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Oil From the Exxon Valdez Spill Still Lingers On Alaska Beaches
An anonymous reader writes "It's been 25 years since the Exxon Valdez dumped 11 million gallons of crude oil in Prince William Sound, and you can still find oil sticking to rocks. Worse yet, scientists say the oil could be around for decades yet to come. From the article: 'There are two main reasons why there's still oil on some of the beaches of the Kenai Fjords and Katmai National Parks and Preserves in the Gulf of Alaska, explains Gail Irvine, a marine ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and lead researcher on the study. When the oil first spilled from the tanker, it mixed with the seawater and formed an emulsion that turned it into a goopy compound, she says. "When oil forms into the foam, the outside is weathering, but the inside isn't," Irvine explains. It's like mayonnaise left out on the counter. The surface will crust over, but the inside of the clump still looks like mayonnaise, she explains.'"
Mmmm....Mayonnaise.
Consequences only exist for those too poor to fight them. Exxon should have been made responsible for taking care of the entire area until all the oil was cleaned up, but that would have driven them out of business...and we can't have that!
Eventually, something will eat the oil. Oil is basically archaia bacterial poop originally made deep under ground.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
There are bacteria that eat oil, but they work very very slowly. This should not be surprising given the quantity of oil just sitting there in the ground, undigested.
"It's like mayonnaise left out on the counter. The surface will crust over, but the inside of the clump still looks like mayonnaise,"
I don't understand that analogy. Does someone have a car analogy to explain it for me?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Pipelines leak constantly. Not in huge spills, but they do leak constantly and often in considerable amounts before being noticed.
I used to write software to help various agencies track leaks in pipelines.
The fine was for $5 billion+, after twenty years they settled out of court for pennies on the dollar, I'd say they paid nothin!
Cyanide is also an organic substance.
I'm not a fan of oil tankers. They tend to spill and waste a lot of oil. Moving oil by rail is better, they don't spill as often or as much when they do. Pipelines are the best means we have to move oil. They spill much less often and are much easier to fix.
Really? Well, no and no.
One must be careful not to confuse the frequency of spills with the quantity spilled, or the size of a spill with how much press it gets.
The shills are out tonight...
50% of profits as a cap on liability? Great!
Now smaller unprofitable oil companies can take big risks.
The oil in the ground is undigested because there is no oxygen present, not because it takes a long time to digest it. n-alkanes, some of the most abundant compounds in oil, are the ones that are eaten first by bacteria once the oil is in the environment.
Did you also have to write a software patch to patch the pipes?
Deep Water horizon is all cleaned up. All gone.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Irvine explains. It's like mayonnaise left out on the counter. The surface will crust over, but the inside of the clump still looks like mayonnaise, she explains.'"
Hate to think what this girls kitchen looks like.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
The mutated bugs from Fukushima will eat what is left from the spill.
Passionately Indifferent
And that is completely irrelevant since corporations have people as owners, workers, and customers. When are you going to consider those people?
The fine was for $5 billion+, after twenty years they settled out of court for pennies on the dollar, I'd say they paid nothin!
So they settled for roughly 1/5th of the original amount instead of dragging it out. Seems about right?
Thanks to global warming oil that is now coating the rocks on the beach will soon be completely under water and out of view. And when your seafood hits the frying pan you no longer need cooking oil to keep it from sticking to the pan. And dredging for gold where the river mouths reach the ocean may no longer be an issue as well as one simply can not run oil coated gold particles through the sorting riffles as it will not stay put. Also modern society has never figured out how to deal with tribal people in the artic regions and oil in their diet may well finish off what smallpox and alcohol failed to completely accomplish when tried out upon them in years gone by. Hey! If i really believed that rant i would sign up for the Republican party.
I assume that is sarcasm as I expect no one to be that stupid. But you could use Geospatial statistics coupled with the chemical and isotopic "finger print" of the oil itself.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Or the concentration.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
25 years isn't dragging it out? How about "I burned my neighbors house down but I'll pay for 1/5 the replacement cost instead of dragging it out"? Is that a great deal or what?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
You are attacking the very stated purpose of permitting corporations to exist in the first place - to allow investors to collaborate without exposing themselves to risk beyond losing their investment. Now there's an interesting conversation to be had there, but consider - do you really want to risk everything you own because your 401k was partially invested in a company responsible for some massive catastrophe? Personally I think simply requiring the corporations to possess assets and/or malpractice insurance to cover any potential liabilities would be less damaging to the economy.
Executives and board members on the other hand - I'd be all for having them be personally liable for corporate malfeasance - the captain(s) go down with the ship, right? All that power and profit should come with some chains of responsibility to mitigate abuse.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I submit I am the highest authority on this specific subject here on slashdot. I grew up in Valdez, AK, the closest town to the spill. I was there when it happened. There is some documentary footage somewhere of myself and my siblings at one of these oil-soaked beaches. I've known friends to go out and do these beach surveys looking for oil, and I've fished and kayaked throughout Prince William Sound.
Firstly I have to say that, unless one goes specifically looking for it, this oil is invisible. The environment has entirely recovered, the salmon run is healthy, and there are as many sea birds, sea otters, and sea lions as there ever have been.
Secondly, the other posters make a very good points about the relative safety of oil tankers vs oil pipelines. I will additionally say that tankers are better protected from deliberate damage than pipelines. I don't know where you're getting your costs from, but I make the average oil tanker to be in the $100M range, and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System cost $8B.
I don't know if you know about it, but there is also a proposed natural gas pipeline which was intended to run through Canada to the States. Extrapolating from the cost per mile of TAPS, an oil pipeline would probably be in the range of $15B. Setting aside whether it is actually better for the environment, it is a lot easier to suggest that environmental concerns trump economic ones when it's not your $15B.
Nuclear power is probably a good option for Alaska, whereas solar is pretty much off the table. Hopefully one day someone will take advantage of the tidal energy in the Cook Inlet as well, one lobe of that (Turnagain Arm) having the third-highest tides in the world. There are one or two problems though with putting nuclear reactors in geologically active places though, and the NRC isn't exactly putting applications through quickly at the moment.
Personally though, from having witnessed one of the larger oil spills in history, I don't really find them all that concerning.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
... get the Hell over it!
The beaches in what is not Texas were found to have tar balls on them by the 1st wooden ships to land there. There's all sorts of "pollution" all over the world, and yet we are not all dead. Stop dwelling on the Exxon Valdez, the runaway oil well in the gulf, the Keystone Pipeline, etc. etc. They will not "kill us all" and we need to make progress and lift people out of poverty. Now, POVERTY is killing millions. People lose about 6.5 years of life from living in poverty, on average. There's about 47 million people on food stamps, and therefore in poverty, so do the math and find out the real enemy of humans in this country and everywhere.
Maybe eventually somebody will find a way to harvest and use the oil. Perhaps after there's not enough oil being pulled from the ground they'll look at reclaiming some of that which was spilled.
Based on the current rules in the US, never.
If a person was treated like a corporation, murder would be legal. You could walk up to somone with 10,000 witnesses, 10 video cameras coving you, then shoot someone. If you were tried for it, you'd challenge the prosecution to prove you didn't have a muscle spasm that caused the trigger pull.
The captain, the first officer, and the captain's boss should have ended up in jail, unless the helmsman could prove he called Exxon's safety line and reported erratic behavior of the captain. If Exxon didn't have an anonymous way to report safety issues, then Exxon should have been held criminally liable. And not the few-days-of-revenue criminal liability, but actual losses that will harm a corporation as much as the same thing done by a lone human would.
Learn to love Alaska
The consideration I will give them is: people who, individually or collectively, have billion-dollar legal budgets, powerful influence on public policy and have executive control over major operations that affect billions of average people need to held to a higher standard of transparency and accountability in the context of their corporate life.
You tell me, since you misread my post. I was trying to make the point that increasing the population should not only result in a decrease of overhead, but that the decrease in overhead of the US vs. Chile should have been even larger than the GP reported. (The US overhead should have been closer to 1/20 that of Chile, not 1/10, i.e. 1.5% instead of 3%.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Sure. It's called economy of scale.
On a long enough timeline, all problems pretty much solve themselves.
If a person was treated like a corporation, murder would be legal. You could walk up to somone with 10,000 witnesses, 10 video cameras coving you, then shoot someone. If you were tried for it, you'd challenge the prosecution to prove you didn't have a muscle spasm that caused the trigger pull.
Except that corporations can't really commit crimes. People employed by the corporation would be commiting those crimes. And that makes a lot of difference to all this talk of treating corporations "like people", except when we don't want to.
So what individual rights to those people associated with the corporation lose because of their association with it that have to made up by granting additional rights to the corporation. The fact is that corporations are an artificial creation of law and as such they should have nothing other than what is granted them in law. To grant them rights not explicitly outlined in law is a travesty.
So a corporation can't be held responsible, neither can the people that work for it. So how do you force "legal" behavior from a corporation?
Learn to love Alaska
So a corporation can't be held responsible, neither can the people that work for it.
That's a prime example of a non sequitur. Fire hydrants can't be help responsible for crime too. So that must mean that fire fighters can't either. Or guns can't be held responsible for crime so I can shoot people legally. These sort of arguments don't make sense logically because there's no connection between the two assertions. There are plenty of examples of corporate employees being charged and convicted of crimes.
To grant them rights not explicitly outlined in law is a travesty.
The Constitution explicitly grants such rights. For example, the First Amendment doesn't say that "Congress shall make no law (unless the target works for 'artificial creations of law', then it's ok)..." No such distinction is made. Similarly, the same holds for various other amendments. And of course, there is the Ninth Amendment which prohibits the federal government from prohibiting stuff just because.
The people (within a corporation) are, generally, not held responsible. The corporation is generally not held responsible. Those are independent statements that are both true. One does not "cause" the other. You implied, and then ridiculed the causation that was not stated or implied.
Learn to love Alaska
The people (within a corporation) are, generally, not held responsible.
I don't see the problem. If a few people in a corporation commit a crime, then they should held responsible for the crime. The rest of that corporation shouldn't be since they didn't actually commit the crime. Similarly, the corporation shouldn't be because it can't actually commit crimes.
It's like saying that if a resident of New York City mugs someone, then everyone in New York City is responsible for that crime and in particular, New York City itself is responsible for that crime.
It's like saying that if a resident of New York City mugs someone, then everyone in New York City is responsible for that crime and in particular, New York City itself is responsible for that crime.
Nah, more like the mugger who did it getting off because he claims he only did it for profit from the pawn shop that knowingly deals in stolen goods.
Learn to love Alaska
When someone in a corporation illegally dumps hazardous chemicals, they aren't held responsible.
Incorrect.
The guy who told them they were safe isn't held responsible because he didn't know they weren't.
Incorrect.
The person who put the hazardous chemicals in the general bin thought the rubbish handlers would identify and separate them.
Incorrect.
It's worth noting here that dumping hazardous materials is illegal, but it isn't a crime. And by regulation, the business is fined. This has nothing to do with the business being treated as a person or being able to commit a crime or break the law. The "being held responsible" duty is first left to the agents of the business to carry out.
Now, if the above parties continue in their misbehavior despite repeated sanctions, then someone is doing something criminal, not just merely illegal. All these parties can't simultaneously continue to claim ignorance in the face of continued fines, warnings, etc. At that point, the behavior goes from being illegal to being criminal and people get fined and can end up in jail.
You may confirmation-bias yourself to your opinion, but that's not how reality works. Individual workers doing illegal acts are shielded by the fact it was done inside a company.
Learn to love Alaska
I make a distinction between a biological human* the legal fiction that is a corporate person. I think most of the writers of the Constitution would too.
*I can see a future where sentient artificial intelligences could have personhood.
If a person was treated like a corporation, murder would be legal. You could walk up to somone with 10,000 witnesses, 10 video cameras coving you, then shoot someone. If you were tried for it, you'd challenge the prosecution to prove you didn't have a muscle spasm that caused the trigger pull.
You are saying that corporations can somehow magically commit horrendous crimes of some sort with impunity. But you just wrote:
Individual workers doing illegal acts are shielded by the fact it was done inside a company.
Now, it's merely illegal acts (and given that the example you gave a little back is a single case of dumping hazardous waste, not very illegal acts) inside a business. You moved the goalposts.
Further, if I were a single person dumping hazardous waste, I wouldn't receive any more punishment than I would as an agent of a business. There is no such "shield".
I make a distinction between a biological human* the legal fiction that is a corporate person.
So what? Everyone does including the law. Your distinction however illegally takes away the rights of biological humans associated with corporations.
Further, what is the problem with the legal fiction of corporate personhood? Should we really create unique structures of law for every distinct legal concept out there?
Licenses, the No Fly list, public school diplomas, legally recognized marriage, and many other things are also artificial creations of law. Should the state have the power to arbitrary restrict the rights of people who have or want these things because they are artificial creations of law?
Note this strikes to the core of the same sex marriage debate. If the US government can decide marriage means only a marriage between two people of opposite sex with the justification effectively because legally recognized marriage is an artificial creation of law and the state said so, then that means they just created a legal situation that favors one group unfairly at the expense of a second.
The key problem here is simply that the state can create and grant privileges in a way that increases their power to the detriment of society. If they have the ability to regulate the behavior of corporations then they can choose to honor the rights of those associated with one corporation at the expense of those associated with another. They can pick favorites or cripple enemies. Corporate personhood was created in order to fight this abuse.
You moved the goalposts.
No, you just can't answer the questions, so you blame the questioner. Using different analogies to highlight different parts of the constant and immutable statement doesn't count as "moving the goalposts".
Learn to love Alaska
Using different analogies to highlight different parts of the constant and immutable statement doesn't count as "moving the goalposts".
Well, I guess others can read what I wrote and come to their own conclusions on that. But I believe posterity for the most part will agree with me.
What rights of biological humans associated with corporations are taken away? I am employed by a rather large corporation and I can't think of any rights I have that come through that association.
What rights of biological humans associated with corporations are taken away? I am employed by a rather large corporation and I can't think of any rights I have that come through that association.
Think about what you wrote. Do you really think that having rights come through an association (sentence two) is equivalent to having rights taken away through an association (question one)?
The point is that rights shouldn't be taken away by association with a corporation. That's the whole point to the corporate personhood exercise.
I can't think of any of my rights (as a citizen of the USA) that are taken away by my association with a corporation. It's possible I could exercise my rights in a way that forces the corporation to dismiss me but that's the corporation forcing me to conform to certain standards of conduct including limiting my free speech if I want to remain associated with them, not the government limiting my rights. I just don't see that the company I work for has a right to exercise any rights on my behalf without my explicit permission.
I can't think of any of my rights (as a citizen of the USA) that are taken away by my association with a corporation.
That's because of corporate personhood. But if a government in the US could just seize or tax the assets of a corporation discriminatorily and without proper compensation, then that would be in violation of Section 8 and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.
Similarly, if a government could ban the speech of an agent of the corporation from speaking on behalf of the corporation, then that's violation of the First Amendment (and the reason for the Citizens United ruling - Congress made it illegal for certain sorts of political speech by individuals when they were working for corporations).
I just don't see that the company I work for has a right to exercise any rights on my behalf without my explicit permission.
These are about the reverse - you exercising your rights on the behalf of a corporation.
I'm perfectly capable of exercising my rights on behalf of the corporation I work for if I choose to without the corporation having any rights on its own.
I'm perfectly capable of exercising my rights on behalf of the corporation I work for if I choose to without the corporation having any rights on its own.
It turns out that sure, you could - if there was some legal equivalent to corporate personhood to protect your rights in this situation. Otherwise you wouldn't be correct in that assertion.
And it's worth noting that while the US is relatively aggressive with respect to corporate personhood, it's not a thing unique to the US legal system.
It turns out that sure, you could - if there was some legal equivalent to corporate personhood to protect your rights in this situation. Otherwise you wouldn't be correct in that assertion.
I fail to see how my rights are curtailed in any way by the corporation I'm associated with not having all the rights you seem to think they should have.
I'm not saying that corporations shouldn't have any rights. There is good reason to grant corporations a limited amount of personhood so they can be treated as a single entity legally and so their investors have liability limited to what they've invested in the corporation but that's about all the rights they need as far as I'm concerned.
I'm not saying that corporations shouldn't have any rights. There is good reason to grant corporations a limited amount of personhood so they can be treated as a single entity legally and so their investors have liability limited to what they've invested in the corporation but that's about all the rights they need as far as I'm concerned.
That's the current state of affairs. You already have what you want. This drama is for naught.
I don't believe corporations should be able to freely spend their money on partisan politics. The Citizens United decision was a travesty.
I don't believe corporations should be able to freely spend their money on partisan politics. The Citizens United decision was a travesty.
So what? Just because you don't like the ruling doesn't mean that it was flawed in some way. The basis for the ruling was that the "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act" unfairly made it illegal for corporations to do issue advocacy ads (which are expressions of free speech), but not other categories of people. This created an unconstitutional constraint on free speech by groups of people organized in the form of a corporation.
Recall that I spoke of restrictions on the right of people to act on behalf of a corporation? This is one way it can happen. If I spent $1 million of my own money to take out an attack ad on President Obama, it would be legal under the above law. Similarly, it would be legal, if I spent $1 million of some other individual's money. But it becomes illegal, if it's $1 million of a corporation's money. The people whose interests the corporation represents just had their First Amendment rights taken away.
And the idea that certain privileges should have a subsequent impairment of rights is a poisonous belief. There are certain situations where these are baked into the Constitution, such as when the person holds a political office or government position of power. They are held to theoretically higher and tougher standards than a normal person and a variety of concrete restrictions have been placed on their power.
But the same is applied to other classes of people, such as people who own property or drive (drug seizure laws), or who fly (the ongoing security theater in US airports).
Finally, there's really no way to make the law workable since it can't ban political speech without violating the First Amendment.
But it becomes illegal, if it's $1 million of a corporation's money. The people whose interests the corporation represents just had their First Amendment rights taken away.
That's just bullshit. Those individuals can make their own expenditures in support of their First Amendment rights which are no less than the First Amendment rights that anyone not associated with a corporation has. If the corporation has rights then they are in addition to the rights their associates have on their own. I haven't always supported the positions of the corporation I'm associated with and it offends me that they can imply that I do through their expenditures.
You seem to think that money is equivalent to free speech but in reality it is merely an amplifier of free speech. Most corporations (especially the large ones) have resources far in excess of of most individuals. That stacks the deck in favor of corporations and wealthy individuals enough and I'm tired of my voice being drowned out by them.
Those individuals can make their own expenditures in support of their First Amendment rights which are no less than the First Amendment rights that anyone not associated with a corporation has.
Not if their money is tied up in corporations.
If the corporation has rights then they are in addition to the rights their associates have on their own.
I keep hearing that. No one has yet to put forth an argument for it.
I haven't always supported the positions of the corporation I'm associated with and it offends me that they can imply that I do through their expenditures.
Then choose not to be associated with it or change the corporation's positions. Your emotions otherwise mean nothing.
You seem to think that money is equivalent to free speech but in reality it is merely an amplifier of free speech. Most corporations (especially the large ones) have resources far in excess of of most individuals. That stacks the deck in favor of corporations and wealthy individuals enough and I'm tired of my voice being drowned out by them.
Technically, most corporations are shells and/or individual corporations and don't have such resources. But even if we consider big corporations what's a constitutional valid justification for preventing them from exercising a particular right to speech and yet allowing you that right? Merely having a lot of money and saying things you don't like aren't good enough IMHO.
Not if their money is tied up in corporations.
Huh?!!!!! I've got a lot of money tied up in my house. Should it have First Amendment rights separate from my own? If I want to use my money to extend my First Amendment rights I may have to liquidate some of my assets. What's the difference if it's my house or my investment in a corporation?
Actually, that brings up good point. Corporations are property. They are owned by humans. They don't have consciousness on their own. We don't grant rights to property, just to humans. My position is still that humans don't lose any of their existing rights by being associated with a corporation so why should the corporation have First Amendment rights beyond what their associates have individually on their own.
I've got a lot of money tied up in my house. Should it have First Amendment rights separate from my own?
That would be equivalent to making it illegal to borrow against your house to fund a political ad, but allowing other means of funding.
The thing here is that the corporate personhood argument applies because the corporation (here, Citizens United) was being blocked from speech that was otherwise legal. The corporate personhood argument wouldn't apply, if nobody was allowed to do the speech in question though obviously other First Amendment considerations would apply.