We can drive away, but we can't hide. Not from some pretty harsh truths. The fact of the matter is, BP was just doing what every other oil company does, taking big risks to find the oil that we absolutely demand they find for us.

Just think back to 2008 and the chant of "Drill Baby Drill" at Sarah Palin rallies. Think back a little farther and there are those horrifying gas prices from the summer of 2007. $5 a gallon gas, anyone?

We are an energy hungry people. And our need for energy is spurring industry to provide it, and thereby risking the environment. Here in New York, the natural gas of the Marcellus Shale has been touted as a lifesaver over the next decade or so. But with this energy comes a risk to a precious resource: drinking water.

For example, 17 million people depend on the Upper Delaware River, which, because of its proximity to the shale drilling, has been listed by environmental organizations as America's most endangered river.

Increasingly, though, our feelings about such issues come down to just how much it will affect us directly. Someone else's drinking water? Who cares. Oil-tainted seafood in the Gulf of Mexico? Not my problem. Fill 'er up and hit the road.

Are we that selfish, that blind, that jaded?

Well, the fact that oil companies, like BP, have been pushing the very limits of technology, drilling oil wells a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico — and into a complicated geological formation with a number of "problems," such as abundant natural gas mixed in with the oil — is something that we likely didn't know about, and certainly didn't worry about. There weren't any massive protests on the beaches of Louisiana, were there?

Nor did we bother to think about the fact that the regulatory agencies tasked with protecting the environment — and, by extension, us — are either ineffectual, or are actually in the hands of the very industry they're supposed to be regulating. As long the oil keeps coming and the price of gas stays "affordable" we, the Great American Public, turn a blind eye.

So now the Obama Administration is going to get tough with BP. They may even file criminal charges. Is this really anything more than scapegoating, when BP is but one example of a runaway gusher of corporate malfeasance?

Deep water drilling will be off the table for a while, but then oil prices will rise again and it'll be back — because once gasoline again hits $5 a gallon, our energy-glomming civilization becomes unviable.

In the meantime, we have this massive disaster on our hands. We're learning, like BP, that it's very difficult to manage a disaster a mile beneath the surface of the sea. It may take months to stop the flow of oil. Physics professor Michio Kaku of City College in New York said today that the oil could gush for years.

If the worst case scenario comes to pass, more than the seafood industry and the doomed wildlife of the Gulf coastline will have been impacted. There will be a lot of oil from this spill on Florida beaches, New Jersey beaches, Long Island Beaches, and even heading across the Atlantic ocean on the Gulfstream to wash up on European beaches, plumes of toxic sludge riding the global currents to who knows where.

And, while this environmental atrocity is unfolding a thousand miles away, destroying livelihoods, beaches, wetlands, fishing grounds, marine mammals and millions of birds, let us all remember what's going on right here, in our own region.

Can't we clean up the mess we have before we embark upon creating another?