The Gulf coast oil spill "is an epidemic, one that we will be fighting for months and even years," President Obama grimly reported last night in his first Oval Office speech. After visiting the coast for two days, the president's speech showed a passionate man out for BP's blood and aching for progressive environmental reform.

The president will be meeting today with BP's chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg to discuss the oil spill and what BP needs to be doing to stabilize the environment and socio-economic factors the spill has caused. This meeting will go over the environmental reforms needed from BP, including the mobilization of additional equipment and technology as well as the financial obligations the oil company has to the business owners and workers of the Gulf coast. President Obama said he will "meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company's recklessness."

Although nothing can make up for the 60,000 barrels of oil being pumped into the Gulf each day, BP will be required to set monetary assets aside to help the workers and business owners who lost tourism profits due to the oil spill. The account will be set up and administered by a third party company so as to watch BP very closely.

The passionate and patriotic man we saw on TV last night might have something to do with the response he received when arriving at the coast. The crowds were littered with picket signs with words of wisdom, to feelings of thanks, to passionate declarations calling the president useless. Surveys found that more than half the country thinks Obama is doing a poor job taking action against the oil spill. Even more than that says he is not being harsh enough with BP.

This knowledge might have spawned the commitment to environmentalism the president made in his speech, along with his promise to make BP "pay for the damages their company has cost."

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Melissa Rubin