Agreed. But even if their total bill comes out to say $10 billion, it can come out of their profits earned from only the last 1-3 quarters. Since those profits

Agreed. But even if their total bill comes out to say $10 billion, it can come out of their profits earned from only the last 1-3 quarters. Since those profits already came from us, arguably, we the consumers of BP's product have prepayed for the cost of this disaster. In one sense, BP is not going to pay anything. Plus, due to the nature of the incident, it is unlikely that the true "total cost" is going to be charged to BP. How do you come up with a dollar figure for the total short and long term impact to the environment and economy? Very hard to measure, at best you can only estimate.