“Tom G. Danvers, who works in BP’s Houston office — or should we say, used to work there — really screwed this up for everyone else,” the report’s executive summary stated. The report, which clocks in at 672 pages and goes into excruciating details on all the safety measures and potential causes of the lapse, found that only one person at BP, Transocean or Halliburton has any liability whatsoever.

“Really, everyone involved with drilling on the Deepwater Horizon rig performed admirably, right down to neglecting to run appropriate safety checks,” the report went on. “They couldn’t have been expected to act any differently, given that BP didn’t really require the checks, and the oversight from the US government was beyond minimal. Everything went exactly as it should have. Except for Tom. What a dick.”

Reached at his home outside of Houston, Danvers expressed shock that the blame for a disaster costing 11 lives and billions of dollars in cleanup and lost productivity appeared to come down entirely on him. “I just write copy for our green fuels initiatives web site!” he said. A BP spokesperson laughed when told of Danvers’ reaction, and said: “Not anymore he doesn’t!”

Meanwhile, John Shimkus (R-Ill.) added his two cents: “The uncertainty is just way too high. I mean, tell me what will happen on January 24. Right now. Go. You can’t. Will it snow? NOT IN CUBA, IT WON’T. See? You just don’t know. And if we don’t know what the climate is doing, then it doesn’t exist. Q.E.D.”

Shimkus is among several Republicans maneuvering to become chair of the House energy committee. He added that since we can’t predict exact wind conditions, wind power clearly doesn’t exist either.

But it was in the Senate that the most thorough denials were thrown about, with Kentucky Senator-elect Rand Paul echoing the sentiments on climate change strongly. “Climate doesn’t change. There is no climate. In fact, there is no change. Nothing changes. You know what’s the only thing that actually exists, other than maybe Jesus? The Constitution. It never changes, so it exists.” When told that there is in fact a method by which the Constitution changes, Paul responded “NOT ON MY WATCH.”

That's the country's president. Seriously.

The president of the low-lying island nation of the Maldives helped install solar panels on the roof of his official residence, but then apparently fled the country in the middle of the night. A panicked voice message left with the Associated Press from the president cited the fact that as a country, “the Maldives are totally fucked.”

A day later, the president sent an email from an undisclosed location with a calmer explanation for the timing of his expatriation: “We have some kick-ass tax credits for installing solar panels on rooftops,” he wrote. “So I decided I would cash that in before getting the fuck out of Dodge.”

The Maldives are among the most at-risk nations in the world as the oceans continue their rise due to climate change. Earlier this year the country reportedly ordered a “shit-ton” of sandbags apparently aimed at fortifying their shorelines. With close to 1,200 islands, though, it remains unclear if the shit-ton will be enough. The president, in his email, guessed that he would be only the first of many prominent citizens to leave the country “before we’re all breathing salt water. Seriously guys, get out of that place while you can.”

If you even think for a second about putting a wind farm near my house, I will come to your home while you sleep and beat you to death with your own ornamental stairway railing. I’m not arguing with you about how important wind power is; I just don’t ever want to see one of them within 275 miles of my home. I live in peaceful, quiet country, where neighbors treat each other with respect, where our 6,000 square-foot houses need room to breath, and where the rolling hillsides should not be interrupted by giant white monstrosities whipping their blades around at 1,000 miles per hour. So don’t even fucking consider it.

And I haven’t even addressed my summer home at Cape May. I mean, I’m honestly getting choked with rage right now as I consider the possibility that you might soil my view of the sublime, endless ocean with two-inch high turbines 15 miles out to sea. If I so much as sniff a plan for an offshore wind farm within a week’s yacht ride of that house, you and all your commie, crunchy friends will be hunted down and slaughtered, one by one.

Look, take a lesson from the oil companies: they never tried to foist their energy infrastructure on we well-meaning, humble and hard-working denizens of the country’s top tax bracket. Are there pipelines that could burst into flame near my summer home? Are there giant oil tanks in these pleasant rolling hills around my house? No. You know where they are? Near poor people, of course. So please, renewable energy mavens: keep your turbines where they belong, or I will feed your face into a high-powered ceiling fan.

There are plenty of ideas out there, like… you know what? Screw it. We as a species can’t handle this sort of deferred gratification, so why bother trying? I mean, whenever I read about those experiments with three-year-olds turning down the prospect of two cookies in fifteen minutes in order to eat one now, I immediately side with the kid. Who knows what will happen in 15 minutes? I might be hit by a bus in five. You just can’t tell. Give me the fucking cookie.

Similarly, who cares if the planet as we know it will disappear within the next decade or two, killing off countless innocent species and creating a global flow of refugees that will utterly destroy economies and create an even bigger divide between the haves and have-nots. Are there any climate refugees NOW? (Shut up, small town in Alaska. I don’t care about you.) Have sea levels risen and swallowed Bangladesh YET? No? Then yeah, we don’t need legislation or any other plan.

And you know what else? If China isn’t going to enact some strong climate rules, then why should we here in the US? They’ve got, like, 100 times as many people as we do, which totally means they emit 100 times as much carbon dioxide and junk. If waiting for them to act first means destroying the world and possibly turning our planet into another Venus within a few hundred years, then so be it. We had a good run, and we can all blame China as the temperature rises to 800 degrees.

So I’m done mourning the climate bill. This will probably all work itself out anyway. I hear Greenpeace is taking care of it.

“It’s been a long, hard battle,” the environment said. “But this oil spill… man, that was just a masterstroke. I’ll give it to humanity: you guys sure know how to fight dirty.”

The move was met with joy in the coal, oil and gas industries. One spokesperson for Chevron said “Finally, that’s over! So, we’re good to go on the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, right? That’s on the table now?”

The environment said the oil spill in the Gulf was the felling blow, but cited a litany of other protracted battles that had taken too much of a toll for it to continue. “Global warming, deforestation, mass dolphin hunts in Japan… I mean, hydraulic fracturing! Where do you come up with these things?”

Environmental protection groups expressed their regret that their primary concern is packing it in. Mass layoffs happened quickly at the Sierra Club, NRDC and Environmental Defense Fund. President Obama signed an executive order renaming the Environmental Protection Agency the Commission to Plan the Funeral for the Environment.

The environment was congratulatory at the close of the press conference, saying that it had never come up against such an ingenious opponent.

“And now, I’ll just go away quietly. You can do what you want now; well, you already did that, but I won’t complain anymore.”

Though appointed by the President, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson can pretty much go home and do nothing.

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R—Alas.), fresh off her failure to block the Environmental Protection Agency from protecting the environment, has proposed another resolution with a much broader scope: it would block all government agencies from doing pretty much any of the stuff they’re supposed to do. There are indications of bipartisan support.

“Nothing should ever be done by unelected bureaucrats, everything that the government does needs to be handled by us, the elected officials,” Murkowski said during a press conference. “I am proposing that we put the power back into the representatives of the people of this country.” She walked away from the podium before a reporter could finish pointing out that government appointees are appointed by elected officials.

Reactions from the Senate were largely favorable, but calls to some of the agencies in question highlighted some concerns over just what might happen if agency powers are revoked en masse. A spokesperson at the Food and Drug Administration wondered, “Is Congress going to vote to approve every single drug coming on the market? Because that would make our jobs a whole lot easier, actually.”

When told of the resolution, Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner walked away mumbling “they want this shitstorm, it’s all theirs.” Among the other complicated and time consuming jobs that would fall back into the hands of Congress would be reviewing scientific research grants for the National Institutes of Health and approving licenses for nuclear power plants.

“Regulation of pretty much everything is too important to leave to the experts appointed specifically to regulate those things,” Murkowski said. “We members of Congress are more than capable when it comes to every last task the government should ever have, and this resolution would take the unnecessary powers away from government agencies.”

When reached for comment at home, former director of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Mike Brown, said “Seriously? And they couldn’t have done this five years ago? Shit.”

So we at TreeHumper decided to play a little game: Can you differentiate which of the following terms are oil spill-related (or oil rig) and which ones are either a Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude Van Damme movie? Good luck!

(And no cheating by looking at IMDB. All you’ll learn is that Van Damme’s very first acting credit was when he played a character called “Gay Karate Man.” Seriously. Also, I make no claims as to the below movie descriptions’ veracity. They’re probably terrible, so whatever.)

1. Glimmer Man

A. Van Damme movie where he plays someone who accidentally touched a futuristic cloaking device (“NO! The gamma-12 rays are too powerful!”) and now blinks in and out of existence while trying to save the world (and a hot chick with ’80s hair who provides an unexpected nude scene that OF COURSE also features Jean-Claude’s ass).

B. The oil rig worker responsible for monitoring pressure and gas flow into the well, named as such because of the “glimmer” of hope that he could actually alert people in time if a problem arises.

C. Seagal movie involving some Wayans brother or other that is probably supposed to be a buddy cop movie but ends up just being sad.

2. Dead Man’s Switch

A. A secondary safety device meant to shut off the flow of oil between the well and the rig if something bad happens.

B. Seagal movie where he almost gets killed about 17 times but the bad guys never bother to actually just shoot him in the face when he’s down, and he continually is able to revive and beat the shit out of people. Yes, I am aware this describes every Seagal movie. Doesn’t make it wrong, though.

C. Van Damme movie where he trades places with a dead guy whose body is being shipped into the heart of cartel country in Colombia so he can pop out of the coffin and wreak remarkably flexible havoc.

3. Top Kill

A. Van Damme movie where he plays a hired assassin with a heart of gold. He only kills high level and evil politicians around the world, but when he is hired to kill his former mentor in cool assassin skills (flashback montage!) Van Damme has some serious soul searching to do. The mentor has since become a vicious warlord — does Van Damme just kill him, turn down the assignment knowing someone else would do it, or try and reform his former friend?

B. Seagal movie where some evil guys stage a battle royale-style contest for evildoers, mixed with a scavenger hunt. The evil guys have a list of nemeses to assassinate, including do-gooder politicians, CIA agents who thwart their evil deeds, and the like. Seagal figures out the plan and stages his own killing spree, moving up the ladder of evil until he finally is face to face with King Evil Guy (played by… I dunno, Rutger Hauer? Sure) and can finally finish the… Top Kill!

C. Oil gusher plugging effort involving shooting tons and tons of mud into the well to try and plug the leak. This is what is known in the business as a “low-tech,” or “throwing shit at the wall and hoping something sticks” solution.

4. Fire Down Below

A. Van Damme movie where he dies, goes to hell, and can fight his way back against a series of demon-like villains. That’s kinda it. Oh, and the dude who played Chong Li in Bloodsport is one of them, just for kicks. In case you can’t guess, Van Damme beats the shit out of him again, only with his eyes open this time.

B. Strangely relevant Seagal movie about chemical industry jackasses destroying nature as well as Seagal’s friends. Appropriate Seagal revenge/retribution action ensues, nature is saved. Or something.

C. Oil gusher containment method involving a super-hot flame to actually burn the oil up as it leaves the well, 5,000 feet under water. Some chemical mixture or other is brought down there with a robotic submarine and set on fire, and the blaze is able to sustain because it burns at more than 5,000 degrees. This is a temporary fix while relief wells or whatever can be drilled.

5. Replicant

A. Oil rig safety device that diverts gas and oil flow away from the rig through a failsafe pipe in case of catastrophic failure down at the well. Didn’t work. Obviously.

B. Seagal movie where bad guys have created a weapon that not only kills you when it hits, but also remotely infects anyone you’re directly related to and kills them as well after a couple of days. Seagal’s wife’s brother gets hit, meaning he only has two days to get the bad guys and find an antidote. Hurry, Seagal!

C. Van Damme movie where scientists create a good guy clone of Van Damme’s serial killer character. The clone has to try and catch the killer. Hijinks galore!

6. Containment Dome

A. Van Damme movie involving a futuristic prison: all bad guys in 2017 (because movies NEVER go far enough in the future to make us unable to mock them later) are placed inside a giant dome that floats around the world’s oceans. Van Damme is sent there, falsely of course, and he has to fight his way through the hierarchy of bad dudes and find a way out of the dome.

B. Oil gusher solution involving lowering a giant metal structure over the top of the leak in order to reverse-funnel the oil up to the surface. Some badass methane got in the way.

C. Seagal movie where basically the exact same thing as the Van Damme movie happens, only the dome is in the New York Harbor and all the convicts are about to escape and overrun the city. Seagal prevents the apocalypse.

Well, we hope you enjoyed the quiz. I’m off to pitch some of the fake ideas above, because I can totally picture one of those guys making these. And if not Seagal or Van Damme, I think The Rock is available.

ANSWERS:

1. C  2. A.  3. C  4. B  5. C  6. B

Have you ever tried to clean an oily bird? You would think that it would be appreciative, given that it doesn’t have opposable thumbs or access to these nifty oil brushes and washers they let us use down here. Well, you would think wrong. These assholes just want to get away from you, in spite of all your best intentions. They can’t stop squawking and trying to eat various digits, even though they’re dripping BP’s profit margins from every feather.

I’ve tried to reason with them. Please Mr. Gannet, I swear, I am only trying to help. You will feel better without Venezuela’s principal export covering your entire body. But they don’t listen. That gannet pecked my arm so deep I needed stitches. And his fucking beak was covered in oil so it burned like hell and they had to clean the wound incredibly thoroughly before even beginning to stitching process. All that just because I love nature so much.

And don’t even get me started on the turtles. GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR SHELL, JACKASS, I NEED TO CLEAN THE OIL FROM YOUR EYEBALLS. Nope. I’m just going to chill in here, away from the only being in the universe currently trying to save my life.

This oil spill is a tragedy of epic proportions, but usually tragedy brings everyone together. I shudder to think what this pelican I’m trying to clean would be like if I met him under normal circumstances. I mean, if he’s this much of a dick when I’m attempting to remove hydrocarbons from his bulbous neck pouch thing, I can’t imagine I’d get the time of day if I just stopped by to say hello some time. Take note, pelican: your manners suck. Next time you land in some oily water, be prepared to tone it down a notch when the help arrives.