Ellington

If you were looking for meaning and purpose here in the 21st century—a "future" many of us thought would already be full of flying cars and Rosie the Robots—well, here it is: clean energy.

The future is windmills, solar panels, geothermal and maybe even safer nuclear plants. It's household compost, citywide recycling, backyard gardens, local farms, walkable neighborhoods, bike lanes, regional train networks and electric vehicles. It's lower-impact sewers, showers, air conditioning, lighting and electronics.

It's time to make fundamental progress in the way we generate, consume and think about energy. Now.

If "Drill, Baby, Drill" corporate conservatism is an oil tanker, then it has run aground twice in the Gulf of Mexico this summer. First, the BP "oil gush" catastrophe means we don't have to wait for willful naysayers to reach "consensus" with the rest of us over global warming—BP has created a immediate, dramatic, human-error case study against "crude" energy for the world to see, regardless of global warming.

Second, BP has seriously scuttled any remaining argument that "deregulation" is a one-size-fits-all solution to economic growth. In light of this tragedy, it's become abundantly clear that you can't pair loose-to-no oversight with the high-profit stakes of something like undersea oil drilling. Things that are hard—like underwater drilling—need to be closely regulated by smart, powerful regulators in the future.

It may even end up being true that there are some risks not worth taking.

And when corporations and regulators fail us, the attorneys will step in. Gulf Coast politicians may find "tort reform" slow-going over the next decade or so as the entire economy is forced to dig out from under BP's mistakes. They deserve to be sued relentlessly—not apologized to—for what they're doing to Gulf Coast livelihoods in pursuit of their own profits.

Subsidizing unclean energy with deregulation, tax breaks, liability caps—even full-scale war—is no way to run a future. It is time for every single one of us to take responsibility for our own energy footprint and for the energy policies of our nation.

By the way, this new Apollo Project has jobs and growth—and presents an opportunity for the U.S. to lead the globe, while leaving it in better shape for our children. All it will require is a little fundamental Americanism: a tireless supply of ingenuity, hard work, courage and community spirit.

We're still capable of those things, aren't we?