Oil? Bull.

To quote loud-mouthed, furniture-throwing investments guru Jim Cramer, “There’s always a bull market somewhere.”

In other words, the glass is always half full; it just requires creative thinking at times to see where opportunity lies.

It’s easy to be disheartened watching media coverage of continued devastation and waste in the U.S. Gulf Coast. However, I got to thinking: Perhaps this oil spill is ultimately going to be like World War II in a (hopefully less destructive) way.

It is widely accepted that manufacturing increases for the war effort, plus President FDR’s social programming, helped lift the U.S. out of the Great Depression. Maybe war on an oil-soaked Gulf will help the U.S. recover from the media-dubbed Great Recession.

Imagine thousands of unemployed people put to work cleaning beaches and giving oily wildlife a Dawn (dish soap) bath. It could be a government and BP sponsored program. BP’s gargantuan financial penalties could fund the program. Funding would be administered by the government while know-how would be directed by BP.

Green economics, reducing fossil fuel usage, and lowering carbon footprints are in vogue right now. Oil, the catalyst that has driven the robust economy of the past may be just the catalyst that drives us into new transportation technology: Imagine the engineers and scientists put to work discovering new energy. It may be cleaner, safer nuclear, or a way to harness wind energy without tall, ugly turbines that don’t make much power.

Aircraft, spacecraft, and automobile—these mass-transit industries are what have made America great. To delete even one entity would be seriously compromise progress in this nation and it’s standing as a world leader. But I envision a day where these things won’t run on oil. Maybe what I envision is a utopian society. But like I said before, I hope oil is the very thing that drives America into recovery, progress, and a less oily future.