Six lessons from the BP oil spill

In tiny Magnolia Springs, Ala., fire chief Jamie Hinton says he began brainstorming ideas to protect his area's marshlands within days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Colleagues from neighboring cities told him to let the government handle it. "I said, 'Are they going to handle it like they handled Katrina, Ivan, the Valdez?' " Mr. Hinton recalls. "Thanks, but no thanks. The only people I trust are my people."

He has more than 400 hours of hazardous materials training, including booming instruction, but he has something else, too – a deep understanding of what he calls "my river." The waves sometimes reach more than a two-foot chop, so he scoffed when he saw BP workers affix a boom to barnacle-laden pylons with ropes. The wave action severed the stays and the boom floated away.

He found a kindred spirit in Mayor Charles Houser. Together, they decided to block their bay with barges, flanking them with layers of boom. There was only one problem: They'd gotten permission, but when they got ready for deployment, they were told they had to reapply or risk being fined or jailed. They complied, but agreed that if the oil came near, they would act. "Sooner or later, someone's got to do something," says Mayor Houser.

John Wathen, a member of Waterkeeper Alliance, says there's no shortage of people along the coast who feel the same way, but they're being turned away by BP. He says if BP would tap into the Waterkeeper network, which spans six continents, they would find a free fount of knowledge. Instead, even these seasoned environmentalists are having trouble sorting through the bureaucratic quagmire of the Deepwater command.

"It's been an absolute fistfight," says Mr. Wathen. "We know our waters better than anyone. We're not here to sue or condemn anybody. We're out here to protect our watershed and our communities."

He echoes Hansen's advocacy for a trained network of volunteers. Residents could decide which area they'd like to focus on and take additional training in operating skimmers, laying boom, or rescuing and caring for injured wildlife.

"A lot of people are just yelling," says Jen McClurg Roth, founder of Clean the Gulf Now, a grass-roots group. "But it's about coming together and identifying the issues we can change."

6 Recalibrate our energy policy

It has become one of the iconic images of 2010: oil gushing from the floor of the Gulf, almost one mile below the surface, where it mushrooms up from BP's failed drilling rig like clouds of café au lait. The undersea feed from robotic cameras has popped up on national news telecasts and cable shows, during televised congressional hearings and presidential speeches – a potent reminder that for all the talk and technology, man's search for oil is risky and beginning to push the limits of human engineering.

It would be tempting to conclude that the answer is to switch energy sources, to the green alternatives favored by some or the natural-gas and nuclear options favored by others. Tempting and probably not doable. Like it or not, America and the world are stuck with oil for years to come when it comes to transportation. Oil powers 1 billion cars worldwide, 10,000 commercial aircraft, and thousands more ships and trains that deliver our goods, facilitate trade, and keep economies humming.

Nothing can compete with it in terms of price, ubiquity, and ease of use on such massive a scale. "If oil didn't exist, we'd have to invent it," says Robert Bryce, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future."

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