The other day, President Obama got around to conceding that the ongoing under-sea oil leak in the Mexican Gulf is America’s worst environmental disaster ever.

The President has decided to make the BP Company the scapegoat — insisting that the company must “pick up the tab” and “set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of the company’s recklessness.”

Were they reckless?

Had they not been given permission by the relevant government agencies to deep-sea drill offshore?

These agencies — the Minerals Management Service or whatever — may have been the “reckless” ones.

Such a conclusion would not suit the politicians. Government agencies are not cashed-up corporations capable of being milked to pay millions (billions?) of dollars in damages claims.

If the agencies were acknowledged as the ultimate villains, the taxpayer would end up funding the pay-outs.

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What about trying to stop such a leak ever happening again?

The Democrats have imposed a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling.

The Republicans are angry, claiming that the move will prove “job-destroying”.

Of course you could argue against laws banning female circumcision on the grounds of job-destroyingness.  Or any laws banning anything.

Some jobs are not worth preserving.  Some jobs are, in fact, anti-social non-jobs.

Will there be an America-wide and world-wide groundswell of opinion insisting that we start phasing out the use of fossil fuels? Really phasing them out.

Probably not. But there should be.

* * *

In one’s private life one can start personally reducing fossil fuel use.

Grow your own food. There is no earthly reason why a small backyard cannot produce most of the vegetables, eggs and fruit a family needs.

What you cannot grow, either don’t eat it – or at least buy it from local growers.

Barter with your neighbours. Swap and share God’s creatures – compost, mulch, earthworms etc.

Whenever you buy foodstuffs grown in Asia, Britain, South Africa – even interstate – you are an accomplice to the sinful waste of the burning of fossil fuel to transport them.