Vomiting Crude: British Petroleum, You and I

As a sense of doom casts an oily shadow over a large section of the American coastline from Lousiana to Florida and beyond, the bottom line is all the fault does not start and finish with the failed equipment of British Petroleum.  The uncontrolled gusher spews close to 200,000 gallons of crude oil into the sea every day. Disaster looms.  Forgetting for a moment the 11 rig workers that were killed in the initial explosion,  we now have an environmental and economic disaster of epic proportions looming with enormous threats to the fishing and shrimp industry, marine mammals, fragile ecosytems, beaches, marshes and summer tourism. The situation has eclipsed the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.  We are entering the worst case scenerio phase--- and a time of veiled hypocrisy. Yes, it was a failed BP well that punched the coast in the gut and continues to vomit crude. But it is you and I and our hungry cars and fishing industry boats and our insatiable appetite for what was once called Black Gold that fuels the need for BP and other companies to drill and drill.  This is not the time to Drill Baby Drill. It is time to get our act together and curb our oil desires. The same thing the nation said back in 1989. Easier said than done.