Lessons From the Disaster

The LA Times today published a great editorial regarding lessons learned (or lessons that should be learned) from the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Here are a few excerpts:

"Last week’s oil rig disaster should remind us that expansion of the environmentally risky practice is not the way to go.

Here's what we've already learned: Offshore drilling is more dangerous than industry apologists claim (11 men are believed to have died in the explosion), and it can have environmentally devastating impacts.

This kind of environmental tragedy isn't unprecedented — a similar rig explosion happened last year off Australia — and we'll probably be seeing it more often if Congress expands drilling off U.S. shores. There's a better way of using our coastal resources to generate energy. On Wednesday, the Obama administration approved the country's first offshore wind farm, a 130-turbine project off Massachusetts that is guaranteed never to foul beaches with tar or emit carbon into the atmosphere. Cape Wind is the future; the sunken Deepwater Horizon drilling rig represents a tarred past."