with which the tragedy has been salivatingly reported by environmental correspondents. Boy, there's nothing they like more than a juicy oil spill: all those moving pictures of tarry seabirds (though of course a manatee, if you can find one, would be better); all those political cartoons to be published captioned "the price of oil"; all the column inches to be filled with heart-rending accounts of just how much damage will be done to the "fragile eco-system". Can we please get a sense of perspective here? Of course the tragedy is a disaster for all who have been exposed to it. We all feel as sorry for Lousianan shrimpers and beach cafe owners and birdwatchers as we would for the victims of any tragedy -- be it terrorism or a horrible train crash. But the idea that there is any bigger ecological moral to be drawn from this is as poisonous as it is stupid. You might as well argue the next time there's a big motorway pile up: "Right. That's it. The time has come to ban forever this wheeled death machine we call the motor car!" We need oil. There is no substitute for it. It tends, increasingly, to be found in remote places where it is harder to drill. Sometimes there will be accidents. This is why oil companies like BP make so much money: it is a function of the risks they take drilling for the stuff and of the intense global demand for this vital resource.