The now infamous Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, tragically killing 11 workers, on April 20. Amid the understandably growing tension over the looming environmental catastrophe, the arguments and incriminations now predictably center around money and where a lot of money is involved, common sense is sometimes elusive.

Making sense out of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, first and foremost, the tragedy is the loss of the lives of the eleven workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig, the tragedy is the growing list of casualties in the animal world, including dolphins, turtles, birds and the entire ecosystem along the four US Gulf States and the tragedy is the livelihoods of the thousands of people in the area who make a living from the sea. If Hurricane Katrina was Mother Nature's scourge, this is Mankind's follow-up. And how.

What exactly is going on in the Gulf of Mexico? When there are reports of media blackouts, then the natural reaction is to start investigating, and in the current environmental catastrophe, the more stones one turns, the more horrific the potential scenario becomes. While scare mongering is as pointless as it is dangerous, the truth remains that the media have the duty to inform.