OIL ON OUR HANDS    

June 28, 2010

I did not personally cause the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and yet, as an American, I feel partially at fault for this tragedy.
The greatest share of responsibility obviously belongs to British Petroleum, which should never have drilled a well it did not know how to plug in an emergency. The fault is not theirs alone; the U.S. Department of the Interior's regulators and inspectors appear to have colluded with BP and other oil companies on setting safety measures.
Whether this partnership skirts the boundaries of incompetence has not yet been determined. In essence, it is also a philosophical issue: How much government regulation of private enterprise is too much?
The answer in the case of the Gulf oil spill couldn't be clearer: Barack Obama's administration should have investigated much more deeply their predecessors' approval and regulation of deep-sea drilling. This was not done, and now we are suffering the consequences.
Also, Obama's response to this particular disaster was not appropriate to its gravity. While no one wants a leader to lose emotional control, for several weeks Obama did not act with the haste that the situation demanded.
Even more frustrating is the government's unpreparedness for this crisis, forcing it to leave the solution in the hands of the very company that caused the problem. Apparently, no one who works for the U.S. government knows how to plug wells drilled in the middle of the sea. This abdication of responsibility is absurd -- the equivalent of telling a pyromaniac to put out a fire he just set ablaze. We have learned very little since the disastrous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
When I see the often-played video of that torrent of oil gushing into the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, my first impulse is to change the channel. Still, the oil keeps flowing, and the responsibility, in part, is mine.
That crude oil now painting our beaches black was being brought to the surface to fuel my car. The American lifestyle depends on it, and that's why we are all ultimately responsible for this accident. If you are a consumer of gasoline, you are implicated in our collective sin.
Of course, I could always ride a bicycle to work, but it would take me five or six hours each day to complete the round trip. I could also use the public transportation system, but Miami's bus service is a disgrace; it would take half a day of circling the city on those inefficient buses to reach my destination.
So I admit it: I have no choice but to use my car and the fuel that is pumped from the bottom of the sea by enterprises like BP.
Maybe what frustrates me most about this ecological crisis -- the repercussions of which might be with us for decades -- is that it hasn't become an opportunity for radical change. President Obama has not used this unique moment to permanently alter the way we travel and live.
A new gasoline tax would reduce our reliance on motor vehicles, and the billions of dollars generated by the tax could fund the development of new technologies. But there is no political will in Washington for a new tariff since midterm elections are only five months away.
And what about alternative energy sources? The sun and wind are inexhaustible, clean sources of power, yet we haven't gotten the most out of them. I also can't quite understand why hybrid cars -- powered by a combination of electricity and gasoline -- haven't been aggressively promoted by the government as a step toward the goal. Could it be that government regulators are in cahoots with automobile manufacturers, just as they seem to be with oil companies? Meanwhile, I can't believe we must wait until August, if we are lucky, to put an end to this tragedy in the Gulf. Try as I might, I cannot forget the image of that billowing stream of oil. And with every gallon of crude released into the sea, our shared responsibility keeps growing.

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