Looking back, we know that this has been an accelerating catastrophe from the start. And it will get worse.

Let's review and then look to the future.

The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20 killing 11 people.

Millions of gallons of oil and gas immediately began gushing to the surface.

After an initial estimate of 1000 barrels a day, the Coast Guard told us 5000 barrels a day were being released. i(Wrong. Very wrong. And still wrong).

BP and other companies instantly started blaming each other for the accident.ii

BP said environmental impact would be "relatively tiny." iii(Very very wrong).

BP straight away asked fishermen and others on the initial cleanup crews to waive future legal claims in favor of a $5000 one-time payment. iv(They quit doing that when their self-serving strategy was exposed).

We learned they had failed to include a back-up acoustic trigger device to activate the Blowout Preventer that had failed to stop the gusher as it was intended to do.v

We learned that staff of the US government agency, the Minerals Management Service, had at times literally been in bed with BP executives - and cut them a lot of slack in their license applications.vi

Dick Cheney and the former administration were fingered for having held secret meetings with oil company executives to offer them a "wish list" that would make their lives much easier.viiA "top hat" procedure - lowering a 100-ton containment structure over the blowout - failed.viii

BP took a long time to release any video footage of the gusher, eventually did so under pressure, but some claim it has avoided showing the primary gusher hole to the public - only oil spurting from a broken pipe. And even this has been called a loop.

Independent scientists were quick to analyze video footage and calculate that there could be hundreds of times more oil being spewed into the ocean than BP and the Government were telling us.ix

News coverage was hampered when the US Coast Guard threatened to arrest a CBS film crew. Then access to much of the area was restricted.x

BP started pouring hundreds of thousands of gallons of a product called Corexit into the ocean to hide the escaping oil ias underwater globules - despite the fact that Corexit is itself highly toxic. (The EPA agreed to it, but later insisted on other types being used. BP ignored that call).xi

An early hearing into the disaster was told there had been arguments between on-site drilling engineers and BP executives as to the safety of certain procedures just prior to the blow-out.xii

Within days, huge areas of the Gulf - which supplies 40 per cent of the US seafood market - were closed to fishing.xiiiConcerns were raised that the oil would enter the Loop Current and find its way into the Caribbean and then up the East Coast. (This is obviously unstoppable).xiv

A "top kill" procedure involving pumping a million gallons of slurry down the hole failed.xv

The gusher was being described as a "spill," and then more correctly as a "volcano."

At least 120 miles of coastline has so far been contaminated, despite the deployment of oil containment booms - of which there are not enough.

Clean-up workers began to get very sick - nauseated by the fumes that we've been told can cause brain damage and even death.xvi BP said it was food poisoning. xvii

Numerous law suits have been filed by various parties, and six weeks into the disaster the US Administration started distancing itself from BP with the announcement that criminal charges might be brought against the company. xviii (May be PR spin).

Tens of thousands of people have seen their livelihoods put at risk - or disappear - because of the fishing ban. From fishermen to on-shore handling facilities to trucking firms and restaurants, the impact has been beyond disastrous.

BP started drilling two "relief wells" to intercept the blowout hole and plug it - but they won't be finished till August at the earliest.xix

BP (as of early June) planned another effort at siphoning oil into surface ships. This was to cut the riser pipe and try and cap it or capture some of the oil. Chances of success were put at about 60 per cent by the company - at about zero by others in the industry. It ran into problems early on.xx

Among thousands of suggestions (or rumors) as to how to stop the oil was one that a barge - or even a battleship - should be scuttled and sunk over the mouth of the well.xxi

A bomb - even an atomic bomb - was another suggestion. (Explosives had actually been used in the past by the legendary Red Adair to plug surface wells that had blown out). But the geology of the Gulf sea floor may preclude such an option - or make the problem far worse if it is resorted to.xxii

Late May, emergency medical tents were being set up to deal with continuing illness among clean-up workers.xxiii

Turtles fish and breeding birds started turning up dead or covered in oil as wildlife sanctuaries and breeding grounds became inundated with toxic water and oil.xxiv

Hurricane season officially started June 1 - with 14 to 23 stormsxxv predicted for the next few months. Any one (or more) of them could be strong enough to disrupt drilling of relief wells and other containment operations for at least 10 days. That could potentially see a further quarter million gallons a day polluting the Gulf, the Caribbean and the Atlantic on into September or beyond.

"Insider information" started appearing on the Internet, saying "secret plans" were being drawn up to evacuate millions of people from the Gulf Coast because of the possible life-threatening effects of the oil spill and its poisonous gases.xxvi

The NOAA put out a "fact sheet"xxvii implying that a hurricane could potentially drive the oil slick away from the coast - and that it would not pick up much of the highly toxic underwater dispersant and oil. It did not address the issue of acid rain or what gases released from the well might do to waterways, catchment areas, and city water supplies.

President Obama said things like "the buck stops here" xxviii (which he has said quite often about other issues) while critics said he hadn't said enough - or done enough - without saying what else he might do. Then along came the investigation and the hint of criminal charges. (Which won't stop the oil).

BP has promised to "clean up every last drop"xxix of the oil spill - and has seen billions of dollars wiped off its share market value.xxx It has not yet explained why it did not spend $500,000 on the system that would have stopped the gusher in its tracks - though it uses them in other oil fields outside the United States.

Having reviewed all that, and turning to the future, it can safely be said that this is a disaster of historic proportions and its ongoing effects are impossible to fully comprehend.

Nevertheless, the cloudy crystal ball gives us a hint of some possibilities.

As a transport hub for much of the United States, the port of New Orleans could lose the bulk of its incoming and outgoing trade if cargo vessels must be diverted to other places to avoid being contaminated by surface oil. Perhaps they could be pressure washed before docking rather than have them contaminate the port and surrounding waters, but the cost would be horrendous.

Seafood is either going to disappear from the menu, or become prohibitively expensive - which may be the only thing that will make some people realize what a catastrophe this reliance on oil as energy has turned into.

Health issues far worse than food poisoning are likely to overtake hundreds and perhaps thousands of people as who knows how much gas including benzene and methane makes its way into the atmosphere. The dead zones will no longer be limited to the undersea environment where oxygen has disappeared.

What hurricanes will do to either compound the problem - or clean it up - remains to be seen.

Hurricane season storm surges will certainly carry poisonous ocean waters into vast swathes of the Gulf coastline, destroying the marshes as breeding grounds and killing off the vegetation that holds the marshes together.

On shore, hotels and tourist resorts will suffer immeasurably, though an influx of clean-up workers may stave off the inevitable bankruptcies.

Should the hurricane season and its storm winds turn to acid rain, then as far as it travels agriculture, viticulture, cropping and farming of all kinds will be in jeopardy.

This could include the Rio Grande Valleyxxxi (as but one example) which according to Wikipedia is reliant on agribusiness and tourism. Cotton, sorghum, maize, and sugarcane are its leading crops, and the region is the center of citrus production and the most important area of vegetable production in the State of Texas.

To date, Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico, have been one of the most important areas of oil production in the United States.

Big Oil with its long-standing political connections has called the shots for decades.

The environment, ecology, even human lives have been both ignored, and lost in this endless quest for control of and profit from fossil fuels.

But with so many lives and livelihoods now so obviously at risk, this BP disaster may prove to be the beginning of the end for Big Oil.