It is not Obama's Katrina.

To make the case that the federal government should do more to plug the hole, one would have to suppose that the government, which does no offshore drilling, can instantly marshal more technological expertise than those who routinely do.

Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster of immense proportions. But hurricanes end. This disaster has been growing in gooey severity each day (with hurricane season approaching). And this president has reacted as forcefully as he could — as if there is federal as well as corporate culpability, as if lives have been lost and livelihoods, economies and environments are endangered.

Send in the National Guard. Check.

Mobilize other resources to divert, disperse, protect and clean. Check.

Press BP to plug the hole. Check. Press some more. Check.

Set up a commission to get at root causes. Check.

Launch an investigation into whether laws were broken. Check.

The federal government has responded. But it's clear that the heaviest burden for response — plugging the hole — has necessarily rested with BP and the other corporate entities involved in the Deepwater Horizon rig's operation.

No, the federal government's major failing here is not about response. It's about pre-sponse. Which is to say that the flaws and troubles of the Minerals Management Service charged with regulating such drilling were well known before Barack Obama assumed office. Obama inherited an MMS too cozy with the industry it was supposed to regulate and inept when it regulated in any case.

Fixing this was Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's charge when he was appointed. Yet even under his and Obama's watch, this was still done too haphazardly. Splitting the agency in two, as Obama is contemplating, likely will help but is much belated.

But it appears also that BP might have pressed forward without proper regard for safety and the potential for environmental disaster. If your fail-safe explodes, what does this say about your plan?

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert's asserted the other day: "If a bank is too big to fail, it's way too big to exist. If an oil well is too far beneath the sea to be plugged when something goes wrong, it's too big to be drilled in the first place."

That's one extreme. U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul in Kentucky provided another. He invoked the "sometimes accidents happen" rule a little too cavalierly recently.

Herbert is closer to the mark. But there is danger here in both overreaction and underreaction.

Yes, the spill is a clarion call for the nation to pursue an alternative energy future, but, unfortunately, even if the nation embarked on that path today, as if it truly meant it, it still will need oil for awhile and it's better that it come from domestic sources than foreign.

Safely.

But imagine where we'd be today if we had properly absorbed the lessons of the oil crisis of the 1970s. It turns out Jimmy Carter was right.

"We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us," he said in a televised speech in 1977. "Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the president and the Congress to govern."

Different context, but as a nation, we did not react appropriately enough back then. New context, but we should not make the same mistake today. Underreaction can rob the country of a prosperous future. Moreover, it could have us failing to absorb another big lesson: the need for serious regulation.

No resource extraction is risk-free, but it's the federal government's job to make sure these risks are kept to acceptable levels.

Eleven workers are dead, and this spill is the worst in the nation's history. BP successfully installed a containment dome late last week but says that, in even the best of cases, seepage will continue. And, even if the spill was capped today, immense damage has been done.

What's ahead?

Though he has since put a temporary moratorium on this, the president in March announced opening up large portions of the American coastline to oil and natural gas drilling. He said at that time that he was doing this to satisfy domestic energy needs while protecting natural resources.

Such confidence in the oil industry now seems quaint. This new drilling should not go forward unless the federal government can ensure proper regulation and that fail-safes are really fail-safe.

Canada and other nations require relief wells in, at least, Arctic drilling. We're told that this Gulf spill won't be capped completely until BP completes its relief wells in August. So why aren't these relief wells routinely required in U.S. offshore drilling?

The federal government has been tardy in one respect when it comes to its response. The rig exploded and sank on April 20. It is now June. About 47 million gallons had spilled as of late last week. Yet the president spoke his most forceful words on Wednesday on an alternative-energy future. It's a message he must continue — to get Americans to realize the impact of profligate oil consumption and to pressure Congress to get serious about energy and climate change.

"We have to acknowledge that an America run solely on fossil fuels should not be the vision we have for our children and our grandchildren," he said in a speech in Pittsburgh. He said it's time to "accelerate that transition" to a "clean energy future."

In truth, it's past time.

REPRINTED FROM THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL.