BrianGarst.com

I haven’t surveyed the environmentalist response to the oil spill yet, but one argument I anticipate hearing is that the spill shows why we have to get off oil.  This argument holds no weight, because there is no energy plan that does not involve oil and offshore drilling.  We can go all in on “renewable technology,” build wind farms across the country and solar panels on every building, and we’d still need oil that we would either have to drill offshore ourselves or buy from someone who does.  So I’ll be on the lookout for these utopian arguments.

An important question raised by incidents like this involves who pays for the cleanup. BP says they will pay, as they should.  However, they owe more than just the cost of removing the oil.  They also owe economic compensation to the fisherman whose work they have made impossible, to the cities whose tourism will be devastated because their beaches are covered in oil, and anyone else directly harmed by this catastrophe.