Comments on: Happy 20th Anniversary, Exxon Valdez

By: Wilson

Wilson — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:42:26 +0000

One mechanism that actually deters the sort of recklessness that led to this disaster – in terms the CEOs and boards of directors well understand – is the prospect of huge punitive damages in lawsuits. But our Supreme Court will have none of that, deciding last year that only a 1:1 ratio of punitive to compensatory damages is permissible in a case like that. (Check out the Court’s reasoning here: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-219.pdf.) Punitive awards without some “rational” basis are too unpredictable, says the Court. But it is precisely the specter of an unpredictably gigantic – and enforecable on appeal – jury award of punitives that forces companies to offer hefty settlements amounts, and that could constrain their actions ahead of time. Here, that means a measly $500 million, pocket change for Exxon. A federal jury, which had listened to all the evidence and considered the arguments of both sides, decided that $5 billion was more like it.

By: D.W. Sabin

D.W. Sabin — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:00:18 +0000

Twenty Years later, you can still turn over a rock along the shorefront that took the Valdez hit and find the sludge that was “successfully cleaned up”. Still, whales breach, some glaciers advance and life goes on. From this point on the coast, you can look out into the Pacific toward the North Pacific Gyre and know that something exceeding 3.5 million tons of plastic garbage floats in a mass about twice the size of Texas. Rising seas will not submerge it and the sunlight that is supposed to break it down has a hard time keeping up with new arrivals.

As to waiting for nature or Gaia to smite us, they’ll have to get in line behind ourselves, the highly evolved form of Homo sapiens sapiens; Homo sapiens mortem sibi consciscere. Or, as Virgil asserted “Quisque suos non patimer manes” or each of us bears his own hell.

That Eleysian Fields we look for is all around us. When the Berlin Wall between Nature and ourselves finally does come down….or, if an when it comes down, humans might actually enjoy the role we perverted a long time ago and find an aesthetic of life and labor that makes time both precious and meaningless. Transcendence has it’s pedestrian charms and the smell of soil waking in the spring sunshine reminds a dirty pilgrim that second chances are real.

By: wisewebwoman

wisewebwoman — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:38:09 +0000

Gaia will ALWAYS have her way with us, we are just the pesky fleas that need to be tossed off.
We are all wearing oil from the Valdez.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:32:02 +0000

Hey! What’s wrong with you? The Exxon Valdez (like cell phones and nuclear weapons) is just a tool, which means that it can serve or it can cut, that it does not dictate any of the terms of its own usage, and that we can antecedently control for all of its unintended consequences. History shows that if humans have knowledge enough to invent something, we have the concomitant virtue to use it appropriately.