I had finally found my passion, the great cause to which I wanted to dedicate my career—environmentalism. The more I read about climate change and the frightening effects it could have on our planet, the more I looked down upon Hummers, coal mines, cow farts, and all other greenhouse gas-emitting destructors.

Then, a major oil and gas company offered me an internship. With about the same level of hesitation that the oil companies might exhibit if offered a chance to set up a harmful but profitable rig in Alaska, I accepted the offer and put cowboy boots on over my Birkenstocks.

There were times when I felt like a black swan. I heard a longtime employee balk at the notion of carrying trash an extra hundred feet just to recycle. I almost laughed when a fellow employee dismissed an idea because “some green dork in California would get mad.” When a speaker asked a group of eight interns how many of us believed in global warming, just two of us raised our hands (an experience I still find disheartening).

Just as often, though, I felt the concern of my fellow employees when I spoke with them about the environment. In agreement with the company’s official position, many recognized the danger of climate change and agreed that something needed to be done (as long as it aligned with their business plan, of course). Some offered empathy to our generation but conceded that they loved their job and the money it brought home. A handful even admitted they were embarrassed by the environmental effects of our dependence on oil.

So why isn’t anything changing? Why is the Alternative Energy portion of the company intranet littered with “Updates Coming Soon” messages but the links to write your local legislator and voice disapproval over climate change legislation are always on the home page? Why is this company investing less than 1 percent of their budget into Research and Development?

What we really need to ask is, “Why has our government done nothing to force oil companies to reinvent themselves?”

(To all of you that just sighed at the notion of bigger government and crumpled up your newspapers, please recycle.)

Imagine that you woke up today to hear that unleaded gasoline would never fall below $4 per gallon. The government would tax however much was necessary to maintain this floor price.

Here’s how it might play out. My driving habits would change overnight, and so would yours. The oil companies would freak out and devise business plans to truly become energy companies, by utilizing their resources to develop efficient bio-fuels and explore new sources of power (Electric cars are the future; oil companies are in the perfect position, with their great geologists, to use geothermal resources to generate electricity.). With this drop in oil demand, we would cut our ties to Saudi Arabia and other dangerous oil-producing countries. We would hold our position as the most powerful nation in the world and lead the way toward saving the planet.

Perhaps equally likely, there would be chaos, high food prices, a steepened recession, and a lot more hillbillies making their five-year-old children hold up signs saying they are being taxed too much.

There are probably other reasons why the above proposition is implausible. I won’t pretend to have any of the solutions when it comes to running the government, but it seems clear to me that our nation cannot progress if we maintain our current dependence on oil.

After staying in the homes of families whose lives revolved around oil and enjoying my summer in a town that would be nothing without petroleum, it is truly hard for me to promote legislation that could cripple our oil and gas companies. After all, these companies donate millions of dollars to charity, bring in revenue to Oklahoma and, for the most part, contribute less pollution than many other industries. The biggest environmental damage comes only after we get our hands on the products they make.

As it is with other harmful dependencies, though, there is no way to end the users’ addiction without costing the dealers. We used regulation in the tobacco industry to help save the health of our people; why not use a similar strategy in the oil industry to save the health of our planet?

As hard as it is to suggest such things, it would be much more difficult to promote government inactivity that would lead to our great grandchildren inheriting an Earth-wide natural disaster.

TJ Moen is an industrial engineering junior.