How the Biggest, Most Expensive Oil Spill In History Changed Almost Nothing 195
merbs writes: Tthe biggest oil spill in US history, despite incurring the largest environmental fine on the books—$18.7 billion, handed down this month—has done almost nothing to change the nation's relationship to oil. Five years after the spill, and, by BP's count, $54 billion in projected total expenses, there have been no serious legislative efforts to improve the oversight or regulation of the United States' still-expanding offshore oil operations. Public opinion of deepwater drilling barely budged during the ordeal; today, a majority of Americans favor doing even more of it.
Country run by oil barons does nothing!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Country run by oil barons does nothing when there's an oil problem!?!
Film at 11.
Re:Country run by oil barons does nothing!!! (Score:5, Informative)
PS: Fracking is being given a totally free pass too!
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And investment in renewables and clean-nuclear is almost non-existent. Color me shocked!
Re:Country run by oil barons does nothing!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
And investment in [,,,] clean-nuclear [...]
Clean nuclear, doesn't nuclear fuel have a pesky rather long term disposal issue? Granted I'd never heard of using Thorium as a fuel before but, I don't get a warm fuzzy about the use of 'er' in cleaner and safer.
Re:Country run by oil barons does nothing!!! (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe he should have said almost clean. Generation IV nuclear reactors don't solve the waste problem but they dig into. They produce much less waste and can use waste from older reactors. The waste that is produced has a greatly reduced half-life as compared to current reactor waste. The big bonus is they have a really hard time melting down since they don't need a continuous water supply to cool. It's what we should have been investing in until renewables are advanced enough to take over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor
Re:Country run by oil barons does nothing!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's what we should have been investing in until renewables are advanced enough to take over.
But hey, we got the F35 instead. Winner!
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You've clearly never been in/around the military, or the development of military hardware.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor
Sadly, your reference points out Generation IV reactors will not be ready for prime time until 2030. "The Technology Roadmap Update for Generation IV Nuclear Energy Systems was published in January 2014 which details R&D objectives for the next decade." Yes, that was just the roadmap. We may as well assume to add at least another 10 years to their 2030 target date on top of that too.
This is probably a terrible and grossly oversimplified analogy but I'm going to use it anyway. Our world is like a
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It does, but it produces very little of that waste. Little enough that 'bury and forget' is a viable disposal method. You just need a deep enough hole. The problem seems to be that everyone wishes for that hole to be somewhere else.
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...and have never heard of a thing called "Background Radiation".
(BR is natural though, not like that man-made stuff...)
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The reactors you're currently familiar with were _designed_ to have the 'radioactive waste' problem - it's what makes them useful for manufacturing atom bombs. Thorium reactors don't have that problem.
Thorium reactors have been around nearly as long as Uranium reactors. One operated for 20 years in the USA from the 1950s to the 1970s. The only reason they were never fully developed was political, not technical (they needed those bombs!):
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
FWIW, we could have got them work
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Commercial light water reactors can't generate weapons grade plutonium without shutting down very early in the cycle (around a month) as the Pu-239 is effectively poisoned by Pu-240, Pu-241. Then separating the plutonium is very challenging as they need to reprocess it. A brief overview of this is here [ccnr.org].
If you are referring to tritium producing burnable absorber rods (TPBARS [doe.gov]), that is only done in one unit in the United States.
The complications [wikipedia.org] of the molten salt reactors are much more numerous than thoriu
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The complications of the molten salt reactors are much more numerous than thorium reactor proponents would suggest, the reactor in Oak Ridge was hardly at commercial scale.
Weirdly enough, the solution to most of the complications is right there in the Wikipedia article (alongside the complication).
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Sort of, in theory. In practice, less so. The materials issues are the key challenge, plants don't operate at those environments and there is a tremendous amount of qualification needed. For example, I've heard flanges for molten salt reactors are a potential for failure, one leak and your radioactive fuel is everywhere. It is also very difficult to separate the required amount of lithium-7.
I want them to become a base load energy source. Don't get me wrong, I support MSR development, it's just that LW
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No, it's a piece of rock salt on the floor. It's not liquid at room temperature, and will cool and solidify almost instatly if it leaks out of the reactor vessel.
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"For example, I've heard flanges for molten salt reactors are a potential for failure"
So is pipework in a conventional reactor. Ultra-hot, high pressure, borated water is extremely corrosive - actually more so than fluoride salts.
"one leak and your radioactive fuel is everywhere"
In a molten salt reactor it's not going to go very far before it freezes - and as it's under negligable pressure you're talking drops, not gallons.
With a conventional reactor you now have ~1400 times as much radioactively contaminat
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Clean nuclear, doesn't nuclear fuel have a pesky rather long term disposal issue?
No. Not to rational people. A thorium fuel cycle could reduce the waste by at least an order of magnitude, but even uranium PWRs are "good enough". Just bury the waste in a deep geologic structure in an arid region. In about 500 years it will be less radioactive than the ore from with it was originally mined. If you don't think that is "good enough", then please explain why.
There are legitimate concerns about nuclear power, and especially about PWRs, but "long-term waste" is not one of them.
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I'd rather reprocess. If it is hot enough to hurt, it is hot enough to produce power.
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I'd rather reprocess.
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong. Reprocessing is an expensive, dirty process, that causes a lot more problems than it solves. It may make more sense in the future, when robotics and other technologies are more advanced.
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Reprocessing is an expensive, dirty process, that causes a lot more problems than it solves.
Sounds like we're not out of simple, obvious, and wrong ideas. I suggest engineering. It's known to fix problems and create solutions.
It may make more sense in the future, when robotics and other technologies are more advanced.
What would those do that we couldn't do now?
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It may make more sense in the future, when robotics and other technologies are more advanced.
What would those do that we couldn't do now?
Reduce the cost by an order of magnitude.
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Thorium reactors could use most of that stockpiled waste as fuel.
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I'll just be happy with -any- modern reactor technology. Right now, if I were to throw a car analogy out there, people whine and gripe about how unsafe and terrible Studebakers and Packards are, without realizing that nuclear technology has progressed 70 years since then.
New gen technology is a lot safer, intrinsically. Come a scram, rods fall down into the core, instead of being pushed horizontally. Gen IV designs are a lot better at getting the most out of every fuel rod, so waste is lessened.
The US ca
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I know that *I* refuse to fly -- I've seen the footage of the Hindenberg. I know how dangerous flying is, and I would assume that absolutely no progress has been made in the last 79 years.
Similarly, in the last 37 years since Chernobyl, I can't imagine that anybody has had any ideas. It's not like nuclear engineering or flight are new fields that would have major advances.
I look forward to your reply when you get this message in the next few weeks, and hope to have your response in the next couple months!
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The Chernobyl disaster was in 1986, which was 29 years ago...not 37.
Big words for a guy whose own figures are off by 8 years.
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Big words for a guy whose own figures are off by 8 years.
I hate to say it, but not only are your figures are quite off, you have fallen into the specific trap of misguided thinking that both I and the comment I was responding to was making.
The level of technology reflected in a design is determined by the date the thing was *built*, not when it finally failed. Going to the comment I was replying to, you have just implied that an antique Studebaker that crashed this year represents the cars of 2015, and thus all current cars are unsafe as they lack air bags, sea
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"Thorium reactors for base power, solar for peak"
WHY????
The prime factor which stops LWR reactors load-following is Xenon poisoning when they're turned down - it builds up in the fuel rods and has to decay away before they become usable.
In a MSR the xenon is able to vent into the reactor's surge space and decay harmlessly. This was generated at Oak Ridge in the 1960s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The MSRE system is highly throttleable (almost as fast as hydro systems) and as such you don't _need_ solar,
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In about 500 years it will be less radioactive than the ore from with it was originally mined. If you don't think that is "good enough", then please explain why.
To get technical with it, in order for the waste to be less radioactive than the ore it was mined from, you'd need to be reprocessing and/or using breeder reactors to take out and burn all the long-life isotopes. This leaves you with *intensely* radioactive waste, but the thing with very radioactive materials is that it means that the material has a short half-life and thus doesn't last as long.
Re:Country run by oil barons does nothing!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
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There is a solution. You inject the waste into a subduction zone. That's the only place where you can "throw" radioactives "away". The mantle is already full of them, so you're not polluting anything. In several millions of years, when it comes back out, it won't be a problem. I don't know of anyone who's come up with an actual plan for doing this, but it's the only rational place to bury nuclear waste. The Earth can turn big parts of itself over in only a few thousand years, so un-reprocessed waste is just
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I agree and to sell it politically I recommend we call it "reprocessing fuel for use in geothermal power plants."
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The idea I read for doing this involved mixing the waste with glass to form large cylinders. You'd then drop them into the ocean near a subduction zone. The cylinder would penetrate something like 60 feet into the sediment on the ocean floor which would keep it sealed from the environment until such time as it actually gets pushed down into the mantle. The problems with the method are apparently mostly related to international treaties governing what you can dump in the ocean.
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Countries like Russia and the likes probably don't care much about their population's irrational fears and would much rather present a solution, if only for the "Ha ha!" aspect of it. Instead, they dumped their waste in the seas, creating more risks and, eventually, costs. You reiterate your "just do x" mantra and ignore the fact that short term as well as long term storage is extremely complicated and very expensive if done properly. "Future tech y will solve all problems" is not helpful either. K
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"they dumped their waste in the seas, creating more risks and, eventually, costs."
To put something against this:
There are at least 3 old nuclear reactors from the icebreaker "Lenin" dumped in international waters in the Arctic Sea, along with a Soviet nuclear boat which imploded and sank with the loss of all hands, coming to rest about a mile down, complete with nuclear torpedoes loaded in the open forward tubes as well as a reactor which was running at the time of the accident.
Finland has been keeping a cl
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Nah. "Depleted" implies that at some point in the past there was a greater concentration. From what I've seen and read, rational humans have always been only slightly more common than unicorns. At best we find the occasional person who is moderately rational in their approach to one or two relatively small fields of endeavour.
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Alternately, the "disposal problem" exists largely because advances in uranium mining made it substantially cheaper to mine and refine fresh fuel than reprocess "spent" fuel. (also, because suitable containment sites don't, and can't, exist). Originally reprocessing was the norm - you take your "spent" fuel, separate out the reaction-damping fission products, and return the ~95% of unused fuel to be used again. The fission products left over are then pretty much the same relatively short-lived waste that
Fission fuel isn't radioactive (Score:2)
Not so. Nuclear fuel isn't actually meaningfully radioactive - it's fissile, so when bombarded by neutrons it shatters (aka fissions), but leave it alone and it will decay so slowly that it emits essentially no radiation. Basically the longer the half-life, the less radioactive the material, and nuclear fuel has a very long half life - it has after all been present since long before our planet formed from the remnants of ancient supernovas. Uranium-235, the most common fuel, has a half-life of 700 millio
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And investment in renewables and clean-nuclear is almost non-existent. Color me shocked!
I'll be more interested in nuclear power when it shows it can compete economically with other forms of energy production including all life-cycle costs.
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Unlike USA systems, the LWR reactors run in the UK have their shutdown and disposal costs factored into their running costs.
Reactors being dismantled now are paid out of funds built up during their operational lifespan.
They were definitely economic, even though the UK wasted a fuckton of money making every reactor of slightly different design and thus negating any chance of lowering costs via modularity.
The only non-minor (as in actually involving nuclear materials) nuclear reactor accident in the UK (winds
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A good starting point would be to stop subsidizing fossil fuels by indemnifying producers and consumers from environmental damage caused by their negligence. I'm not even talking about global warming here - coal mining and power plants dump horrifying amount of toxic and radioactive waste into the surrounding environment - thousands of times more than is permissible for a nuclear plant. Oil producers have liability caps in case of spills that are laughable compared to the actual clean-up costs, and fracki
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PS: Fracking is being given a totally free pass too!
Frelling too, or are we talking about something else?
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A fatal flaw with nuclear power, too.
Re:Country run by oil barons does nothing!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Since oil is environmentally harmful, removing it from the environment is exactly what we should do. So, I think we should continue to drill for oil, extract it from the environment, and then of course use it up so there is no risk of it re-entering the environment.
Plus, I like cheap power.
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Aha! But it *does* re-enter the environment. How do you think it got underground in the first place?
it's not just the oil barons (Score:4, Interesting)
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Electric transport is around the corner. Oil for heating would be uneconomical if electricity was done properly. What's left? Only a fraction of the current oil consumption.
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You don't know what an 'order of magnitude' is?
Also note: Basically no electricity outside of Hawaii and similar is generated from oil.
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It's coal!
Which is nearly as bad!
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Wealthy oil companies have a financial incentive to block efforts that would ultimately compete with their offerings.
You mean like buying up battery patents, etc., so nobody can put decent batteries in cars?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Yeah, they do that.
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The other big problem is that the Oil companies bought all the patents for NiMH batteries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
NiMH are much smaller.
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Today, a majority of Americans *are morons* - FTFY
I think "idiots" is the better word. According to this site [huginn.com],
...the word idiot originates from the Greek word idiwtes (idiotes), which refers to a person disinterested in participating in democracy and public life. These people were viewed as selfish, contemptable and stupid as they were more concerned with their daily personal affairs than they were of the good of the society.
Here is the Webster's [merriam-webster.com] definition. The Greek origin is mentioned at the end.
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You don't just want a word, though you're on the right track. You want a phrase [wikipedia.org] — which contains that word.
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I've got to hand it to the oil cartels: Telling the USA they'll have to drive tiny little cars if they want to save the planet was a smart piece of advertising.
It's not true though. You can knock a few liters off the engine in your SUV and get about the same power just by remapping the ECU. Rev the engine a bit instead, maybe add a turbo, you'll pull away from the lights just as well as before. Trying to produce big torque from a gasoline the engine running at 1500RPM is just a stupid waste of gasoline.
PS:
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I've got to hand it to the oil cartels: Telling the USA they'll have to drive tiny little cars if they want to save the planet was a smart piece of advertising.
It's not true; we have to give up cars. Tiny little cars don't solve the problem of running on oil. We only have to give up cars because we're not smart enough to give up oil, because Big Oil told us not to and we love authority.
You can knock a few liters off the engine in your SUV and get about the same power just by remapping the ECU.
Sure, you can get the same power out of half the displacement... for less than half as long. You want less-reliable cars? I prefer the trend towards reliability that we seem to be on.
Rev the engine a bit instead, maybe add a turbo,
Ah yes, run it up into the high Rs where engine life decreases. And a turbocharger is a very expensi
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And millions of Americans and citizens of the world are addicted to wasting oil in inefficient cars and trucks.
There's another phrase for "addicted to wasting oil" that makes more sense in this context, "doing real and productive work".
Business as usual under the US Gov't (Score:2)
Obviously, the Deepwater Horizon disaster wasn't going to change anything either.
Re:Business as usual under the US Gov't (Score:5, Informative)
We've had plenty of significant events happen in the past couple decades. One and only one - 9/11 - changed how the government does anything.
Yeah, and it only changed how the government did anything by making things worse. Now we're subjected to illegal searches, detainment, etc. by an incompetent bureaucracy that has stopped exactly 0 terrorist plots and misses over 95% of banned items in its screenings [cnn.com]. Hopefully these aren't the kinds of changes you'd like to see with the oil industry as well.
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We've had plenty of significant events happen in the past couple decades. One and only one - 9/11 - changed how the government does anything.
Yeah, and it only changed how the government did anything by making things worse.
I didn't say it was a positive change ... just that it was the only disaster of the last decade-plus that brought about any change in how the government does business. I approve of almost none of the changes that came about with 9/11 as a justification.
There have, however, been other disasters that have occurred multiple times since 9/11, and the government response has been crickets. I would like to have seen them try something but instead they opted to again do nothing.
misses over 95% of banned items in its screenings.
To give the devil his due, wou
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To give the devil his due, would-be terrorists won't necessarily know as much about TSA vulnerabilities and methods as the TSA agents who are tasked with doing these tests.
Given the absolute shit quality of TSA hiring practices, and overall policies, I doubt that's true. As deluded as terrorists are, they can't be any dumber than TSA agents, and they have a lot more motivation to get it right.
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Don't forget that the TSA is likelier to kill you than are terrorists (because terrorist's aren't constantly pointing carcinogenic x-rays at every single passenger).
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9/11 changed nothing. It just gave a big excuse to spend even more hundreds of billions for poor results.
Which changed the way the government does business. They added a huge - and hugely expensive - new bureaucracy while simultaneously embracing fear and opening the national wallet even further to commercial exploitation by the military-industrial complex.
Yeah, it didn't change daily life for the rest of us mere mortals, but it did change how things happen in DC - which was the point of this thread.
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It changed something all right (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody wants to eat anything that comes out of the gulf
Sure, I favor doing more of it (Score:5, Insightful)
Public opinion of deepwater drilling barely budged during the ordeal; today, a majority of Americans favor doing even more of it.
In light of all the rockets that have exploded and astronauts killed over the years, I favor doing even more space exploration.
Just because something is unsafe, doesn't mean I want to stop doing it. Sometimes it's worth doing so long as it can be done more safely.
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Just because something is unsafe, doesn't mean I want to stop doing it.
I don't quite agree, at least not in the simple form you've posted here. If something is unsafe, that is a very good reason to stop doing it. I think (or at least hope) you would acknowledge that very often, we shouldn't want to do unsafe things. I wouldn't play Russian Roulette because it is unsafe. I wouldn't support making it legal for children to drink and then drive cars because it would be unsafe. As a principle, lack of safety is one of the best reasons not to do something.
I think what you're r
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Just because something is unsafe, doesn't mean I want to stop doing it. Sometimes it's worth doing so long as it can be done more safely.
The problem is, it isn't being done safely. The industry routinely has spills which do lasting damage to the environment, and the industry has a death rate that is 7 times higher than all other industries (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6216a2.htm). This is beyond the day to day pollution caused by the oil being pumped out. I'm not saying we can avoid this, but it's a shame we continue to look the other way.
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The problem is, it isn't being done safely. The industry routinely has spills which do lasting damage to the environment, and the industry has a death rate that is 7 times higher than all other industries
So what's wrong with that? I'm willing to "look the other way" till the end of time, if we could get that kind of return on investment on everything we did.
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"In light of" is defined to mean "in consideration of". There's no need for correction.
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Sorry, but it was an appropriate correction. When you say, "in light of", it's implied to be something akin to "because of". Even your own definition of "in consideration of" has the same implication.
So what you said implies that you would like to do even more space exploration because of all of the astronauts that have been killed, as though murdering astronauts is a good reason to continue. I'm guessing that's not what you intend. Changing it to "in spite of" instead implies that, although astronauts
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Even your own definition of "in consideration of" has the same implication.
No, it doesn't. "In consideration of" implies only that something has been considered, not that it is a cause.
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Why don't we just agree that neither wording is ideal, and go with "Despite". ;)
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Sorry, but you're not quite right. I mean, to some extent language means whatever you understand it to mean, so whatever. But in the conventional meaning, "In consideration of" does imply a sort of causal link.
The phrase "in consideration of" implies that the phrase is going to be followed by a conclusion from that consideration. If I say, "In consideration of X, I believe Y," then you're saying essentially the same thing as, "Thinking about X has lead me to conclude Y."
"Thinking how space exploration
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If I say, "In consideration of X, I believe Y," then you're saying essentially the same thing as, "Thinking about X has lead me to conclude Y."
Or it isn't, because that's not what I said.
Is the person who has trouble with language the one who utilizes accepted vocabulary, or the one who does not?
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Re: Sure, I favor doing more of it (Score:2)
So, you are saying that you are more likely to be misunderstood. Thanks for clarifying.
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Or it isn't, because that's not what I said.
No, it is, because it's what you implied. Things you imply are by definition unsaid.
Here: http://idioms.thefreedictionar... [thefreedictionary.com]
First clause of the first definition:
"because of certain knowledge now in hand; "
The use of "because" in this definition clearly conveys the causal link.
Is the person who has trouble with language the one who utilizes accepted vocabulary, or the one who does not?
Everybody here is using accepted vocabulary, but not everybody is agreeing on what it means. I believe you are in the minority on this issue, both today and historically speaking.
Re: Sure, I favor doing more of it (Score:2)
You might want to look further than the first definition. The next two both use "in consideration of".
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Yes, I saw and do not dispute that definition. You seem to be disputing that you are implying causality, even though definition 1 is because.
Clear communication is not achieved by being able to provide a golden path through various dictionary definitions that aren't strictly wrong. It's by saying things such that they can be understood as easily as possible, without losing the message.
If you can't understand the objections people are raising in this thread, then I very strongly recommend that you avoid th
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"irregardless of..."
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The regulators have been involved all along. Measuring that by the volume of _new_ regulations is OTOH quite wrong. We don't pass new laws on murder every time someone gets killed.
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You write as if they didn't do that several years ago [nytimes.com].
The solution to oil spills is not: "another regulation that requires the regulated to follow the existing regulation." You develop new regulations when new processes or technology begin to fall outside existing regulations. Otherwise you enforce existing regulations, rebalance penalties, and rec
Why change? (Score:4)
The American lifestyle is no different. We need oil. We drive vehicles that burn gas. We need asphalt to pave our roads. We fly in airplanes that burn jet fuel. We depend on plastics to make everything that exists in our lives. In order to buy everything, we need it shipped from half-way around the world in freighters that burn diesel and in trains to get it across the United States. Practically everything that makes our modern lives modern depends on petrochemicals. If you want a more thorough list, go here [oilandgasinfo.ca].
We won't give up on oil until we run out.
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We won't give up on oil until we run out.
It'll never happen: I'd like to introduce thermal depolymerization [wikipedia.org], or, as it may possibly come to be known, soylent oil. ;)
It's not just an environmental issue (Score:2)
Energy production has impacts all over our culture and economy - it's short-sighted to look only at the (clearly negative) environmental effects. We also need to consider the job and GDP growth that oil can produce, at a time when our economy badly needs it. Then there are the (clearly positive) national and economic security implications of being energy-independent.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't also have a balls-to-the-wall, fully government-assisted race toward cleaner energy. But we're far from being ab
Are you sure something needed to change? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing can just be an accident, can it? Someone screwed you over somewhere...
They are getting away with it, and again, Congress does nothing. (Well except the initial authorization to manage deep sea drilling, and those managers now require use of an improved version of the wellhead thing that broke) But other than that, nothing!
Something must be done! Will no one think of the children?
Offshore platforms (Score:2)
How, pray tell, are you going to regulate Chinese or other nations' platforms that are (just) outside of your territorial waters?
Related: regulating (punitively, not preventatively) the companies from your own countries that produce oil such that they outsource it to companies that are not under your country's legislative purview does exactly what for saving Gaia?
I'm all for environmental conscience but if you are going to settle for curb-stomping the companies you can get to in lieu of the ones you can't,
The article is deeply flawed. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, the US doesn't OWN all of 'offshore', or even Gulf of Mexico, you know! If BP wanted to do something silly again, they could dodge any and all regulation, by simple selection of a foreign drilling site.
But, BP won't do something silly again. Not for a long time. BP will, for purely profit-seeking reasons, manage better in future. BP employees, for their own personal safety, will be more inclined to caution and prudence.
The best thing the US government can do, is to insist on full disclosure of any and all safety-related information, that could be of use in future planning (including regulation) by any and all persons, anywhere in the world, The courts (not regulators, not legislators) did perform that function, I hope adequately. BP cooperated, responsibly (IMHO).
The author of the article clearly wants restrictions on 'them', as a kind of punishment for a criime, even if it means some kind of ex-post-facto criminalization. He's missing the productive possibility of doing things better, because he wants to see someone's time wasted in a public pillory.
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He's missing the productive possibility of doing things better,
The problem with your idea is that it is impossible to burn oil responsibly. There is no possibility of doing things better — at least, not better enough to validate continuing to burn oil.
It is also impossible to get oil from the ocean safely. We don't know how. In order to develop this technology — a technology which we should not be using — we will have to experience a lot more failures, which our biosphere can ill sustain. It's not a worthy goal, so why pursue it?
Government Finances (Score:2)
Option 1: The government spends millions of dollars inspecting and enforcing safety rules. No accident happens, and the government collects nothing. Profit for the government: negative millions.
Option 2: The government spends nothing on inspections or enforcement. An accident happens, and the government collects billions of dollars in fines. Profit for the government: positive 18.7 billion dollars.
Billions should go into electric cars (Score:2)
Spend that fine on electric car rebates, at least 10 billion of it, and get rid of our need for oil. Washington should list to Elon Musk.
scammers cleaned up on $12B of reparations (Score:2)
Re:Wait for the government suckers. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Worst oil spill in history. Nature sucked it up. Hard to find signs.
It changed things, we don't have to be nearly as paranoid. The worst case scenario already happened and wasn't that bad.
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The Mexican national oil company didn't 20 years earlier with their very similar fuckup.
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Righto. I'm sure that the Coast Guard and BP had thousands of helpful hints from people like you and the astrologer next door. Ideas so intelligent that they blew past the several thousand highly experienced deep oil engineers from every single oil company and support company on the Gulf Coast that set to work on the problem.
No submarines? WTF is a submarine going to do - torpedo the thing?
"Simply place a clamp" on a pipe 5000 feet deep pushing out over 400 cubic meters of oil per hour. Simply. I don't
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That is how you stop it in less than 10 years. OTOH, the left are basically accomplishing NOTHING. In fact, in many ways, they actually stop forward progress because so many dislike the approach.
You don't like what the left is doing, so you are trying to reframe the debate. But in truth, you are a failure: The left has succeeded in reframing the debate, which is in sharp contrast to what you call "nothing". By continually pushing for environmental reform, the left has successfully got some environmental reform — precisely what you suggest they would accomplish by not actually trying to fix things.
The truth is that ten years is too long to wait to fix this problem, we on the far left know that