Environmental Disasters Are Also Human Disasters

Thinking of eleven men and their survivors

Queen Bess Island on the afternoon of April 12, 2010, a few days before the Deepwater Horizon Spill / photo by the author Amethyst Qu

In August 2010, I flew to Australia, where I was searched for a good twenty minutes by a chatty immigration officer. Knowing that I was from south Louisiana, she asked what everyone asked in those months.

“Do you think the Deepwater Horizon accident had to happen? Don’t you think there…