The Road Not Travelled

Ethics Daily has posted an essay by Wendell Griffin about the environment disaster taking place in the Gulf of Mexico. He speaks a truth that most Americans are still reluctant to hear:

All of this should point the nation back to its rejection of President Carter's effort to redirect the way we use energy and the sources for our energy. Carter was defeated in 1980 by Reagan, whose distrust of governmental regulation helped chart the course for U.S. energy over the past 30 years. Dead birds and fish increase and more land, water and people are threatened with each passing day because of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Yet the oil industry remains unwilling to admit its environmental arrogance and incompetence and is still somewhat unchecked by governmental lawmakers and regulators. This is the "small government" reality Americans chose with Reagan in 1980, along with Reagan's affable invitation that we embrace what we should now realize was free enterprise idolatry.

American energy policy, one result of that idolatry, now has tar balls washing ashore along the beaches of the Gulf Coast. The families of killed and wounded workers on the Deepwater Horizon platform struggle with tragedies that will never be undone. We face years -- if not decades -- during which the waters of the Gulf will be unsafe for fish, water fowl and humans. In the words of the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, "the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved."