Ann Friedman on how a headline-dominating oil spill should catalyze big changes in the way we power our country and regulate corporations:
Much of the hard work of progressivism is to make the personal political — encouraging workers whose wages have stagnated to see the need for unions, making women who experience workplace sexism more aware of the need for feminism, helping not only the uninsured but those who worry about their health coverage to appreciate the need for industry — wide health-care reform.
It can be even harder to make the political personal. Americans’ insatiable appetite for petroleum is what necessitates riskier extraction methods like deepwater drilling. But do most Americans — who don’t live on the Gulf Coast and are watching the oil spill from afar — really connect this environmental disaster to their own energy use? When they turn on the air conditioning this summer, will they picture crude gushing into the Gulf and birds slick with oil? Will it be enough to overcome their immediate fears about providing for their families in this economy and convince them to support carbon-pricing and stricter industry regulation?