From 'The Fix: Dirty Energy's Undue Influence in American Political Life'

Deep Pockets.

With their deep pockets, oil companies have purchased loose safety regulations, slack oversight and support from key lawmakers. Last year alone, the industry spent a $168 million on lobbying—$16 million of which came from BP. The blowout on the Deepwater Horizon is a symptom of that undue influence.

Decades of Spills.

We've seen massive spills on a regular basis for decades. Santa Barbara, 1969 (marring 35 miles of coastline and polluting rich marine environments); Brittany, 1978 (67 million gallons, polluting 200 miles of coastline); the Exxon Valdez, 1989 (spilling 10.8 million gallons and polluting 1,100 miles of Alaskan coastline). In some places we're still cleaning up oil that spilled decades ago.

Big Oil Looks out for Itself.

I know what it's like to have a job that depends on towing the line. I worked in the oil fields when I was a teenager, and my dad worked in the accounting department of Standard Oil.…Long after I left the oil fields, I felt outraged by the way oil companies advertised themselves as conservationists.…We need to stop buying into these fictions, and the BP spill is our reality check—a reminder that the oil industry looks out for number one in the Gulf, in the Arctic and in Washington.

Learning from our Mistakes: Clean Energy Now.

Unfortunately, we seem to have learned very little over the last forty years about the risks of offshore oil drilling, and we keep repeating the mistake. But if there were ever a time to learn from a disaster and make better choices going forward, this is it.…We need to create high-tech, 21st century jobs in energy efficiency and renewable energy. We need to do that for the sake of our environment and for the sake of our economy as well as the safety of our workers.