliver overnight at competitive rates with USPS, and do so faster (9PM deadline vs noon-2).  Which begs the question--what could they do if it WAS a free market, where they were allowed to compete for profit and out of pocket, with a taxpayer subsidized system with the law stacked in its favor?

BP deserves blame for that disaster, but so does the agency of your vaunted government that signed off on the rig, and the ecosimps who wouldn't allow a more profitable, safe, economic and practical rig closer to shore, and then had the audacity to whine about the result, while making much use of that oil.

I could bring up the hypocrisy of simultaneously demanding cheap oil, but less use, with more regs but less expense, etc.

You also make the mistake of assuming that because I'm attacking the hypocritical logical failure of MoreOn's ad (it is.  Just because people are copying it does not mean it wasn't designed in the ad department of a multimillion dollar operation with a profit motive and an ax to grind), that I blindly support their opposition.

I just want their position, arguments, and counterproposals to be logical and reasonable, rather than ranting stupidity.