Slick as an oil spill, baby

I am finally catching up on this whole BP Oil Spill. Apparently this happened in April ... and is still ongoing. Shit.

I wonder how much longer this will continue. I'm nervous though; everyone keeps talking about how much this affects the poor animals (I think by now everyone has seen pictures of the ducks covered in oil) but we're saying much less about the ecosystem. And, we're entirely disregarding how this affects all of us. The United States is very oil dependent; it's going to be a huge problem economically, even though it will create a huge number of jobs for environmental scientists, biologists, zoologists/wildlife ecologists, and chemists. Time will tell if this is The Biggest Oil Spill Ever, but there's been some big ones in the past.

This is what it would look like if the spill was where I live (I live in Southern MA).