Gulf Coast Disaster.

As the Deepwater Horizon crisis continues to unfold it is becoming ever more apparent that this could be an environmental disaster on a scale that we have never had to deal with before. The oil industry has a huge repertoire of technical know how and it is quite likely that the leak will be capped eventually but by that time the damage, both environmental and social, may be beyond repair. This is not a matter of cleaning up a few seabirds and compensating some fishermen; at risk on the Louisiana coastline is a habitat, an economy and a way of life that can never be replaced. The truth is that America is now waking up to a reality that the people of the Niger Delta have had to live with for years - the ability of Big Oil to wreck peoples lives. The one place where we can be sure that the impact will not be felt, not in any real sense, will be in the boardroom of BP. We should all look long and hard at what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico because I fear that as oil is extracted from ever more difficult terrains, I fear that it is the shape of things to come.