Peter Bommer

We've come a long way, baby...

The Macondo well may be sealed and "dead," but the impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is going to be felt for some time to come. We're spending the whole hour wrestling with some of the unanswered questions and lingering issues that the BP oil spill has left in its wake. To help us navigate these dirty waters, Robert Hernan, author of "This Borrowed Earth: Lessons from the Fifteen Worst Environmental Disasters Around the World" joins us for the hour.

Also, check out our timeline of the entire disaster, spanning from the Deepwater Horizon's construction in 1998 through when it was declared "dead" on Sunday.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen declared a war on the gusher over the weekend as BP continued its attempts to curb the spill. Meanwhile, a device put in place on Friday on top of the blown-out well is working to collect 10,000 barrels of oil per day. While that's still only a portion of the oil spewing from the well, BP head Tony Hayward says the cap could eventually capture 90 percent of the oil. However, the longterm effects are still daunting.

The BP Gulf oil spill, without question one of the worst disasters to ever occur in our waters, has rightly brought our national energy debate to a boil.  As we consider TV images of oil-sodden marine life and out-of-work shrimpers, we are saddened and dismayed.  This is only natural in the face of such ugliness.  But at this moment, we would also do well to look in the national mirror and see what stares back.

As we consider this mess, the inconvenient truth is that our standard of living – indeed, our whole economy – depends on oil, and lots of it.  We can argue about weaning ourselves off of it or whether we can replace it with a better option.  But the present facts are these - the world burns an incredible 3,600,000,000 (yes, that’s billion with a “b”) gallons of the stuff every day and we, the people of this great land, account for 25% of that consumption.  Our transportation network, our agricultural output, our whole just-in-time way of life depends on the highly concentrated energy found in oil and about this, there is no debate.   It is fact.