What if the BP oil disaster can't be fixed?

BP have started a new and riskier technique to stem the flow of oil from 1.5 km under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Called a "top kill", it basically involves pumping mud at high pressure into the hole to try to weigh down the oil pushing up. Although it has been used successfully on many wells before, it has never been done at this depth (there has never been a problem of this magnitude at this depth before). BP are giving it a 60-70% chance of success. What is not often mentioned is that there is also a chance it could make things worse. It may be a couple of days before it is clear which is the case.

While we're waiting, here are two interesting things to check out.
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Benjamin on progress

"A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress."

- Walter Benjamin, 'Theses on the philosophy of history' in Illuminations.

Image: Klee's Angelus Novus.