Energy & Environment

Set aside the cap-and-trade fight, climate change, the debate over energy sources and how much more dependent on foreign oil the BP oil spill and subsequent moratorium on offshore drilling is going to make us. The question of how this could be allowed to happen in the first place is being answered, bit by horrible bit, and what we are learning is staggering.

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A.B. Stoddard answers viewer questions on whether the GOP will suffer in the midterms because of their support of deregulation of the oil industry following the Gulf oil spill.

It's hard to tell who's whipping up the story that Americans are angry with Britons over the horrible Gulf oil spill.

Is it the media, as the politicians say? Or is it British politicians who want to make a show of defending their constituents' pension funds, as some in the media claim? After all, 18 million Britons are BP investors, many of them through their retirement plans.

Let's be clear: I treasure the Brits. Just like our leaders always say, it's a "special relationship.” Like so many on this side of the pond, I pretentiously mimic their affectations, up to and including calling the Atlantic Ocean "the pond.”

I get a huge kick out of the way they talk, even though they are incapable of correctly pronouncing my name. They can't say "Bob.” No matter how hard they try, it comes out somewhere between "Bub" and "Boob.” And "Pentagon" is "Pentaghin.” Professor Henry Higgins had a good question when he asked, "Why can't the English learn to speak?" Maybe it has to do with their stiff upper lips. But hey, you gotta love 'em.

Get ready for the BP bailout debate. As the most hated company in America led by the most despised CEO in business continues its systematic deceptions about the magnitude of the catastrophe, its systematic secrecy and threats of reprisal against employees who speak the truth in public and its systematic blockade against reporters seeking the basic facts, get ready for the mother of all political debates.

British Petroleum is already showing how it plans to "make it right" for the desperate Gulf-region residents and businesspeople who are drowning in oil. Already, the lifelines are so entangled in impossible procedures and other delays that any rescue will come long after these hard-luck victims have gone under.

In other words, there seems to be much more corporate concern over preserving the financial health of the company than for those who were simply going about their business while the renegade drillers carelessly set off their calamitous gusher. Chances are those life-sustaining businesses will be wiped out while procedural obstacles block meaningful assistance till it's too late.

As White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel once mused, a crisis shouldn't be wasted. The administration has clearly given its blessing to a new push by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to request a comprehensive energy reform bill by July 4. Our report by Alexander Bolton notes Reid is asking chairmen of the committees of jurisdiction on energy and climate to craft legislation that addresses "the unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico" by ensuring that oil companies are held accountable for damages and provide "swift and fair compensation" to those who suffer losses related to the accident.

Now we see the result of Dick Cheney's secret energy task force meetings and Sarah Palin's greed fanaticism of "Drill, baby, drill.” Now we see the truth: If Al Gore and John Kerry had been inaugurated president, our dependence on foreign oil would have been long ago reduced, and the poison destroying our jobs and killing the pelicans on the coast of our nation would not be happening today.

Politics means choices. Governing means deciding. Al Gore has spent a lifetime warning about the polluting and economic dangers of dependence on foreign oil. John Kerry is battling today to wage war against climate change and unshackle the potential of new energy sources. They were right all along. They should have been heard long ago. They should be heeded today.

The entire country is mad at BP, and I join in the frustration — technical problems, mounting since March, weren't warning enough for the greatest environmental disaster the United States has ever seen, and now the CEO is sorry for revealing his pity party; he just wants his life back.

But with criminal investigations under way and lawyers, members of the media and others calculating how much per barrel BP could be liable for under the Clean Water Act, the question of the government's role in offshore oil drilling has been drowned out in the hunger to make BP pay for what it has done.

OK, I am going to leave aside the constant “Drill, baby, drill” refrain, the love affair with oil companies, the anti-environment rhetoric from Sarah Palin and her Fox friends.

My one question to the anti-government Tea Party movement (and Sarah) — to all of you who believe government should just stay out of the way of business, remove those pesky regulations, get big government off of the backs of free enterprise — is: