Gulf oil spill is a signal to embrace clean-energy policy

By Fred Krupp

We rarely see them coming, the moments that crystallize public opinion on matters of enormous national importance. President Reagan at the Berlin Wall, or tobacco executives testifying before Congress that nicotine is not addictive.

I believe we are now witnessing another one, a gushing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The spill threatens one of America's most productive fisheries, as well as working men and women who depend on it. The toll on the Gulf's wildlife populations is potentially catastrophic. People's livelihoods and entire communities are at risk.

Here's the lesson of this moment: Fossil fuels come with a price far beyond what we pay for gasoline or our utility bills. It's time to move toward a cleaner energy future.

The bureaucrats in Beijing and Brussels couldn't be happier than to see America sitting on its hands while our addiction to oil costs us clean-energy jobs.

The price of fossil fuels cannot be measured just in the $1 billion a day we send overseas for imported oil - though that itself has a devastating impact on our economy and national security. It also must be calculated by asthma rates, tons of smog, and the mercury in our lakes and rivers.

And we haven't yet seen the ultimate cost of carbon: catastrophic climate change that could threaten the world with heat waves, sea level rise, and mass extinctions of wildlife species.

The benefits of moving away from fossil fuels will be undeniable - even the minority of Americans who haven't embraced the science of climate change agree on the goals. We'll be a more secure America when we end our dangerous dependence on oil imports, often from countries hostile to our interests. We'll be able to compete with the Chinese job creation machine. We'll reduce the air pollution.

Let's give American entrepreneurs and workers a green light to create technologies that generate clean energy and use energy more efficiently.The U.S. can lead the world in these technologies. But we must move quickly. Last year, China spent $2 for every American buck devoted to clean energy, and its lead is growing.

I want these jobs kept here in America, and I want to export these technologies to China and Europe. The best way to do that is to pass an energy independence and climate bill in this session of Congress.

In years to come, we'll look back at the Gulf oil spill as the crystallizing moment that finally propelled us to act.

Fred Krupp is president of Environmental Defense Fund. Comments: www.edf.org