This oil spill is not the end of the world. As I've said before here, nature does a lot to clean up these spills.

I remember reading about a mine near my home which used to produce ozokerite, a naturally occurring form of paraffin, which has a relatively high melting point, which was used as a plastic for such things as telephone mouthpieces, before chemists discovered the varieties of plastics which could be made from coal tar and petroleum. Ozokertite is still widely used, but it is produced by refineries as a distillate of petroleum and is no longer mined. The reason for mentioning this is that in its natural state ozokerite came from pools of oil which bubbled up to the surface where they evaporated leaving this black mineral behind. It looks like coal, but it floats in water and can be melted with a match flame, at least sufficiently to show that it isn't coal.

Another thing to consider is this point from an article on how dispersants work:

The good news, if there is any, is that crude oil in itself is largely biodegradable. It is made of dinosaurs, [Not really, but it was made from once living things.] after all, and naturally occurring bacteria and other underwater microorganisms will feed on crude oil and break it down. The trouble (beyond the devastating effects of 11 million gallons) is that oil’s cohesive properties—the same qualities that make oil-coated measuring cups a pain to wash—mean a vast oil slick like the one currently blanketing the Gulf presents very little molecular surface area to the bacteria that would take it down.

What is needed is surfactants and one of those is lecithin, which is used in the food industry to create suspensions like mayonnaise. I don't know if lecithin works on crude oil or is available in the amounts that would be necessary, but chemical dispersants, such as detergents, can do much the same thing, which is why they're used to clean oil-soaked birds and other critters, but even without these, the natural action of waves, currents and tides breaks up oil slicks and eventually, they get broken down by naturally occurring bacteria.

Nevertheless, it's going to be bad for some time, but it isn't hopeless. I just read an article about the ten biggest oil spills in history and the Exxon Valdez wasn't even mentioned.

I'm not ignoring the horror of this thing, but I do think that we need some perspective. We also need better technology before we allow any more wells this deep in the ocean. And we ought to be using the oil shale and coal we have beneath our lands, and quit being lead around by environmental activists with junk science. Keep working toward other sources of energy, but don't cripple the economy, because if we do that, the alternatives will never materialize. You'll notice in all the stories about "green" energy, there are never cost comparisons in terms we can understand, such as "this is equivalent to $X per gallon of gasoline."