[anamax]

> So do you think the government should have done more to prevent this? Or that this isn't a big deal and that the private sector is handling it fine?

mu.

I don't think that the govt could have done more to prevent this without causing other, more significant problems.

It is a big deal. I think that the private sector is doing a better job of fixing the leak than govt would have.

I note that govt had reasonable plans for dealing with the effects of leaks yet didn't bother. (For example, burning, which should have been started on day 1 and would have helped significantly, was pre-cleared in the 1990s for exactly that reason. Note that it never happened in any meaningful way.) It's unclear why I should blame the private sector for that.

[jbooth]

Well, fair enough. It does actually sound like most people involved are doing their best job, except for the safety inspectors who let the thing get built that way in the first place.

[sigzero]

I like this quote because it is true as well. It is easy to point to finger.

"But Republicans should beware, and even mute their mischief. We're in the middle of an actual disaster. When they win back the presidency, they'll probably get the big California earthquake. And they'll probably blow it. Because, ironically enough, of a hard core of truth within their own philosophy: when you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well."

[anamax]

> It does actually sound like most people involved are doing their best job, except for the safety inspectors who let the thing get built that way in the first place.

Not at all. The cleanup and reaction people failed horribly, and most of them were in govt.

[jbooth]

Citation needed.