When an ocean of black oil comes ashore

To my mind, CNN anchor T.J. Holmes best summed up the situation when he said on his Sunday-morning spot, “They’re really making this up as they’re going along.”

Indeed, they are. Holmes was referring to British Petroleum officials’ vain attempts last weekend to cap an out-of-control oil leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, which, to date, has released an estimated 3 million to 4.4 million gallons of oil into the environment.

BP sent what is best described as a 40-foot-tall bell a mile down into the Gulf to try to plug the leak at a depth where water pressure is two tons per square inch and then funnel oil to a waiting tanker at the surface via a massive tube. But the effort failed.

As I wrote in last week’s column, “We’re drowning in an ocean of black,” we need to switch to clean, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. As we can see, this whole oil/natural gas/coal thing just isn’t working out.

I recently watched Leonardo DiCaprio’s “The 11th Hour.” The film, which premiered in 2007 at the Cannes Film Festival, is DiCaprio’s hour-and-a-half plea to humanity to head in a new direction on the environment. We must use science to rethink our energy-delivery systems — and even our cities. The technology is there, DiCaprio points out. We must first turn our backs on the oil barons and accept a new way of life — and that, admittedly, is easier said than done.

DiCaprio, an Academy Award-nominated actor, philanthropist and boyfriend of more than one supermodel over the years, also happens to be a staunch environmentalist and a longtime supporter of the National Resources Defense Council.

While “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore’s tutorial on the global-warming crisis, might be called a soft sell, DiCaprio’s film hits you like a hammer against the knuckles. It’s clearly intended as a wake-up call, one that’s difficult to watch for even the most ardent environmentalist.