Only Rush Limbaugh’s fevered imagination could have hatched the idea that environmentalists caused the Deepwater Horizon oil spill:

RUSH: I want to get back to the timing of the blowing up, the explosion out there in the Gulf of Mexico of this oil rig. Since they’re sending SWAT teams down there now this changes the whole perspective of this. Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day. I remember that. And then it was postponed for a couple of days later after Earth Day, and then of course immigration has now moved in front of it. But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they’re sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they’re sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here.

Really, he said it.

Texas Governor Rick Perry has a different suspect:  God. An observation that has been treated with some derision even in Texas.

While the list of direct suspects is long and includes government regulators, British Petroleum, the actual operators of the drilling rig and Halliburton.

However, it is very clear that all of us who drive cars bear some responsibility here. The fundamental truth is that as long as humanity is in the business of piercing the protective shell of the earth and pulling out oil there will be calamities like the one  currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico.  As Lisa Margonelli of the New America Foundation, correctly, recently wrote in the New York Times: “All oil comes from someone’s backyard, and when we don’t reduce the amount of oil we consume, and refuse to drill at home, we end up getting people to drill for us in Kazakhstan, Angola and Nigeria — places without America’s strong environmental safeguards or the resources to enforce them.”

Yes, we need to stop drilling off the shores of the United States.  But we need to also recognize that so long as we consume oil in anything like current quantities there will be spills somewhere and (not incidentally) we will continue to put dangerous greenhouse gases causing global warming into the atmosphere.

And where do we use oil in the U.S. ?  The federal government reports that the answer is that 71% of our petroleum use is “for transportation” – in our cars, trucks and airplanes.

As CLF noted in our “5 Steps in 5 Years” Climate Vision, the state and federal governments are literally paving the way  towards a car-dependent future by spending 75 percent of our transportation capital budgets on roads and highways and 25 percent on transit.  To be blunt, the old hiker slogan has some truth to it – that “The Road to Hell is Paved.”

So the next time you are in the drivers seat of a gasoline powered vehicle take a look at yourself in the rear view mirror and stop to consider your own complicity in what is unfolding in the Gulf.  But don’t be paralyzed by guilt – take action.  Urge your elected representatives to pass comprehensive climate legislation and to make a massive investment in transit and smart, livable and walkable communities.

Understandably, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (which seems to be the first oil spill to have a Facebook page) has been the subject of intense interest on this blog (repeatedly), in New Orleans (which incredibly finds itself in the cross-hairs of ANOTHER disaster) and in nearby Florida, where brilliant and acerbic environmentalist Carl Hiaasen (buy his books, especially the ones for kids) makes his mark on the subject.

But here is a different angle on the disaster. Consider the recent episode here in New England where a quarter of the population of Right Whales were spotted feeding in an area where whales are not normally found. This reminds us that putting an inherently dangerous activity like oil and gas drilling anywhere in the ocean is like playing Russian roulette with the lives of the animals that live in the ocean and our oceans generally.  A lesson that is playing out among the sea turtles who rely on the Gulf of Mexico as a safe place to reproduce.

So what can we do? The first thing is to not open up even more of our coastline to drilling, especially as part of a climate bill that is intended to protect and restore our environment. But the ultimate answer is to reduce use of , and therefore demand for, oil. And that means, more than anything else, reducing our gasoline consumption. How do we do that? Building smart walkable communities with transit options and using far more efficient cars would be a great start.

We have the seen the enemy and it is us . . . but it doesn’t have to be that way forever.