James Ridgeway: Obama's "Revelations" and the Oil Industry's Slimy History
[James Ridgeway is a senior correspondent at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here.]
"What's been made clear from this disaster is that for years the oil and gas industry has leveraged such power that they have effectively been allowed to regulate themselves," President Obama said last week in his press conference on the BP oil spill. "I was wrong," he declared, "in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios."
Ya think? If this isn't a textbook example of closing the barn door after the horse is out, I don't know what is. In fact, it isn't even closing the door so much as acknowledging that the barn actually has a door, which we might want to consider using once in a while if we don't want the horses running wild. What the president's statement reminds me of most is Alan Greenspan's admission, after the economic meltdown took place, that there just might be a tiny "flaw" in his approach to financial regulation. "I made a mistake," Greenspan told Congress in October 2008, "in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."...
The 1970s through the 1990s saw more than a dozen spills larger than the Exxon Valdez, pouring oil into the waters off Trinidad, Uzbekistan, Iran, Angola, South Africa, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Mozambique, Chile, and Sweden.
As for the Valdez disaster itself, its effects still linger nearly two decades after the 1989 spill. During that time, suits against Exxon made their way through courts, resulting in a $5.5 billion jury trial settlement. But the Supreme Court later thought this was too much money, and cut the settlement to $1 billion. No fine ever levied against the oil industry has seriously inhibited its ability to keep doing business as usual—or employing lobbyists, or making campaign contributions. And to my knowledge, no oil company executives have ever gone to jail for the environmental devastation caused by their negligence or greed.
This, perhaps, is the real lesson of history when it comes to oil spills: It isn't enough, even, to close the barn door, if you allow the horses to keep making hay.
Read entire article at Mother Jones
"What's been made clear from this disaster is that for years the oil and gas industry has leveraged such power that they have effectively been allowed to regulate themselves," President Obama said last week in his press conference on the BP oil spill. "I was wrong," he declared, "in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios."
Ya think? If this isn't a textbook example of closing the barn door after the horse is out, I don't know what is. In fact, it isn't even closing the door so much as acknowledging that the barn actually has a door, which we might want to consider using once in a while if we don't want the horses running wild. What the president's statement reminds me of most is Alan Greenspan's admission, after the economic meltdown took place, that there just might be a tiny "flaw" in his approach to financial regulation. "I made a mistake," Greenspan told Congress in October 2008, "in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."...
The 1970s through the 1990s saw more than a dozen spills larger than the Exxon Valdez, pouring oil into the waters off Trinidad, Uzbekistan, Iran, Angola, South Africa, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Mozambique, Chile, and Sweden.
As for the Valdez disaster itself, its effects still linger nearly two decades after the 1989 spill. During that time, suits against Exxon made their way through courts, resulting in a $5.5 billion jury trial settlement. But the Supreme Court later thought this was too much money, and cut the settlement to $1 billion. No fine ever levied against the oil industry has seriously inhibited its ability to keep doing business as usual—or employing lobbyists, or making campaign contributions. And to my knowledge, no oil company executives have ever gone to jail for the environmental devastation caused by their negligence or greed.
This, perhaps, is the real lesson of history when it comes to oil spills: It isn't enough, even, to close the barn door, if you allow the horses to keep making hay.