I feel about as helpless as you over what we’ve allowed ourselves to come to because of our dependence on oil. Here it is day 54 in this and no end in sight.

I’m angry at BP right now, but that’s not enough to put a stop to this. There is no telling what we have all destroyed in the Gulf of Mexico to support our lifestyles.

I’ve been thinking about what I can do. You can’t look anywhere online without seeing calls for boycott and how boycotts don’t work. Then it dawned on me that there is something that BP can do.

It’s called BP solar, and it’s an opportunity for BP to help break us from our dependence on oil and coal while also becoming the world’s leading supplier of solar solutions. Here is where BP stands on solar today:

BP has been providing solar power for more than 35 years and shipped its 10 millionth module in 2009. The business is constantly evolving and today our focus is on increasing our competiveness and our share in residential, commercial and the emerging utility markets. We are committed to providing high quality systems with low lifetime costs. The long-term nature of BP’s business provides customers with assurance that they can be supported through the life of the system, typically around 25 years.

Our solar module sales were 203MW in 2009, primarily in markets such as Germany and the US where uptake is encouraged by policy-makers. We are also participating in emerging solar markets such as China, Italy and several countries in the Middle East. Sales grew by 25% in 2009, despite a challenging global market in which sales prices fell by around 40% and newly installed capacity was less than 2008.

BP can do this by tapping into its massive quarterly profits and commit to heavy subsidies for residential and commercial solar panels starting with the Southern U.S. states immediately affected by BP’s irresponsible mistakes. This shouldn’t come at the expense of making our environment whole again, but it should be in conjunction with a commitment to reducing our dependence on oil.

Helping provide cheaper and cleaner solar energy for transportation can dramatically reduce our dependence on oil. Solar solutions will also help reduce our dependence on coal and protect our nation’s interior from the kind of devastation we saw in 2008’s 1 billion gallon coal waste spill in Tennessee and ongoing mountain top removal throughout the United States.

Transitioning our nation to solar could go a long way toward redeeming the BP brand as a responsible energy leader.