Being in the knowledge that British Petroleum was to announce the outcome of their attempt to plug a blown offshore oil well this week, this newspaper’s leading article last week asked whether the ecological disaster will change our world.

British Petroleum announced yesterday – as our front page shows – that the top kill method had failed and they are now going to go back to robot submarines.

We will not head into the realm of witty analogies to music as we did in the last leading article, as it has now got more serious. Six weeks ago, an offshore platform blew up and oil has been spewing out ever since.

BP has already tried to use robot submarines to fix the problem, but it has been to no avail. They then tried to lower a concrete dome over the ruptured well and this also failed. They then tried to slip a pipe down the ruptured vein which apparently “yielded a disappointing 3.4 million litres of oil”.

To put it into context, 3.4 million litres was deemed disappointing because it is estimated that between 68 and 150 million litres have so far leaked out into the sea. They then tried top kill, which means pumping mud and junk down into the gusher, but after a number of days they have given up.

President Obama has termed the disaster and failure to deal with it as “heartbreaking and enraging”. Of course it is. And we agree. Wildlife is being killed off in their thousands and God only knows what is going to happen when the 70-metre (and growing) slick of oil makes landfall.

What one cannot understand is that while this is one of the biggest ecological disasters the world has seen and will have untold repercussions on millions of people – everything seems deathly quiet. The UN is quiet, the WWF is quiet, the EU is quiet… even Greenpeace has been quiet.

Is this because all tacitly know that if BP cannot get this next attempt to work – the world will be irreparably damaged for ever? Many argue that it is only BP that has the expertise to fix the problem, so it is best to let them concentrate on it. Perhaps they are right. But at what cost? BP has said the only way to safely guarantee the extraction of the oil is by drilling a relief well – but this will not be ready until August. In three weeks we have a seen a slick grow to a size as big as European countries. What will happen if nothing can be done until August? Will the Atlantic (and at some point Europe’s western shore) be taken over by it? Satellite images show the sun’s rays bouncing off the spill and reflecting back into space… Oh what have we done?

The US has put a moratorium on well drilling for the next six months and has also ordered other offshore platforms to stop extracting oil. However, here in Malta we have plans to dig another offshore exploratory well. While one can never dispute the financial rewards of striking oil, after seeing this slick, one can equally never dispute the risk to our environment in doing so.

The only way we are ever going to be sure to stop polluting and bleeding our planet to death is by getting over this addiction to fossil fuels. It cannot happen overnight. But we really must do more. They say that necessity is the mother of all invention. Well… a viable and alternative method of generating power has become one such necessity.