OPINION: Disasters reframe the energy debate

Dale McFeatters is a senior writer for the Scripps Howard News Service.

The blowout at a sunken offshore drilling rig, if indeed it takes 90 days to cap, is on track to be the worst oil spill in our history, surpassing even the wreck of the Exxon Valdez and far exceeding the 1969 Santa Barbara, Calif., spill that led to the moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration. The explosion and fire that precipitated the blowout killed 11 oil workers.

That followed by 15 days the worst U.S. mining accident in 40 years, an explosion that killed 29 miners in West Virginia. Critics blamed less-than-zealous enforcement of the mine-safety laws, rooted in the George W. Bush administration's bias against government regulation.

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill, gushing at 5,000 barrels a day, quickly took on a political dimension, too. The government's reaction brought unwelcome comparisons to the Bush administration's slow and ineffectual response to Hurricane Katrina that the Obama White House was quick to discount.

In a phone call to the five Republican governors who surround the spill, President Barack Obama promised "to use every single available resource at our disposal." He called in the Navy to help and dispatched the secretaries of Interior and Homeland Security and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to the scene.

Democratic environmentalists were quick to recall the signature "Drill, baby, drill!" chant at the 2008 Republican convention and note that Sarah Palin is the party's best-known advocate of unrestricted drilling.

But it was Obama who in March - and to general approval - lifted the long-standing moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration on the Atlantic coast and the eastern Gulf. Although the administration was a long way from awarding leases, lifting the moratorium is now on hold, pending an investigation into the cause of the Gulf spill and recommendations to prevent another one.

And the spill is threatening an administration-backed climate-and-energy bill that calls for expanded offshore drilling.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), said he will try to kill the measure if that provision remains, and separately said he would introduce a bill to block Obama's plan to again award offshore leases.

Taken together, the oil spill and the mine disaster - along with the most recent mine accident, in Kentucky last week, which killed two - are harsh reminders that our demand for energy has costs. And in an unfortunate bit of timing for fossil-fuel advocates, the spill came just as the Interior Department announced that it would allow a private developer to go ahead with the nation's first offshore wind farm, near Cape Cod.

But for all the talk of solar, wind and biofuels, these will be marginal players; we will be overwhelmingly dependent on oil, natural gas and coal for the foreseeable future. And to extract them as safely and cleanly as possible will require standards, inspection and enforcement.