As British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon continues to gush millions of gallons of crude oil into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the temptation to ban deep sea drilling for oil now and forevermore is growing.

None of BP's fixes for this catastrophe have had any appreciable effect on stopping it, oil slicks seem everywhere, tar balls have hit the pristine beaches of Key West and may head up the Atlantic seacoast. The spill promises to exceed the ecological impact of the Exxon Valdez in 1989 and possibly exceed the gross volume of all oil spills in history.

It seems like an environmental Armageddon and Greenpeace, other environmental whacko groups, and green politicians must be mobilizing for an all-out effort to pre-empt any future, similar disasters by agitating for a cessation of all off-shore drilling just as they have campaigned against on-shore drilling.

The chief problem with that approach is that if the United States chooses to bet its future and continued existence on renewable sources of energy-solar, wind, and geothermal-we might as well roll over and play dead now rather than wait another generation.

For better or worse, oil is the lifeblood of America and of the rest of the industrialized world. We can rant and rave all we want about the Gulf disaster but those alternative sources better serve as political points than as viable solutions to our petroleum needs.

Even as Western European nations quietly bemoan the Gulf situation, they're moving ahead for their future by developing and building nuclear power plants while America falls farther and farther behind in energy self-sufficiency, thanks mainly to environmentalist objections and governmental stupefaction.