Almost two months after the BP oil spill began in the Gulf of Mexico, there are still countless unanswered, yet critical, questions. How much oil is actually out there? What will it take to bring the spill under control? What are the long-term consequences of the dispersant chemicals being used to break up the oil? Can the damage ever be undone?

BP’s lack of transparency is making matters murkier worse. In a recent letter to the company’s Chief Executive Tony Hayward, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen insisted that the government required "more detail and openness from BP" to ensure it was meeting its commitment to restore the Gulf Coast.

What we really need is a new national energy policy weaning us of our dependence on fossil fuels. If we continue to base our economy on oil, then oil is periodically going to spill, as the legendary actor and longtime environmental activist Robert Redford makes clear in this video produced by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Redford, who as a teenager worked with his father in the Standard Oil fields, laments the disaster but says it was perhaps necessary to "wake us up" and to force the "politicians in the government that are in collusion with the energy companies" to move America towards a clean energy future.

The BP spill is an unmitigated environmental, social and economic disaster. Join the NRDC campaign imploring the Senate to urgently support and pass comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation that cuts our dependence on oil, puts a firm limit on global warming emissions and ensures that an accident like the BP spill doesn’t happen again.