Obama, BP and The Gulf Oil Spill – What Should Be Done?

President Barack Obama used the growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to renew his pitch for alternative energy Wednesday, arguing that the unfolding environmental disaster “gives you a sense of where we’re going” without comprehensive reform.

The federal government is “going to bring every resource necessary to put a stop” to the spill, the president said during a visit to a solar panel manufacturing facility in Fremont, California. “We will not rest until this well is shut, the environment is repaired, and the cleanup is complete.”

But, he added, “a lot of damage has been done already. The spill in the Gulf, which is just heartbreaking, only underscores the necessity” of seeking alternative fuel sources. A failure to enact comprehensive energy reform, he argued, would pose a threat to national security and the economy, as well as the environment.

And this:

The Obama administration, under pressure to act over the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, is expected to announce Thursday that it will suspend consideration of any applications for exploratory drilling for oil in the Arctic until 2011.

The decision is a major blow to Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which had planned an ambitious oil-drilling program in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off Alaska this summer. Shell has been arguing to regulators that its operations in Alaska would face a lower risk of the kind of problems faced by BP PLC in its ill-fated Gulf of Mexico operation.

Is this enough? Not enough? Too much? Do you agree BP should be running the cleanup instead of the government? Given BP is the most knowledgeable on such things, despite never having tested some of their methods, is there a choice? What do you think about suspending drilling? Are you in the conspiracy camp that says the explosion was on purpose to further alternative energy? What other steps would you take?