“What the hell did we do to deserve this?”

That’s the question BP CEO Tony Hayward posed to fellow executives in London.

Perhaps it could be explained by the 760 safety violations his company received during the past three years. (By comparison, ExxonMobil received just one.)

Maybe it was rushing the Deepwater Horizon project in the face of troubling test results. It’s possible that deepwater drilling is still too dangerous and current technology inadequate to safely conduct.

Or it could be that it was a mistake to expect techniques for spill mitigation that have failed for the past 30 years to work this time. By BP’s admission, oil from a spill in the area could be expected to reach shore in 30 days. Yet they had no booms or other diversion equipment in the area to deploy readily.

Whatever answers eventually emerge, we have serious choices to make. Experts agree that the easy, cheap oil has been found and extracted. Now oil companies are moving into arctic areas and deep water locations where expensive new technologies must be developed and perfected.

Petroleum companies have shown great interest in recovering and profiting from that oil, but next to none in the technologies needed to limit the damage from spills and blowouts. Surprisingly, considering their opposition to federal bailouts, Republicans are arguing to continue limits on the oil companies’ liability for the damage their negligence causes. That would put taxpayers on the hook.

Reliance on unproven, ­expensive technologies to supply our energy needs merely delays the inevitable. We are simply running out of oil.

A report issued this year by the United States Joint Forces Command said, “By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 MBD [million barrels per day].” That would be more than 10 percent of consumption. When demand exceeds supply, prices soar and shortages start to affect our economy. Anyone who lived through the gas shortages of the ’70s will not want to go through that again.

It’s our responsibility to take alternative energy seriously. Developing wind, solar, biomass, nuclear and other solutions must become our focus — as concentrated in time and effort as for any major crisis we have faced. Such a series of projects will require a partnership between government and private enterprise — and serious federal outlays. The challenge is enormous and too important to leave to the whims of the market.

It would be a mistake to regard this new “Manhattan Project” as nothing more than a cost. On the contrary, developing such remarkable new technologies will create new industries and millions of new jobs. If we do it right, most of those companies and jobs will be right here in our state and country. Alternative energy could be the driver of America’s future economy.

As for the “drill, baby, drill” crowd, consider this: The U.S. produces only 12 percent of the world’s oil and consumes 24 percent of it. Given our total reserves, we would exhaust our national supply (including ANWR and offshore sources) in under three years if we used only our own oil. Then what? Is this a rational policy?

We are learning, painfully, the cost of offshore drilling, the results of stripping our regulatory agencies of their ability to control risk, and the power of huge multinational corporations to shift the risks from their activities to us. Mr. Hayward’s question is a good one, but he’s the wrong one to ask it. We Americans should be asking it.

In fact, the ones who truly deserve an answer to the ­question they can’t ask are the millions of fish, birds and other animals currently dying hideous deaths in the Gulf of Mexico. If you’ve seen the ­photos that BP has been trying desperately to keep away from our media, you know the face of tragedy.

You should be asking why the oil containment effort in the Gulf has been so disastrously inept. The people deploying the booms have no idea what they’re doing, the supplies they need are not available, and BP is spending much more money defending their bottom line than America’s coastline. You should be outraged that BP has announced $10 billion for dividends this year in the face of the mounting costs they’re incurring.

For those who think that this is a local problem for the Gulf States, there’s this: The National Center for Atmospheric Research has published a map which suggests that ocean currents will likely put BP oil on the beaches of the Outer Banks sometime this summer.

Democrats believe that energy independence depends not on extracting every last barrel of American oil at any cost, but continuing and dramatically increasing this country’s commitment to clean alternative energy sources. Success will free us from foreign sources and provide new industries to employ our workforce. Too, reducing our carbon use will substantially help reverse climate change.

We are convinced that time is short and the price of failure is simply unacceptable. We cannot afford any further delay. Ten-dollar gas is not that far away.

Jim Heim is chairman of the Moore County Democratic Party. Contact him at democrat@heim.us.