Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

“The
Spill vs. a Need to Drill” (Week in Review, May 2) asserts, “The
country needs the oil.” It’s a perversely comforting assumption. Surely
we wouldn’t tolerate oil spills and climate disruption if we had
practical alternatives to fossil fuel dependence.

But the comfort is false and dilatory. It diverts attention from
America’s chronic failure to adopt a serious energy and climate policy.

The writer cites an American Enterprise Institute fellow who contends
that clean energy is “decades away.” Many alternatives to oil
exploration—especially greater fuel efficiency—are available and
economical today. Others await an affirmative national policy to
accelerate their development.

What stands between America and a clean energy transition is not
“decades”; it is the fossil fuel lobby’s success in prolonging our oil
and coal dependence by blocking policy reform. The Gulf disaster should
eradicate any lingering doubt about the moral and economic imperative to
overcome that obstacle.

K. C. Golden
Policy Director, Climate Solutions
Seattle, May 2, 2010