Oil spill off Louisiana coast

Current Events Environmentalism
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The purpose of bringing up Exxon was to show the potential futility of taking claims to court against a mega corporation. In order to protect one’s rights and property, relying on the court system after the fact would seemingly give such mega corporations more rights than individuals. Trying to sue a company like Exxon, which had clear liability beyond dispute, was an exhaustive ordeal. If you’re lucky you might get a settlement offer, which almost assuredly will be far below the actual damages, but at least its money in hand.

If anyone wants to read the link describing the litigation and how such lawsuits usually go down, be my guest. If you prefer to live in a dreamworld where courts magically bestow even-handed justice and that money plays no factor in an attempt to claim damages, you can do that too.

Fascism is precisely the national control of corporations and economic activity in general the current administration is aiming for

If you read up on fascism you will find that in order to qualify as fascism, something has to have just about ALL the elements of that ideology. You can’t just pick out the ones that seem to match with your thesis. What about extreme nationalism, totalitarianism, ethnic purity, suppression of dissent, cult of one supreme leader, etc?

What are you talking about? The Supreme Court ruling I linked you to was made in 2008.

The original case was argued in the early 90’s. All the subsequent appeals were about the punitive damages, not the actual damages, which were figured in the original case.

I also don’t believe any of those ridiculous numbers.

The average income statewide for fishermen may be closer to $65,000 according to this site, but it may be different for the fishermen of Prince William Sound. It is a $11 billion industry up there. Fromthissite:

After the spill, the average annual income of a salmon seiner went from $176,500 to less than $88,250, according to the trustee council. In 1992 and 1993, earnings hit a new bottom, the lowest in 15 years. By 1999, average earnings had made a comeback, reaching $130,000, per the council’s figures.

Regardless, they made pretty good money. The problem is the debt load of many of the fishermen was tremendous, to pay for permits and specialized boats. No compensation for that.

I just find it curious that you are are so willing to side with Exxon versus the individual fishermen, many who’s lives were clearly destroyed by Exxon’s transgression. Why not take the blinders off and read for yourself what happened to those people? If you think anyone was even close to compensated for their actual damages you just aren’t paying attention or are being obtuse. Don’t you care about individual rights?

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If you read up on fascism you will find that in order to qualify as fascism, something has to have just about ALL the elements of that ideology. You can’t just pick out the ones that seem to match with your thesis.

A quality specific to fascism (as indirect government control over corporations is) is a fascist quality.

Fromthissite:

I’d love to go all out, but it’s not a poorly written article. For a college girl working as an intern there, that is. Still, she is a liberal activist (her twitter has the always witty "Oh, Faux “News.” observation), and I have about as much reason to trust her random numbers as I have to trust yours.

The average income statewide for fishermen may be closer to $65,000 according to this site, but it may be different for the fishermen of Prince William Sound. It is a $11 billion industry up there.

Right. It currently is an 11 billion industry, and they are fishing that much out of the ocean, in current money. In all of Alaska. I assure you that figure was far smaller before the Exxon Valdez accident, which did not affect the entire state of Alaska, which ash the longest shoreline among all the states. What evidence do you have that the damage to fishing was greater than 300 million?

Regardless, they made pretty good money. The problem is the debt load of many of the fishermen was tremendous, to pay for permits and specialized boats. No compensation for that.

Exxon didn’t take their money for those permits, Exxon shouldn’t give it back.

I just find it curious that you are are so willing to side with Exxon versus the individual fishermen, many who’s lives were clearly destroyed by Exxon’s transgression.

It was an accident, not a transgression. A transgression is an intentional act. And I am siding with the decision of the Supreme Court, which I found to be lawful an objective.

Why not take the blinders off and read for yourself what happened to those people? If you think anyone was even close to compensated for their actual damages you just aren’t paying attention or are being obtuse.

I have read the Supreme Court decision explaining why the victims were in fact properly compensated, as per US law. I challenged you to point out their factual errors, and I still would love to see evidence of any. You don’t have it, the best you could come up with after three pages is an article by a liberal college girl, and a series of logical fallacies and insults.

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I’ve read the Supreme Court decision explaining why the victims were in fact properly compensated, as per US law. I challenged you to point out their factual errors, and I still would love to see evidence of any. You don’t have it, the best you could come up with after three pages is an article by a liberal college girl, and a series of logical fallacies and insults.

You insist on evading reality by intentionally not understanding why thousands of Alaskan fishermen were not adequately compensated, people who received a fraction of their actual losses, and doing so by essentially saying “Well the Supreme Court ruled this way so it must be just.” I can bet you have haven’t even bothered to find out why so many fishermen were devastated. The court had every legal justification for ruling the way it did, but in the end is justice served? Ask the plaintiffs who died before they got money, or the plaintiffs who were stripped of their livelihood through no fault of their own. You have no answer for this, nor do you seem to even have any curiosity about it. You seem to be celebrating your own ignorance with respect to why it is very difficult to sue a large corporation.

I’m at least somewhat encouraged that no one posted any agreement to your assertions here, which probably means you’re an outlier here in your unreasonableness. My bad for not recognizing this sooner.

Have a good one.

44

More importantly, the assumption made by Russk and Seeker is that money can return the damaged party to the original state before the initiation of force. As we talked about the Exxon Valdez spill, it is clear from all the studies in that case the Prince William Sound has not returned to its previous state, despite the cleanup efforts. So in cases where the damages are not reversible, or at least for not many years, does the government have an interest in mitigating risky behavior that have the potential for catastrophic consequences?

I never made that assumption. The environment may never be returned to its original state; however, that doesn’t make compensation for damages illegitimate. If you are severely injured in some way, by some action, the compensation received can be legitimate even though you may never return to your original state. The question of mitigating catastrophic oil spills was what I had asked previously. Some responses touched on the issue, but I still think that risk mitigation for probable, catastrophic events looks like a rational policy. Before, I used and built upon an example that someone else provided, about burning debris in one’s yard, etc… However, a more widely known and understood example would be the regulations imposed on the nuclear energy industry.

45

The one thing that nobody has addressed yet is why BP is drilling here to begin with. Are there easier places to extract oil? Can oil companies overcome the regulatory barriers to drill there? Does drilling in such places involve less risk? I ask because I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that’s the case. Offshore drilling seems to be easier to get a bureaucrat to sign off on - the farther away the better.

Actually, it looks like this was close to being addressed already:

It depends on where you are at (which state). There are a lot of oil rigs drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Most are west of the Florida panhandle. When I lived in Florida, drilling off the coast of Florida was always debated, and I don’t even think it was possible for new rigs to be built. Gov. Crist recently said he will not support drilling for oil off the coast, after popular support for drilling had been pushed back due to the recent oil spill. So, in certain cases, drilling offshore can be very hard to get approved.

46

Since this conversation has mainly focused on whether the government should regulate industries to prevent things like this from happening, here’s a qustion I haven’t seen answered:

Should the government take action to stop the current oil leak, or should it be left solely to the corporation responsible?

47

Should the government take action to stop the current oil leak, or should it be left solely to the corporation responsible?

It is the responsibility of BP, so the question should be refined to one of two different questions. First: should the government step in if BP’s actions are insufficient to ameliorating the violation of other people’s property rights. Now so far, nobody’s property rights have been violated, but the potential is there. If rights are violated, then there is a well-defined way to address the problem, and those who are aggrieved may file suit in court to seek relief. If the application of objective principles of law lead to a finding that BP should be forced to do something that they are not doing, then that is a legitimate function of government.

The follow-up question is, what if after all is said and done, BP says “to hell with it, we quit, we abandon all interests in the US, it’s your problem”. (An utterly inconceivable outcome, but for the sake of discussion, you could imagine…). Then, after the carcass of former BP is carved up by the courts, and there is still a problem (for example, suppose they don’t cap the leak and they say “Tough titties, we’re outa here”), what should the government do? Should it act as executor of the estate and assign someone the job of fixing the problem?

That’s a more interesting philosophical question. I’d say that the interest of the government should be minimal: they should appoint a suitable executor who would use whatever available BP assets to solve the problem, and should not themselves get into the business of plugging oil leaks.

The proper function of government is regulating the use of force, not plugging oil leaks.

48

You insist on evading reality by intentionally not understanding why thousands of Alaskan fishermen were not adequately compensated

You insist on repeating and repeating the same nonsense. In what specific way is the Court’s ruling unfair?

49

Is there any credence to the claim that the Obama Administration caused the Oil spill? Rush Limbaugh keeps going on about that

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Is there any credence to the claim that the Obama Administration caused the Oil spill? Rush Limbaugh keeps going on about that

Rush plays a high level meta-game with some of his poses. This one just mirrors some of the nutty criticisms of Bush, so could be an example of that. I don’t believe it.

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Is there any credence to the claim that the Obama Administration caused the Oil spill? Rush Limbaugh keeps going on about that

Where you are getting this from?

Rush himself is saying the media is making it up.

Here is a link:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/sit…5113.guest.html

RUSH: CNN, by the way, still on this conspiracy theory, this story line they just won’t let go about me and – and the – what is this? I don’t even know. Too much to read here. Here, it’s CNN, let’s just listen to it together.

AVLON: We’re in a point right now in the wing-nut wars where we can’t even deal with a natural disaster like an oil spill without politicizing it. One of the early adapters was Rush Limbaugh, part of his stock-in-trade. He took the airwaves – and I’ll do my best Rush Limbaugh impersonation – to say this: “This bill, the cap and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant vestments. So since we’re sending SWAT teams down there, folks, to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig?”

ROBERTS: He’s just saying –

RUSH: That’s John Avlon. Who is John Avlon? I guess he’s a Daily Beast columnist, it’s Tina Brown’s website. The point is here they keep reporting this. I never said that the SWAT teams are going to blow it up. I said that the administration, if the regime is sending SWAT teams down there, maybe they think there was sabotage. Not that the administration blew it up. But anyway, the truth doesn’t matter when it comes to me and reportage in the media. Yesterday afternoon on MSNBC, I don’t even know who this guy is, but he was asked a question, and he said this about me.

Bold above is mine.

52

In theory this accident should have been preventable. Perhaps a company more competent than BP would not have made the same mistake. The only regulation this calls for is safety and protection. Before BP drilled, they could have roughly calculated/estimated the amount of damage such an event could cause, were it to happen. This sounds like an enormous undertaking, but given the scope of their project, it is possible and important. If BP were to claim ignorance (of the scale of potential disaster)when knowledge was possible—especially with modern technology—then I’d consider them negligent. They should have been prepared for something like this, especially since it’s happened before, and they should have had a Plan B, based on their best knowledge, in case it did happen.

It is in our interest to have a government capable of protection of our rights, and therefore, to have it be educated and physically prepared for such threats. Police, military, and safety regulations—as well as strict adherence to an objective standard of risk—and enforcing companies to be realistically prepared should those risks become a reality, are necessary for the protection of individual rights.

In the case of Exxon Valdez, if the court ruled objectively that those affected had been paid enough to be compensated (in dollars) for the extent to which their individual rights were violated, then each individual—with the potential to be affected by a situation such as the one we have with the gulf—should asses the risk they place on their rights, and be willing to trade the violation of said rights for dollars.

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It is in our interest to have a government capable of protection of our rights, and therefore, to have it be educated and physically prepared for such threats. Police, military, and safety regulations—as well as strict adherence to an objective standard of risk—and enforcing companies to be realistically prepared should those risks become a reality, are necessary for the protection of individual rights.

A strict adherence to an objective standard of risk is a meaningless phrase, unless such a standard is common knowledge or you mention it. It isn’t common knowledge how you would determine what the risk of each human action is, objectively, so please share. I’d love a way to measure the “risk” of all my actions.

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A strict adherence to an objective standard of risk is a meaningless phrase, unless such a standard is common knowledge or you mention it. It isn’t common knowledge how you would determine what the risk of each human action is, objectively, so please share. I’d love a way to measure the “risk” of all my actions.

I’m not going to speak for the Ben Archer, but I don’t see how that phrase is meaningless. Risk can be found objectively, and it can be upheld objectively as well. If someone wants to have an operation of constant burning of brush and trash in the midst of a neighborhood, the risks involved can be realized quite easily. When the dew point, humidity, temperature, and wind come together, a ban on all burning in the affected area is in store–a strict adherence to an objective standard of the risk present. When a nuclear power plant is trying to get approval, or is already in operation, risk is measured by known facts and data, hypothesis on such data, and historical events; then there is an attempt to mitigate that risk by objective methods.

55

In theory this accident should have been preventable. Perhaps a company more competent than BP would not have made the same mistake.

Okay; can you explain what that theory is by which this accident was preventable? What exactly caused the accident, and what did BP incompetently neglect to do that caused the accident. The answer can’t be “prevent the spill”.

The accusation of incompetence has to be supported by identifying actual breach of professional standards. So what standards were breached, according to you? “Taking a risk” is not incompetence; failure to reach a goal is not incompetence. Let us know what well-known fact BP should have taken into consideration and didn’t.

56

I’m not going to speak for the Ben Archer, but I don’t see how that phrase is meaningless. Risk can be found objectively, and it can be upheld objectively as well.

Of course it can be, in theory (and even in practice, on rare occasion). I am assuming by risk you mean the probability of the occurrence of an accident that harms others or their property. But saying that it isn’t impossible is one thing, saying that it should be done, by the government, to me, is another. If you’re saying that it should be done, you should know and specify how it should be done, first. Then I’ll know exactly what is being done, and have an informed opinion on it.

And I don’t just mean the specific method of calculating risks (which is a big enough question to end all actions until it is first answered in a meaningful way-I can’t even begin to imagine how), I also mean who should pay for it?

I certainly have no interest to pay for a government which tries to measure the risks of every human activity. I am perfectly satisfied in having a government which punishes those who fail to limit their own risks, and actually cause harm to others. I have no intention of ever paying for an entity which supervises all human activity, and assigns numbers to thousands (or more) complex ventures (or millions of relatively simple ones like driving, for that matter). Not even if you can figure out a scientific way, well beyond at least my grasp of Statistics, but I’m pretty sure well beyond the field itself.

And even if you have the science, and are also offering to pay for this massive undertaking, I’m also not willing to agree to give power to an entity which supervises human activity intrusively, by violating the rights of innocent people (the way current regulations work) and forcing them to provide access to government agents, and send in details of their activities without any proof of foul play, or legal warrant. If yo wish to sponsor such an activity, it would have to be done without the initiation of force, and within the framework of criminal investigations, including the presumption of innocence, and the requirement of legal warrants obtained by presenting probable cause, for any access to private property or privately owned information.

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I’m not going to speak for the Ben Archer, but I don’t see how that phrase is meaningless. Risk can be found objectively, and it can be upheld objectively as well. If someone wants to have an operation of constant burning of brush and trash in the midst of a neighborhood, the risks involved can be realized quite easily. When the dew point, humidity, temperature, and wind come together, a ban on all burning in the affected area is in store–a strict adherence to an objective standard of the risk present. When a nuclear power plant is trying to get approval, or is already in operation, risk is measured by known facts and data, hypothesis on such data, and historical events; then there is an attempt to mitigate that risk by objective methods.

The real difficulty is deciding what is an acceptable risk. Who is the final authority making that decision? By what right?

58

Okay; can you explain what that theory is by which this accident was preventable? What exactly caused the accident, and what did BP incompetently neglect to do that caused the accident. The answer can’t be “prevent the spill”.

The accusation of incompetence has to be supported by identifying actual breach of professional standards. So what standards were breached, according to you? “Taking a risk” is not incompetence; failure to reach a goal is not incompetence. Let us know what well-known fact BP should have taken into consideration and didn’t.

If you’re going to be drilling 5,000 under water, you should have the ability to control what you’re doing. Obviously no one can gaurantee that an accident will not happen, but the possibility and its repercussions should be addressed accurately. BP’s 52-page exploration plan for the Deepwater Horizon well says repeatedly that it was “unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities.”

And while the company conceded that a spill would impact beaches, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas, it argued that “due to the distance to shore (48 miles) and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected.”

If, in retrospect, their argument is that they’ve never experienced a blowout at this depth before; that the situation is unique inasmuch as it would have been impossible to forsee an accident of this magnitude, then that is what they should have conveyed in their exploration plans. Of course the federal Minerals Management service, to whom the report was submitted, could have recognized this.

You can’t compare drilling for oil 5,000 feet underwater to driving a car, simply because they both involve risk. It’s ridiculous to suggest that they should be treated with the same levels of preparation and control (control by the entities involved not government regulation). It is not a simply a case of “all potentially risky activities should have equal levels of regulation, or none at all.” Just as you would not ask someone to file a 52 page exploration report before driving to school in the rain, you wouldn’t expect an oil company to drill the nonchalance of a child in a sandbox.

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Okay; can you explain what that theory is by which this accident was preventable? What exactly caused the accident, and what did BP incompetently neglect to do that caused the accident. The answer can’t be “prevent the spill”.

The accusation of incompetence has to be supported by identifying actual breach of professional standards. So what standards were breached, according to you? “Taking a risk” is not incompetence; failure to reach a goal is not incompetence. Let us know what well-known fact BP should have taken into consideration and didn’t.

From what I understand there was an additional type of valve BP could have installed which would have allowed methane to be released rather than build up pressure. They did not install this valve and what caused the severity of this explosion was a buildup of methane pressure.

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If you’re going to be drilling 5,000 under water, you should have the ability to control what you’re doing.

Why does “5,000 feet under water” cause a quantum change in obligation? We don’t impose absolute liability on people driving cars, although if you’re going to be driving at 70 mph or driving a truck that weights 5 tons of 50 tons, you should also have the ability to control what you’re doing. If you’re a doctor performing surgery on a patient, you should have the ability to cut out or insert the relevant bits without causing any other harm. The part that you don’t seem to understand is that culpability is a consequence of knowingly performing a wrong act, of choosing to use materials that will fail etc. You haven’t shown that that is the case.

Obviously no one can gaurantee that an accident will not happen, but the possibility and its repercussions should be addressed accurately. BP’s 52-page exploration plan for the Deepwater Horizon well says repeatedly that it was “unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities.”

Fine, so tell me in what specific way is this a falsehood. You understand, I hope, that “unlikely” does not mean the same as “impossible”.

Anyhow, bringing in this exploration plan is irrelevant, since they have no moral obligation to present such a plan, and the government has no right to require it, just as the government has no right to require you to present an environmental impact statement if you plan to add a deck on your property. Nor does the government have a right to demand that you present a risk-assessment plan if you intend to drive from Cleveland to Detroit.

You can’t compare drilling for oil 5,000 feet underwater to driving a car, simply because they both involve risk.

I can and I did, because the principle is precisely the same. When there is forseeable risk, you have an obligation to take action to prevent that forseeable risk, whether it is in a car, a train, or on the ocean. The problem is that you have not demonstrated that BP was negligent. You have simply asserted it, based on the fact that there was an accident. But that is not what negligence means.

You might try Kat’s approach. Go do the research and determine whether there is any sense in which failure to install said additional valve type constitutes professional negligence. Imaginary “might have” is not worth squat in this discussion, but proof that such a valve is likely to have prevented the accident and that there is a known relationship between that valve and risk-mitigation would make your assignment of blame more credible.