It's with great sorrow that I'm reading the news about the mining accident in West Virginia that has taken 25 lives so far. All of our thoughts and prayers are going out to the families of the victims of this terrible tragedy. 

In the days and weeks to come, there's sure to be a lot of hand wringing, finger pointing, and passing the buck around -- in fact, it's already started. 

It turns out the company owning the mine -- Massey Energy -- isn't exactly the safest. According to the LA Times, "Over the last year, federal safety inspectors fined the company more than $382,000 for repeated serious violations involving its ventilation plan and equipment at the Upper Big Branch mine."

Yet the Governor of West Virginia, in the same article, is saying, "you have the federal and the state both doing inspections, and they had to be within tolerance or, you know, you shut them down". 

But that's exactly the problem -- it's not as simple as shutting the thing down. Massive mining companies like Massey spend millions making sure they can ignore the laws or just pay fines. So they run a cost-assessment on the lives of miners and their communities, and chalk the human toll up to the cost of doing business. 

I'm predicting Don Blankenship, Massey CEO, environmental hater, and all around anti-regulation champ will take to the airwaves and somehow blame the environmental movement for this. 

But if this isn't a wake up call that we need a different energy policy, I don't know what is.