Sure, the satirical newspaper The Onion enjoys mocking environmentalists sometimes. But tonight they put up a rather apropos response to the BP spill – Millions Of Barrels Of Oil Safely Reach Port In Major Environmental Catastrophe:

According to witnesses, the catastrophe began shortly after the tanker, which sailed unimpeded across the Gulf of Mexico, stopped safely at the harbor and made contact with oil company workers on the shore. Soon after, vast amounts of the black, toxic petroleum in the ship’s hold were unloaded at an alarming rate into special storage containers on the mainland.

From there, experts confirmed, the oil will likely spread across the entire country’s infrastructure and commit unforetold damage to its lakes, streams, and air.

“We’re looking at a crisis of cataclysmic proportions,” said Charles Hartsell, an environmental scientist at Tufts University. “In a matter of days, this oil may be refined into a lighter substance that, when burned as fuel in vehicles, homes, and businesses, will poison the earth’s atmosphere on a terrifying scale.”

All this is a clever way of underscoring how it is our business-as-usual activities that are actually most threatening to the planet upon which we depend, rather than the accidents and spills that generally get more attention.