Tim GULLA LEDGER STAFF WRITER While I wasn’t yet born when it happened, everyone who grew up in my old hometown was well aware of the Knox Mine Disaster.

The river valley where I grew up was once a hotbed for the anthracite coal industry and several generations of area residents, including a grandfather I never had the chance to meet because of the industry’s bad health effects, had grown up relying on black glass to put food on their tables and clothes on their children’s backs.

But every industry, especially the really dirty ones, have limits.

In 1959, a gaping whirlpool opened up in the Susquehanna River and swallowed up millions upon millions of gallons, flooding the coal mines beneath the ground, trapping and killing miners.

They actually had to dump railroad cars into the whirlpool in an attempt to plug the leak and you can still find film clips of that disaster on various web sites such as You Tube today.

Investigations would later reveal that the river opened up because a coal company took too many chances — it not only was mining too close to the river bed, but it also was “robbing pillars,” essentially taking coal out of the supports that hold up the ground.

While it may seem like a completely different story, I’ve been thinking about the Knox Mine Disaster a lot in recent weeks as the BP oil company makes attempt after failed attempt to fix a new type of disaster blooming thousands of feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

About the same number of people were killed in both incidents, though the ecological effects of the BP oil spill will no doubt be far more costly as once-pristine beaches and wetlands along the Gulf Coast are coated in tar balls.

And while the Knox Mine Disaster rang a death knell for the anthracite industry in my old home town, I wonder if the BP oil spill could do the same for multiple industries in the Gulf, from fishing to tourism.

At the same time, however, as we complain about the mess, about BP, about Washington D.C., and the costs of a disaster like this, I wonder what we’d be willing to give up to ensure we wouldn’t face the same problems in the future.

We once dug deeper and deeper into the ground — or too close to the bed of a river — looking for coal to keep homes warm and factories humming.

We now drill deeper and deeper into the ocean looking for oil, essentially to do the same.

And while the jury is still out on the BP oil disaster, some information has surfaced in recent days that a lot went bad because someone took chances in the pursuit.

I really can’t say what the answer to all of this is. My car doesn’t yet run on solar or wind power and my warmth relies on an electrical outlet connected to Duke Energy.

Electric cars, if they ever become mainstream technology, will undoubtedly require us to create more electricity. That extra electricity could very well come from the wind or sun some day, but right now most of it comes from coal, natural gas, or nuclear fission, all of which requires us to dig up the earth or to drill into it.

Our ever-increasing hunger and thirst for energy means we can’t do without it.

We want it cheap.

We want it now.

We only ask questions and take notice when things go wrong.

Maybe the BP oil spill will finally make us come up with some answers. Maybe this will help spur a real push for alternative and less ecologically costly forms of energy, some of which could be a boon for a new economy.

But I’m betting that won’t happen, at least in earnest.

It didn’t happen after a wrecked Exxon oil tanker in Alaska.

It didn’t happen after the Oil Crisis of 1973.

It didn’t happen after pump prices set new records in 2008.

Maybe we’ll get serious when OPEC announces its oil kegs are officially tapped. Until then the extra costs and growing pains of converting from one form of energy to another, and the government regulations imposed to act as a push or incentive, will make us howl in anger and we’ll demand to keep using what we’ve been using, without asking questions.

And someone in the future will no doubt take too many chances once again.

In the meantime, maybe BP can take lessons from the Knox Mine Disaster. If golf balls and other “junk shots” won’t plug the leak in the gulf, try stuffing railroad cars into it.