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Disaster looms as oil slick reaches US coast

GenericMind said:
It won't be.

And why should it be? The company was worth over $200 Billion before the spill. The whole point of incorporation is to allow a business to be treated like a single entity, like a person. We don't liquidate the entire worth of a person when they fuck up. They're fined amounts that are in accordance with the law, just like companies are.
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Obviously, you've never talked about the financial situation of someone who got drunk, got in his car, and paralyzed somebody when they drove into them. The damages awarded in the civil suit can be a life-long burden.

As for incorporation and entity-hood, it is completely frustrated by the use of subsidiaries and holding companies.
 
Would it be if the person that got drunk and paralyzed someone had $200 Billion? No it wouldn't. My point is that all the people claiming that Corporations don't have consequences for their actions is false because they have the same types of consequences that people have.
 
tangential question: how much money is the use of your arms, legs, and sphincter worth to you? ;)

real response: Ruining the economy and ecosystem of a region is certainly cause for a substantial payout in the interests of correcting what has gone wrong.
 
even if the damages exceed the entire worth of the company... which i think is the point of the person-running-dude-over analogy
 
Well the gulf is fucked. I just finished reading an article in augusts rolling stone and I did not realize the picture was so bleak. Heads need to roll at the EPA all the way up to the white house. I voted for Obama but he is turning out to be a weak leader. Frankly we cannot afford weak leadership in this crucial time in our history. what a tragedy I mean this makes Katrina look like a small event.
 
moonyham said:
ie, if fisherman made 10 billion a year, and now make nothing, and it takes 10 years to get to the point where they can make 10 billion a year again...

then 100 billion.
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That's pretty much how BP is paying claims out of its $20 Billion recovery fund right now. As long as local fisherman or businesses can back up their claims of losing X amount of dollars because of the spill, BP has been paying them that much.

I realize its extremely popular to be hating on BP right now, but they're actually doing a hell of a lot more than they're required to by law. I think with as much deepwater drilling that goes one nowadays, it's pretty amazing that we haven't had more big spills since Exxon-Valdez.

I don't think people realize how important the services that companies like BP provide us by doing what they do, and I think it's a lot easier for people to jump on the "BP IS EVIL THEY SHOULD DIE" bandwagon than it is to put the whole Gulf situation into perspective.
 
I don't think people realize how important the services that companies like BP provide us by doing what they do
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I'm personally rooting for $50 a gallon gasoline so speak for yourself plz :D
 
Heh, we would have been a lot better if back in the '80s or so, we put a cumulative tax on gasoline of around 5 - 10 cents per gallon per year.

It would have reduced our demand far more painlessly than dealing with current market shocks.
 
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-12/bp-spill-may-be-least-of-gulf-woes-as-farm-chemicals-invade-wetlands-sink.html

Visit the Gulf of Mexico today and you’d hardly recognize it as the scene of what President Barack Obama called “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.”

It’s as if scientists had conducted an insane experiment -- dumping about 4.9 million barrels of oil into the water -- and discovered its effect was in certain ways negligible.

Some 21 years after the Exxon Valdez disaster, globs of oil can still be found in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Yet the Gulf may be scrubbing itself from the BP Plc spill: Sunshine is evaporating the oil, and bacteria are rapidly digesting it, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Aug. 16 edition.

Less crude has infiltrated vulnerable wetlands than was predicted. Documented fish and bird kills have been small, and most Gulf beaches remain pristine.

While concerns remain about the spill’s long-term impact on coastal wetlands and deepwater creatures, the short-term trend is positive: On Aug. 10 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced it was opening an additional 5,000 square miles of the Gulf to fishing, leaving 22 percent of federal waters still closed.

Harlon Pearce, who runs a wholesale seafood business in Kenner, Louisiana, said that with more fish and shellfish passing rigorous smell tests and chemical assays, “I really feel good that we’re going to be getting into large production this September, October, and November.”

Morgan Stanley said on Aug. 3 that while the spill is a “significant shock to the regional economy,” there will be “essentially no impact” on U.S. economic input this year or next.

Not Biggest Threat

That the Gulf is recovering doesn’t mean all is well because the disaster that transfixed the nation isn’t the biggest threat to the Gulf’s health.

Environmental scientists point to more serious and persistent (albeit less telegenic) dangers, including the continued loss of wetlands, the impact of global climate change, and the supercharging of the Gulf with fertilizer that flows down the Mississippi River from Midwestern farms.

“The spill is minor compared to those threats,” said Larry McKinney, director of the Harte Research Institute at the Corpus Christi campus of Texas A&M University. It’s as if a gunshot victim recovered from a wound, then had to battle metastatic cancer.

The patient has a fighting chance. Thanks to favorable winds and human intervention, little oil from the BP spill reached the estuaries where it can do serious damage. The light, sweet crude that stayed at sea is being disposed of rapidly by bacteria that have evolved to feed off the oil and methane that naturally seep from the seafloor.

‘Drainage Ditch’

“In a year or two we can forget this ever happened,” said Roger Sassen, an adjunct professor of geology and geophysics at Texas A&M. “The fact that the Mississippi is the drainage ditch for the fertilizers and nasty agricultural chemicals of the entire central U.S. is much worse than this transient spill.”

Even experts who are less sanguine see the oil spill as an added burden rather than a knockout blow. Jane Lubchenco, the marine ecologist who heads NOAA, said the Gulf’s waters and coasts “have been undergoing a series of changes over the years that have progressively compromised the health of more and more of the system.

Speaking to reporters by phone on Aug. 10 while traveling in the region, she said, “Each of these changes doesn’t happen in isolation. This spill interacts with, and is on top of, the other changes in the Gulf.”

Iowa Corn Farmer

The Gulf’s long-term nemeses can’t be capped like a runaway oil well. Although slower-acting, they will have profound economic as well as environmental impacts, and responsibility for them can’t be easily assigned. The Iowa corn farmer whose excessive use of fertilizer contributes to choking off oxygen in the Gulf is harder to blame than, say, Tony Hayward, BP’s outgoing chief executive officer.

The spill could do its worst damage by exacerbating existing threats.

Harm to the bluefin tuna, prized both as a gamefish and as a culinary delicacy retailing for $100 a pound, is the premier example. It ranges the Atlantic Ocean but spawns just once a year -- precisely where and when the BP spill occurred. The floating beds of brown seaweed that shelter bluefin larvae and fingerlings soak up oil like a sponge. Ocean biologists worry that the spill might have wiped out most of the 2010 generation of Gulf bluefins.

Overfishing Bluefins

Ordinarily, the loss of a year’s worth of fish might be tolerable. The problem: Severe overfishing in international waters of the Atlantic has already endangered the Gulf-spawning population of bluefins, down by 80 percent since 1970.

U.S. fishermen landed a little less than 800 tons of bluefins in the West Atlantic in 2008, while other nations’ fleets landed about 1,200 tons, according to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.

The spill could push the bluefin population into outright collapse, said Robert L. Shipp, chairman of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council as well as the marine sciences department at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. The only other population of the species, which spawns in the Mediterranean Sea, is also threatened.

The single biggest challenge to the Gulf’s ecosystem may be the ongoing loss of wetlands, estimated at 25 to 30 square miles’ worth per year. Estuaries and marshes provide shelter for commercially important crabs and shrimp. They also buffer humans from the impact of hurricanes and soak up the nitrogenous compounds from fertilizer and manure runoff that are borne down the Mississippi.

Seasonal ‘Dead Zone’

Nitrogen that the wetlands don’t capture feeds algal blooms. Bacteria that feed on the algae use up oxygen in the depths of the Gulf, creating a seasonal “dead zone” that’s hospitable only to jellyfish, bacteria, and some worms. This month the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium said the low- oxygen zone extended for 7,722 square miles, the fifth-biggest on record.

What’s unknown is whether oil from the spill will significantly accelerate the destruction of the wetlands. The wetlands are sinking because levees along the Mississippi’s ship channel prevent silt from replenishing them. Pipeline channels have diced up the wetlands, further weakening them.

When an area of wetlands finally sinks beneath the waves, it exposes an adjoining area to the waves’ action, speeding up losses. “If the rate of loss accelerates to 35 or 40 square miles a year, it will give us less time to come up with a restoration plan,” McKinney said.

Global Warming

Global warming subtly worsens many of the Gulf’s problems. Warmer Gulf waters are conducive to the spread of the voracious lionfish, a tropical Pacific fish with poisonous spokes that displaces native species, and the equally aggressive Chinese tallow tree, which has infested Gulf marshes.

Plus, the shores of the Gulf lie so low that a sea level rise of just inches can inundate huge swaths of fertile coastline. Seas have risen 8 inches in the past century, NOAA says. The BP spill could give more of a toehold to invasive species by weakening native ones, McKinney said.

Scientists studying the Gulf’s health emphasize that all damage assessments are strictly preliminary, so the bad news might not be over. A female crab lays about 3 million eggs, and a handful grow up to be crabs. Many of the rest are eaten by fish and other crabs. So when oil droplets and chemical dispersant showed up in the larvae of blue crabs, it was a danger sign for the whole food chain.

Judy Haner, marine program director for the Nature Conservancy in Mobile, Alabama, said damage to fish populations could take three to four years to manifest itself.

Menhaden, Sardines

Another stubborn unknown is the impact of the spill on small fish, such as menhaden, sardines, small jacks and anchovies, that are food for creatures higher up the chain. Anchovies and menhaden are filter feeders that swim with their mouths agape, catching tiny food particles in their gill filaments.

The tiny oil droplets suspended in subsea clouds could kill the fishes’ food source, the near-microscopic crustaceans called copepods. The droplets could also clog the fishes’ gills. At the same time, oil-eating bacteria could exhaust oxygen supplies in deep waters.

Next unknown: If fish in the plumes die, will others occupy their niche as the pollution clears and oxygen increases? Shipp, of the University of South Alabama, said he thinks the spill should continue to be regarded as Public Enemy No. 1 for the Gulf until such questions are answered.

$500 Million From BP

BP has agreed to set aside $500 million for environmental study in the Gulf, many times the normal level of spending.

“If BP has put the money aside like they say and they don’t renege on their promises and the government doesn’t strip the money for other purposes -- and those are big ifs -- there should be money for studies of this spill,” said Edward Overton, an environmental chemist and professor emeritus at Louisiana State University.

After that, the far greater challenge will be to apply the newfound knowledge to helping the resilient Gulf survive its many man-made wounds.
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^^
well we are glad you are above that kind of thinking genericmind.
Crazy liberals and there planet always trying to stop the rich from becoming richer bastards.
 
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