Paul Chesser writes in the Washington Times:

The BP rig explosion has caused the greatest oil mess in U.S. history, and eco-activists are puzzled as to why they can’t exploit it to advance initiatives such as climate-change legislation. “It’s hard to imagine a more useful disaster,” wrote two Washington Post environmentalist reporters, noting a squandered opportunity.
Could it be because we’ve heard similar alarms before? We were told in past decades about the pulled pin on the overpopulation grenade, an impending ice age and a nuclear-caused scorched earth. Photos of starvation and Hollywood “Day After” productions accompanied the ominous predictions.
More recently, we’ve been lectured about so-called hazards such as fossil-fuel-caused global warming, mountaintop coal mining and hydraulic fracturing to reach natural-gas deposits. Smokestacks and drills interchanged with unaltered woods and wildlife conveyed approaching doom, thanks to human corruption of the planet.
But now the Homo sapiens are tired of the blame, not to mention the photoshopped images that falsified many of the accusations. Coca Cola’s polar bears seemed more real.
The Post reported that while the BP leak concerns everyone, public reaction reflects a desire to address our oil-exploration problems so we can continue to access and use fossil fuel resources, as opposed to the environmentalists’ “end it all” plan.
“People’s outrage is focused on BP,” said Yale University public-opinion researcher Anthony Leiserowitz. The spill “hasn’t been automatically connected to some sense that there’s something more fundamental wrong with our relationship with the natural world.”
Missing those signals, environmental extremists want to use the disaster as an excuse (once again) to modify human behavior via forced curbs on greenhouse gases.

The rest here.