The document we have to deal with is an article from the famous British newspaper, The Economist. It was published the 6th of May 2010. This article is quite pessimistic since the title is “The politics of disaster”. Under this title, we can see a caricature of Barack Obama who seems devastated. He is in the slick with a paper in his hand, the energy bill, whereas a man behind him is holding a dead bird. The energy policy of Barack Obama is considered as “a mess”. As the title of the article underlines the main theme of the text, we understand that this article focuses on the Obama’s current policy in the United States but also on various disasters due to human activity. Indeed in February 2009, the president made a speech to the congress on the economic situation and thus he launched a debate based on the environmental situation, on energies. The main issue of this text is “Is the actual politic of the United States of America a barrier to save our planet from every kind of pollution?” We can also remark that this article deals with lessons to be learned related to American people’s consumption.

The article opens on a disaster which happened in 1989. The “exxon Valdez” was an oil tanker but ran aground into Alaskan waters, thus provoked one of the most important oil spills in the United States’ waters. It was the worst oil slick ever, before 2010. The journalist insists on the fact that this ecological and economic crisis is grave and that it will take a long time to fix. This disaster caused several damage on the environment, as the murder of many species of birds, sea turtle and fishes. But that was just the beginning of the damage on the American coast, as in April 2010 another disaster of the same kind occurred in the American waters, and naturally caused the same negative consequences