Ten years ago this week, a drilling rig called the Deepwater Horizon exploded 41 miles off the Louisiana coast, setting in motion the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. Eleven men lost their lives, more were injured... When all is said and done, BP and its partners will have forked over well north of $50 billion in cleanup costs, settlements with individuals and businesses in Gulf Coast states and criminal penalties for damages to natural resources... The oil companies, in fact, have done very well in the decade since the spill, and until the recent price drop, and the crimp the coronavirus has put in driving, stood to do even better... Therein lies one of the nasty little ironies facing the friends of coastal restoration. So far, their only dependable financing model has been the revenue from the catastrophic spill, but the BP money won’t last forever. One thing the state had been counting on is a steady stream of money from offshore oil leases... Which implies a robust oil industry, which in turn means more risk of offshore spills and more emissions of climate-forcing emissions from automobile tailpipes, which in turn means more sea level rise... One more argument, if any were needed, to wean the country off a carbon-based economy.