Costs and benefits

A nagging feeling of futility hit me the other day when the final fines and fees were levied on BP for its part in the Gulf oil spill.  $18 billion sounds like a lot of money, but to hear advocates of the Gulf of Mexico tell it, the money is the proverbial drop in the bucket of what a real cleanup would cost.  A smaller spill off the coast of Santa Barbara in California will probably require more money than the total worth of the company which caused it.  Maybe it is time to reassess the costs and benefits of moving petroleum around the country.  If even minor spills rack up hundreds of millions in damages and major gushers like the BP fiasco are virtually incalculable shouldn't we be taking these costs into account?   Especially when clean energy sources are becoming steadily more competitive and reliable and don't increase the climate change effect the way fossil fuels do.  Do we want to keep knocking the tops off mountains in West Virginia and putting our water resources in danger to squeeze the last drops of oil and chunks of coal from a protesting earth?