Accidents waiting to happen?

I travel annually to the California coast and am always slightly unnerved by the number of oil drilling platforms that pepper the coastline from LA to Santa Barbara. My concern was what would happen if one of the platforms broke and the oil just pumped into the ocean given that many of the platforms were easily within a mile of shore.

Whenever I brought it up to Californians they just shrugged their shoulders and moved on to the next topic.

So when the Oil Rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and caught fire some 50 miles from shore in the Gulf of Mexico last week I was terrified that my worst fears were to be confirmed.

It is interesting how little coverage the oil spill was initially given on the news in the UK -perhaps because the rig is owned by BP? The televised news started to be more interested yesterday and even the Daily Telegraph got involved, running an article which began by rubbishing the claims by environmentalist groups that this was a catastrophe.

Its' tone changed however three-quarters of the way through the report admitting that "sometimes nature cannot cope". They went on to say that it's unfortunate that this is happening in the spring as it is the peak spawning time for fish, bird nesting and migration. Then the clincher: "And the timing is dreadful for President Obama, who just this month opened up vast areas of US coastal waters to oil exploration".

First of all I am really worried if even the Telegraph thinks this could be an ecological disaster. Secondly, I love the way they manage to blame Obama.