The BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf

The BP Oil disaster in the Gulf is a wake up call. I urge you to develop a plan to move our nation beyond oil in the next 20 years.

Mr. President, please remember that I voted for you as I say what I'm about to say. This disaster is your fault. Your environmental oversight organization waived BP so that it did not have to submit a drilling plan for approval prior to drilling one of the deepest wells off our coast. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that, as a result, BP never developed a drilling plan--why should they? They knew that they could count on you to take it out of OUR hides no matter how badly they screwed up. Like every bloatedly wealthy corporation, they knew they could count on you to turn their private disasters into public burdens. Why should they care about how many Americans they injure or kill? Why should they care about how much destruction they wreak on the environment for countless decades to come? Uncle Sugar will come to the rescue with our tax dollars--their profits will hardly suffer, and I'd bet a paycheck that the CEO and the other corporate officers get their usual multi-million-dollar bonuses at the end of the year while you look the other way. You have made it clear that there will be no penalty from you beyond a stern look. What a shame that your sweet little daughters will likely never see the rich diversity of wildlife that used to thrive off the coast of Louisiana. What a shame that maybe even our own mid-Atlantic beaches may become spoiled. My parents' home in North Carolina is likely to be affected--they live off a canal that leads out to the Atlantic, and predictions state that the oil will easily reach Cape Hatteras, which is not far from where they retired.

One disaster like BP's is too many. Didn't we learn from the Exxon Valdez disaster, from which Alaska is still recovering decades later?

The time for bold, visionary leadership for a clean energy future is now.