As I write this, BP engineers are claiming the Deepwater Horizon relief wells will soon be completed, but it is painfully clear that this catastrophe will haunt the Gulf of Mexico long after the leak is finally plugged. Now we must turn to the hard work of restoring the Gulf and repairing the energy policies that led to this disaster.

NRDC’s president, Frances Beinecke, is playing an important role in that process. In June, President Obama asked Frances to serve on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. The appointment is a testament to Frances’s tireless efforts to advance sound oceans and energy policies. To protect the independence of the commission, Frances will not be involved in NRDC’s work in the Gulf or on related oil and energy issues until the six-month investigation has been completed. NRDC’s oceans, public health, energy, and communications experts, meanwhile, remain fully engaged in the Gulf.

I traveled there in July to observe firsthand the scale of the damage. The BP disaster has left profound destruction in its wake, and the only hope for restoring the Gulf’s marine life, economic vitality, and cultural traditions is to grasp how we got here. To this end, I have written a book with NRDC’s Bob Deans, and with input from across the organization, that seeks to understand this catastrophe and the lessons it holds. In Deep Water: The Anatomy of a Disaster, The Fate of the Gulf, and How to End Our Oil Addiction details how the stage was set by years of steady erosion of public protections and the weakening of government oversight.

Most important, the book demonstrates that the Deepwater Horizon disaster is the tragic result of backward-looking energy policies. It lays out a national strategy that will, over time, break our addiction to oil, strengthen our economy, and make our country more secure by moving us toward cleaner, safer, more sustainable sources of power and fuel. Back in July, the Senate abandoned for now the clean energy and climate legislation that would have moved America farther down that path. But NRDC will keep fighting for comprehensive legislation and will insist that tools already in the nation’s arsenal -- such as state climate initiatives and the EPA’s authority to reduce carbon -- are vigorously deployed. We will also advance new solutions, such as a national transportation bill that promotes cleaner mass transit options. And we will continue to help restore the Gulf and ensure that a disaster like this never happens again.