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14-year-long oil spill in Gulf of Mexico may be worst in U.S. history
- nickthemagicman 8y agoMan, I live here and feel bad for the people of Louisiana. The gulf is turning into a giant wasteland/superfund site. Such a corrupt state.
- aarbenton 8y agoBusinesses in the U.S. that don't want to be regulated often speak of the benefits of capitalism. But actually these businesses are not capitalistic at all. They are only profitable because of socialism: They are keeping the profits, and socializing the losses.
- nickthemagicman 8y agoBrilliant and so true. Im to the point with Americans and their voting Republican and pro-business and anti-environment and anti-socialism.... where I think the government should not fix anything and just let it destroy the place where the disaster happened. After a few places got absolutely destroyed people would start paying attention. Dumb people are incapable of learning unless they get burned on the stove a few times. They were talking in the article about the Atlantic being the next target of the oil companies....
- ebcode 8y ago> Dumb people are incapable of learning unless they get burned on the stove a few times. I'm having a hard time not applying your statement to the entire human race. Not that I think we're all "dumb people", but we all seem to be exhibiting a serious lack of concern for the environment and the planet's future. Also called "learning the hard way." Maybe we do need to get burned a bit to learn how to take better care of ourselves.
- andrekandre 8y agoi think the problem is, as intuitive as that sounds, people are good at finding scapegoats and blaming others instead of looking in the mirror, and issues as large as those are so abstract at some point idk... i don’t know what the answer is exactly but i think it starts with ‘edu’ and ends with ‘cation’... just my observation.... but maybe you are right... i just shudder at how bad it would have to get for people to notice. [edit] misspelling (thanks ipad)
- quakeguy 8y agoSad but true. What a f* up situation where corruption and legal bribery enables this. Don‘t get me wrong, i still think some form of capitalism is still the best to make human endavour possible, but the human nature on the other hand cripples it to nothing but moneymaking for a selected few and misery for the rest.
- scarecrowbob 8y agoI don't think I've ever met a socialist who would define socialism in that way.
- scarecrowbob 8y agoTo be clear, I agree with you about the fact that many businesses (especially in the energy extraction industry) can only make my by externalizing many of the real costs of production.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- geggam 8y agoBecause most socialists don't understand that someone pays for everything. Most socialists don't have much and see the govt. as the tool to rob people with so they feel morally justified. Yes this is generalization and you may be a special socialist immune from this.
- pastor_elm 8y agoWhy feel bad for people that choose their own fate?
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoBecause its the rich who choose; the masses of normal people are stuck
- Broken_Hippo 8y agoYou say that as if the people of Louisiana would have actually had a say in it or been able to stop this if only they would have voted differently. Unfortunately, most of this stuff is coming from federal agencies. Even if all of louisiana voted on a unified front against this, it would matter little. Louisiana has 8 electoral college votes. 6 seats in the house and 2 seats in the senate. This isn't enough to get any change done on its own. It doesn't take much to overpower Louisiana's voice. Not to mention that they can't control the entire gulf to protect its share of the shore, nor does the state have the resources to actually do much about it (IIRC, there is a lot of poverty in the state).
- InclinedPlane 8y agoThey don't choose their own fate. Gerrymandering and voter suppression is very real. That's very true in the southern states, where minority rule is the norm.
- nickthemagicman 8y agoThis is an important comment. Also ignorant populace easily influenced by propaganda.
- selimthegrim 8y agoThey don’t - the state environment regulator goes to the oil and gas lobby industry dinner and says “Jump? How high?” With a Democratic governor.
- omegaworks 8y agoEvery time the people have tried to choose a fate other than deference to the extractive industry, they are overruled. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oakland-port-coal-20180515-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oakland-port-coal-2018...
- king_phil 8y agoPaywall. What does the article say?
- justin66 8y agoIt says "use incognito mode."
- nielsole 8y agoBetween 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been spewing from a site [...] since 2004, when an oil-production platform owned by Taylor Energy sank in a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Ivan. Many of the wells have not been capped, and federal officials estimate that the spill could continue through this century. [...] The company has argued that there’s no evidence to prove any of the wells are leaking.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cix_pkez 8y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfhZB7rQ7iA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfhZB7rQ7iA
- jaytaylor 8y agoArchive.is to the rescue: https://archive.is/EcCkU https://archive.is/EcCkU
- ansible 8y agoI'm as disappointed in the Coast Guard as anyone in the story. I also don't understand why they were monitoring the spill instead of the EPA.
- state_less 8y agoWe should charge oil companies an extra environmental tax and use it to pay for the cleanup. It should increase the price of oil, something more inline with the actual cost. The earth is our only home we cannot afford to f—k it up.
- smileysteve 8y agoInstead we have federal maximums and corporate structures that prevent responsibility.
- mbostleman 8y agoNot familiar with the details but that's too bad. Taylor Energy should be paying for all of it. And if that makes them insolvent, so be it. I can see maximums to put sanity around things like slip and fall lawsuits putting mom and pop operations out of business, but not something like this.
- vkou 8y ago> slip and fall lawsuits putting mom and pop operations out of business A sufficiently bad slip and fall can put the falling person out of employ-ability. I've had the pleasure of slipping and falling, when a neighbourhood restaurant was cleaning their floors... In near-freezing weather. The soapy water ran out onto the (highly inclined street), and as soon as I stepped on it, I fell flat on my ass. Now, since I'm a healthy twenty-something-year-old, I got up, cursed for a few minutes, and kept going. If I weren't, and were a manual laborer, that one fall could have left me seriously injured, and destitute. I don't care that the perpetrator in question was a mom & pop shop. Negligent behavior can destroy a life.
- sathackr 8y agoI generally watch where I'm walking, particularly on highly inclined streets, and would recognize a soapy water covered slope and know that it might be slippery. Are you saying they should have put up a sign to advise you that the street was wet and might be slippery? And it was their negligence that caused your fall, not your negligence to properly observe your surroundings?
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoI had no idea there are over 3000 active oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico!
- liftbigweights 8y agoIt's one of the reasons why US and mexico are major oil producers.
- trumped 8y agoThe BP oil spill released more total oil in just a few months, it was a real disaster (estimated @ 4.9 million barrels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill#Volume_and_extent_of_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill#Vo...). And the dispersants that they used to hide/sink some of the spill were even more toxic then the oil itself.
- forkLding 8y agoAny fish that come from that area? Slightly sketched out about the fish I'm eating now.
- kbutler 8y agoYes, oil in water is bad. But there's no scale - how does this 100, 300, or 700 barrels per day compare to natural seeps? "In the Gulf of Mexico, there are more than 600 natural oil seeps that leak between one and five million barrels of oil per year, equivalent to roughly 80,000 to 200,000 tonnes." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_seep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_seep with reference) I think we really need to figure out where all this oil goes. For another yardstick, deepwater horizon was estimated at 210 million barrels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill. Even if it is 1000 barrels per day, Taylor has a while to go (575 years...)
- azinman2 8y agoBut why add to it?
- Rjevski 8y agoNot saying we should add to it on purpose, but if an artificial leak is only the equivalent of 1% of the natural leaks, then it's probably not going to have any serious impact on the environment.
- rbanffy 8y agoStill, if a company drills a hole, they should allocate the funds to cap it properly. Making that mandatory would sure help with situations like this.
- Ntrails 8y agoRight, but claiming a thing is a planet/ecosystem defining disaster when in context it's just a bad thing from which the world will inevitably recover is just scaremongering
- BioMeditate 8y agoI think it's more like I'm trying to teach my 5yr old. When you make a mess, you get to clean it up. Simple as that