The Bright Side of BP

Some of you may come here to hear unorthodox viewpoints. Well, here's my take on the BP oil spill:

If this enduringly kills "drill, baby, drill" sentiment, then greater and wider peril will be averted (albeit at tremendous cost to our friends in the Gulf Coast). A large number of merely horrendous disasters wouldn't have been sufficient. But now we've reached critical mass, and that required something this big and this awful.

And if this disaster serves as a tipping point for wider environmentalism, and inspires a really serious push, finally, for the development of alternative energy sources (there's been some serious push already), that would be one heck of a silver lining in the long run.

It's often observed that society doesn't mobilize unless there's some catastrophe. Well, we've had our catastrophe. And we are addicted to oil, and all addicts must hit bottom before they clean up. In both respects, a bottom point was necessary, and it looks like we have ourselves a great big flashy one, with absolutely no wiggle room for thinking otherwise. And that's exactly what we needed (with, again, apologies to our friends on the Gulf Coast, who oughtn't have borne the brunt of this).