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In the U.S. you have a system of lobbying and influence on our policy and law makers which is incredibly pronounced. The gas industry spent $250 million getting an exemption from our Safe Water Act. Every one of those dollars is toxic; a contaminant in our political system. It disrupts the normal flow of justice, science, fact and reporting.

Government and other scientists have identified hundreds of chemicals that are linked to diseases in small concentrations and that are unregulated in drinking water or policed at limits that still pose serious risks.

Portraying as human the people you hear about on the news doing bad things is dangerous. But it's also necessary and important.

I never write about CIA conspiracies or the FBI or mafia or anything like that because I just don't understand that world. But I think I do understand individual human harmfulness.

The BP spill was the greatest environmental catastrophe in U.S. history. Yet somehow, gas companies like BP and Halliburton ran interference on reporting that story.

This trend of reporting process over substance is unfortunate, if omnipresent. Even worse is the media's inability - or unwillingness - to fact-check Republicans who are angry about the Democrats trying to debate and vote on Iraq policy.

Places change over time with or without oil spills, but humans are responsible for the Deepwater Horizon gusher - and humans, as well as the corals, fish and other creatures, are suffering the consequences.

Greed, accident, or malice may have harmful results, but, barring something truly apocalyptic, a resilient system can absorb such results without its overall health being threatened.

Tanks come in two forms: the dangerous, deadly kind and the 'liberating' kind.

Many people believe the whole catastrophe is the oil we spill, but that gets diluted and eventually disarmed over time. In fact, the oil we don't spill, the oil we collect, refine and use, produces CO2 and other gases that don't get diluted.