We are all shaped by place. In Los Angeles, a city with a huge transplant community, you’ll frequently hear someone has “gone Hollywood” or is so “East Coast.” These are frequently flippant statements but they speak to the greater truth that, no matter where we go, we carry with us a piece of home, wherever home may be. I grew up in Texas, about forty five minutes from the Gulf Coast. Down there, the Gulf of Mexico is more than merely a body of water; it’s a part of your collective consciousness. It’s where we saw the ocean for the first time. It was our first wave, our childhood family trip, our high school weekend get away. We spent an hour in the car, an eternity for a child, driving to the marshes to try and catch a glimpse of a crane, alligator or nutria. We lucky Texans, Louisianans, Mississippians, Alabamans and Floridians know the Gulf and the wetlands it feeds as something magical, something glorious. Well, “Sic transit gloria.”

The town of Eton in southern England is a long way from the American Gulf Coast. Eton is the home town of BP CEO Tony Hayward. Hayward has been the target of a lot of scorn lately; it isn’t every day that the President of the United States implies he’d like to “kick your ass,” or at least that of the company you manage and for which you provide the public face. This comment produced a lot of hand wringing across the political echo chamber on both sides of the Atlantic (even from those who were, presumably, big fans of Dick “Go ‘F’ yourself, Senator” Cheney), but I think President Obama was saying what the citizens of the Gulf Coast were all thinking. Contrast this sentiment to that of Tony Hayward who, according to an interview with USA Today on June 1, said that “There’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do, I’d like my life back.” Bad news, Dr. Hayward, you cannot have your life back and, frankly, you do not even have the right to ask for it back. The fishermen of the Louisiana coast will likely never have their lives back. Even if we completely dismantled BP tomorrow, Dr. Hayward would be able to retire comfortably, albeit in shame, to his stately manor in Kent. The average citizen of the Gulf Coast, living paycheck to paycheck, big catch to big catch, or tourist season to tourist season doesn’t have that luxury. I know that there are many thousands of average citizens who also depend on BP and the offshore drilling industry in general, but the true victims of the Deepwater Horizon disaster will be those citizens who lived in harmony with the fragile ecosystems which are currently being destroyed.

How did it come to this? There is much to be found between the lines of the realistically stark pronouncements of Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen: the Gulf Coast as we knew it is now a thing of the past. There is no putting the proverbial toothpaste back in the tube and we have no one to blame but ourselves and our hubris. Yes, we should hold Tony Hayward and BP accountable for their irresponsible management. Yes, we should absolutely bury Transocean for their third and most tragic oil rig explosion since 2002. We must have justice and when we do it will feel good, no doubt about that, but we have to examine the deeper causes as well. When America wanted to extend its territory to the Pacific, they called it “Manifest Destiny.” When we sought to connect our vast continent and tame the very forces of nature which range it, we spent years building a remarkable array of dams and highways; true testaments to the indomitable American spirit. We have conquered our continent, yet we refuse to rest. American exceptionalism drives us to press on. We seek to plumb the depths of the oceans and in doing so we have become Icarus, flying on wax wings too close to the sun. Technology and determination will never make us invincible; we will never be immune to disaster. As much as September 11, 2001 showed us that we are not militarily invulnerable and inspired a serious introspection (amongst many, at least) about how we regard diplomacy and defense, so must this most recent disaster make us take a serious look at our own limitations. We can punish the malfeasance of the bad actors, of course, and there’s plenty of blame to go around, but that will not solve the problem. If any good can possibly come from this tragedy of unfathomable scale, it must be a serious moment to step back and see our limits. We cannot continue to press inexorably forward. If we intend to make progress that progress must be more Hegelian, more dialectical: our thesis, that of limitless growth, has now run into its anti-thesis with a sickening gush, and we must now find the synthesis that will carry us out of our suicidal hubris.

Next week I am traveling back to my home in Houston and intend to take a day trip to the Louisiana Gulf Coast. I do not know what I will see, smell or hear there, but I do know what I will find. There, in the marshes and on the beaches, I will find the fruits of our boundless ambition, the gooey, foul smelling, tar ball, fruits of our ambition.