Dragon's Den: The True Impact of the Oil Spill

Another in a continuing series of blogs for CBC's Dragon's Den:

The environmental event of the week, the year, and potentially the decade, is the ongoing BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. If you haven’t properly absorbed the scale of this thing, check out this, and this and this. The “world’s whitest beaches turn black” is a particularly poignant headline.

What is clear is that this is a mammoth environmental and, likely, economic disaster.

What is less clear is how this oil spill will impact the complicated US debate regarding global warming.

For months now, the US Senate has been awaiting the unveiling of a historic new global warming law. Recent reports indicate it may be finally introduced next week.

In the fractious Senate, where even the Democrats are riven by regional differences, passing this bill at the best of times would be difficult. But in the midst of the slow-motion disaster unfolding around the BP spill, all of a sudden the terrain looks even more volatile than usual.

Does the oil spill make the passage of the Senate bill less likely by shattering the fragile coalition necessary to move it forward?

Or does the spill so thoroughly highlight the desperate need to move towards a post-oil economy that it makes adoption more likely?

Only time will tell.

But it may well be that the more lasting impact of the oil spill is measured in votes won or lost on the floor of the US Senate as opposed to dead turtles and grimy seabirds.