Six months. It's been six months since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico took fire, blew and sank, causing the biggest accidental oil spill in history.
It certainly feels like longer. Was it really six months ago that BP was claiming that any day now, the leak would be plugged? Even less than six months ago that everyone was Googling hopefully for "top kill"? Six months ago that Obama called for a moratorium on deepwater drilling? Six months ago that everyone was making promises to do more, better, faster to end our dependency on dirty oil?
And yet, in six months, while people all over the world were claiming for better fuel economy, for renewable energy and electric cars, politicians all over the world did nothing. In fact, polticians did worse than nothing: they lifted the moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, authorised more deepwater drilling in pristine and threatened places, they refused to put a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the North East Atlantic, and kept subsidising oil companies to keep us addicted to dirty energy.
In the meantime, scientists on board the Arctic Sunrise, the Greenpeace ship currently in the Gulf of Mexico, are still finding oil on the bottom of the sea.
So what difference can six months make? Well, a lot in that special place known as politician-world. Apparently, it causes amnesia, because I can't believe if they could really remember Deepwater Horizon, they would be doing all this. They'd be putting their money on renewable energy and more efficient cars.
Otherwise, to be this irrational, they'd have to be dishonest and/or paid off by oil companies. But surely, that can't be the case.