Energy Extremism.

• Position: Essay

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In his June 15 address to the nation, President Obama called the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced." But this is more than an environmental disaster--it is a civilizational crisis, in that it constitutes a shock not only to the environment but also to the nation's political, economic, and energy systems.

The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster represents a shock to our political system because it has exposed the degree to which government agencies had colluded with Big Oil in disregarding environmental and safety regulations when drilling in the deepwater Gulf. It also revealed the government's total inability to cope with a catastrophe of this scale and complexity. True, Obama inherited many of these problems from his predecessors, but he did nothing to overcome them after taking office.

The Gulf leak represents an economic shock on many levels. First, of course, is the loss of business by the fishing, tourism, and oil-services industries in the region, reckoned in the many billions of dollars. Claims for these losses and other cleanup costs--along with possible fines and civil penalties--could force the collapse of BE one of the world's largest private corporations. If some of the worst projections of ecological damage prove accurate, the costs of restoring the Gulf's fragile coastal areas--and vital barriers to hurricane storm surges--could exceed $1 trillion.

Most of all, this is a shock to our energy system. For the first time, it lays bare our growing reliance on what I call "extreme energy"--fuels derived from geologically, environmentally, and politically hazardous sources. At one time, our civilization rested on access to "easy energy"--oil, coal, and natural gas from easy-to-reach reservoirs on land and shallow coastal waters and located in friendly, stable countries. But most of these reservoirs have now been depleted, and so we must rely on supplies acquired from hard-to-reach deposits in deep waters, the Arctic, complex geological formations (like shale rock), and distant war zones (like the Niger Delta region of Nigeria). It is this reliance that underlies the Gulf of Mexico disaster and fuels the political and economic dimensions of the crisis.

Obama alluded to this aspect of the crisis in his June 15 address. "For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered," he explained. "After all, oil is a finite resource. We...