Over the last four weeks, the conditions in the Gulf of Mexico have declined from bad to worse. Satellite images of the oil spill resulting from the explosion of a drilling rig convey the scope of environmental and economic carnage beginning now to hit our beaches. Our collective indignation will only grow in the weeks and months to come as the oil and gas leaking into the Gulf creates conspicuous damage to marine ecosystems in the open sea and along the coastlines. Some of our fellow Americans will find their livelihoods have disappeared at a time when jobs remain scarce. What has been unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico since April 20 should prompt our outrage. Our indignation will find targets in the corporations that extract and sell the oil, the federal government that regulates its operation, and others. It certainly appears there is ample blame to go around. So let's not miss an opportunity to assign additional blame where it belongs: On me. And on you. We have a collective responsibility for the wasting of areas of Gulf coastline and economy. U.S. consumption of oil has consistently climbed over the last four decades, with periodic (and temporary) declines during recessions. In March of this year, we purchased 19 million barrels worth of oil each day. That translates to over 2.5 gallons per American per day, every day. We consume roughly 25% of the world's oil production. In his 2006 State of the Union speech, President Bush addressed the same. "We have a serious problem," the President said at the time. "America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." Today, we see that instability can be political, and it can be physical, as in the case of fatal explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil platform. We also know that we have lost, not gained, ground in breaking that addiction since 2006. Our guilty wringing of hands or finger pointing won't fix the problem. We wrung our hands and pointed our fingers when the Exxon Valdez spilled 250,000 barrels of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989, but the current disaster now represents a spill of up to 100,000 barrels per day, dwarfing the substantial damage in the Exxon case. Holding parties accountable is important, and it's time we understood ourselves to be one of those parties. And it's time to accept that an economy reliant on production and importation of a toxic substance, associated with regimes whose values in many cases conflict with ours, needs to evolve. What do we do about it? As columnist Tom Friedman suggests in this short interview, we ought to get started by matching the price of oil in the short term to the price of cleaner alternatives, using what could be called an "Economic Survival Tax." Proceeds are invested in clean energy technology, job training and small business lending for the American people. The competitive advantage resulting from each strategy supports economic survival, which contrasts with what some coastal towns will be experiencing in the coming months and years under the status quo. Pundits will discuss the political consequences of how and where voters place blame between now and November. Cleaning up the Gulf – to the extent that's feasible given the sheer volume of oil spilled, and the sea currents and fragile coastal habitats involved – is critical. Still, cleaning up the mess without a broader strategy to transition to clean energy will leave us vulnerable to threats to our economy, our environment and our national security.