Editor,

Seeing the environmental disaster that is the Gulf of Mexico BP oil spill on television makes my heart cold.

Sometimes I feel that we, as a human race, don’t thoroughly plan for all the eventualities that can occur as we attempt to find ways to sustain our unsustainable modern existence.

We’ve had Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez and now we have BP’s ruptured oil well.

I believe that unless human beings try to find a more ‘natural’ type of existence we shall be the cause of widespread extinctions of both global flora and fauna.

And eventually, I fear, we shall be the last creatures we drive to extinction. Just look at issues of climate change and ozone depletion.

These two things are totally caused by man’s endless greed for newer and shinier things. Let’s keep things simple.

Do you really need that gas guzzler? Do you need that huge house? Do you need to vacation in Mombasa? I don’t think so. Just because something is possible doesn’t mean that it is right.

I mean, I’m sure that deepwater oil drilling looked like a good idea for BP at the time. And I’m sure that the wells they had worldwide gave them a tidy profit.

However, I’m pretty sure that the BP executives wish that they had totally ignored that temptation; especially now that the US government is demanding billions of dollars from them as compensation. 

Sadly, while the monetary cost of the spill will be tabulated, the costs to the marine ecosystem will never be revealed.

Kimihurura