AN ENVIRONMENTAL 9/11

On 15 June 2010 President Obama delivered his first speech from the Oval Office, his topic: how to address the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the wider implications of this ecological disaster for US energy policy. Much like 9/11, this disaster may bring about a paradigm shift in the US’ view of itself and the world.

It is difficult to say just how much oil has been released into the Gulf of Mexico since the BP oil rig exploded on 20 April – early estimates of 5 000 barrels a day were revised upwards to between 25 000 and 30 000, and recently it has been estimated that as much as 60 000 barrels could be spewing into the Gulf of Mexico each day. After a series of failed attempts, BP is now capturing some of this oil (15 000 barrels per day), but most continues to escape into the ocean. BP now has plans to deploy new equipment so that it can capture a minimum of 40,000 barrels a day by the end of June, and a minimum of 60,000 barrels a day by mid-July.

As US citizens receive daily news of dying seabirds, sludge-lined beaches, and BP’s ineffectual efforts to address the disaster, there is a growing sense that fundamental changes are necessary in US energy policy and the impact of economic growth on the environment. A recent CBS/New York Times poll showed that nine in ten Americans think U.S. energy policy either needs fundamental changes or should be completely rebuilt.

President Obama has tried to tap into this change in public opinion to gain support for energy policy reforms, which had stagnated ahead of the COP15 climate change negotiations in December 2009. In his address from the Oval Office, he was careful to frame the discussion of energy policy not only in terms of environmental concerns, but also issues of national security, employment and economic growth, as these excerpts from his speech show:

We consume more than 20 percent of the world's oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world's oil reserves. So without a major change in our energy policy, our dependence on oil means that we will continue to send billions of dollars of our hard-earned wealth to other countries every month -- including countries in dangerous and unstable regions.

And the time has come to aggressively accelerate that transition. The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a clean energy future. Now, that means continuing our unprecedented effort to make everything from our homes and

businesses to our cars and trucks more energy-efficient. It means tapping into our natural gas reserves, and moving ahead with our plan to expand our nation's fleet of nuclear power plants...

But the only way the transition to clean energy will ultimately succeed is if the private sector is fully invested in this future -- if capital comes off the sidelines and the ingenuity of our entrepreneurs is unleashed. And the only way to do that is by finally putting a price on carbon pollution.

To further underscore the importance of the BP oil spill, President Obama has said that, as the events of September 11 had profoundly shaped ''our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy'', so the oil disaster would shape thinking on the environment and energy for years to come.

In the near term, however, Obama faces challenges in pursuing a new energy policy, as Republicans will be reluctant to help deliver a significant victory for the Democrats in the lead-up to mid-term Congressional elections in November. It seems clear, however, that the BP oil disaster will for many years be a key reference point for both U.S. businessmen and politicians in debates on economic growth energy policy, and the environment.