Video: Rebuilding from the BP Disaster

It's Time to Implement an Oil Reform Agenda

Jerome Ringo: Today is not a good day. Today is not a good with respect to energy in America. Today we continue to import 70 percent of our fossil fuel energy, and today, this very minute, I live in ground zero where we are hemorrhaging oil into our Gulf of Mexico.

News broadcasters' voices: The gusher unleashed in the Gulf of Mexico ... this oil is really assaulting the shorelines ... it is murder for the animals that call it home.

Dan Weiss: The BP oil spill is the worst environmental calamity in American history. The damage is going to last for years.

Sean Pool: I think there are two main reasons for this disaster. One is a culture of deregulation and of the government having no role in insuring the safety of drilling activities. And two, of course, is BP and their poor risk management.

Ringo: The oil companies were drilling a mile deep. We do not have a margin of error.

Weiss: Recent polls have shown the growing support for comprehensive clean energy legislation that would safeguard oil production, cut oil use, and reduce oil pollution including global warming pollution.

Narrator: So how do we go about implementing such a plan?

Weiss: We need to lift the liability cap so that companies that cause huge oil spills have to pay all the damages, instead of having that limited to only 75 million dollars.

Pool: The people of the Gulf who are hurting right now face immediate bankruptcy if they don't get fair and just reparations from BP.

Ringo: Well, we got to have strict regulations in place that are going to mandate that if they fail to meet the safety requirements there's a level of accountability.

Weiss: Right now, one out of every five barrels of oil that we use comes from countries that are classified as dangerous or unstable by the State Department. We need to set a long-term oil reduction goal of 7 millions barrels a day reduction. In the short term Americans can reduce their use of oil by reducing their use of gasoline. This means biking or walking instead of driving a car, taking public transportation where that's possible, driving vehicles that get much better fuel economies.

James Barrett: In 1987, the car of the year was the Honda CRX. It got 50 miles to the gallon--an internal combustion engine. You go outside, you got the Smart Cars, the cute little things out on the street--41 miles to the gallon. The Prius is rated at 50 miles to the gallon. In 13 years, we have made roughly zero progress. Was it 13? That'd be 23 years.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR): We spend a billion dollars per day on imported oil. That's about three dollars for every American. I have a family of four. Try to picture yourself writing a check every single day, be it to Hugo Chavez or Ahmadenijad.

Narrator: No thanks. But we can implement fees on imported oil. A two-dollar fee per barrel would raise $9.5 billion annually, providing revenue to fund oil reduction policies. But that's not the only way to save money.

Weiss: There's no need to be subsidizing oil companies that made close to a trillion dollars in profits over the last decade.

Ringo: Exxon Mobil makes $1200 a second. There's no reason why these companies can't invest in rebuilding the economy of America.

Narrator: That sounds reasonable, but is it even possible? What can your average citizen do to help?

Ringo: Federal policy is driven, one community at a time, one person at a time, and we all should be anxious to be a part of that process.

Merkley: We need to end our addiction to overseas oil. It's smart policy. It's smart politics.