Greenpeace

Two years and one month ago, James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute and the leading authority on global warming, wrote that we have “at most ten years” to drastically change our ways if we are to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.

Dr. Hansen wrote to a nation still in shock from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast in the late summer of 2005.

Three years after Katrina and two years after James Hansen’s warning, we seem to have learned nothing from either the storm or the scientist.

Another storm, Gustav, gathers strength over the warm waters of the Gulf as residents of likely landfalls collect important papers and keepsakes and head inland. Behind Gustav, tropical storm Hanna approaches the Antilles and an unnamed tropical low pressure system forms off the west coast of Africa.

But it’s not just hurricane season: it’s political season too. Candidates and their surrogates create their own masses of hot air in convention cities. The Republicans – whose candidate John McCain has been traversing the nation shouting, Drill Here! Drill Now! – announce in one breath that they may postpone their convention if Gustav’s havoc is as severe as feared.

In the next breath, Mr. McCain names Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. The GOP hopes Ms. Palin will contrast Mr. McCain – female vs. male, young vs. old, governor vs. senator – but when it comes to energy all she wants to do is drill, drill, drill.

The Democrats are not much better, as Barack Obama says he would support some offshore drilling in exchange for other, undefined environmental protections.

Is it possible no politician understands that drilling, mining and burning fossil fuels stokes the storms that rip into America’s southern coast?

Is it possible they don’t realize the other perils of offshore drilling, either? There are over 400 oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico that are threatened right now by Gustav. At best, the storm (and Hanna behind it) will cause a temporary interruption and another spike in the price of gas. At worst, the storms will cause oil spills and ruin among the rigs – and resulting energy prices may bankrupt working families all through the winter, while the oil spills themselves would harm wildlife and devastate ecosystems.

And still the call from across the political spectrum is, “more offshore drilling.” More rigs in the Gulf? Or off the coast of Florida, or the Carolinas, also favorite targets of hurricanes? Or off the earthquake-prone coast of California?

America is addicted to oil. Our addiction is making the planet uninhabitable. The cure for an oil addiction is not to seek more places to drill for it. The economic and environmental instability caused by our oil addiction can only be cured by changing the way we find and use energy.

We need to use far less energy and we need to generate it with clean, renewable sources. Many nations are ahead of the United States in this regard. They are more than willing to help us catch up. All that is required is the vision and the will to do better, both in our leaders and in ourselves.