AstroBoy Online Forums

Oil leak in gulf.
Reaganomic deregulation. BP lobbied against reg
that would have added 500,000 lousey bucks to cost of oil wells.
500,000 bucks! The Gulf is polluted forever!
Not to mention the impending economic collapse to come!

And I live in Texas. >.<

I'm super worried about this, and I don't even live in the area. I have no idea how all of this happened. I just try to avoid the news every time.

Would look like all of these oil wells would be built for safety first for everyone- in the end building these wells right would save human life and the environment.

Would this count as the first massive oil disaster?

"avatargirl" wrote:Would look like all of these oil wells would be built for safety first for everyone- in the end building these wells right would save human life and the environment.

Building for safety is not cost-efficient. Unless the polluter has to pay, which may actually happen for once.

"Faram45" wrote:Would this count as the first massive oil disaster?

First massive, not sure. But the worst of all times certainly. Unless some big heads don't learn their lesson and we have an even worse one.

Now we learn the depths of hypocrisy that exist in this world.
The entire Gulf of Mexico. Maybe this will stop natural oil exploitation. But this generation with it's rReagan deregulation insanity will be held guilty of gross greed and vices by future generations that will suffer in the Gulf oil pollution zones. For the oil will leak up from the depths forever. Leeching out of the sands at the bottom of the sea.

yah we are sure leaving a big mess for our kids to clean up

hi- look like companies like BP would build these oil wells for safety to not only save lives and the environment- but in the long run it would save them money- but guess they never thought of that.

"avatargirl" wrote:hi- look like companies like BP would build these oil wells for safety to not only save lives and the environment- but in the long run it would save them money- but guess they never thought of that.

It doesn't save them money unless they have to actually pay for ALL the damages. Let me explain to you how big companies do the maths.

This is oversimplified, but explains a lot:
1) Plan for safety measures: x millions dollars.
2) Damages to materials when an accident occur: y1 millions dollars.
3) Lawsuits or out-of-courts settlements for victims' families: y2 millions dollars.
4) Ecological damages: ???

If x>y1+y2 when adjusted to the frequency of the accidents, then it is not cost-efficient to build safety measures, because it will cost less to simply pay when an accident occur. However, if point 4 is made to make them cough up billions of dollars as it should, then it becomes vastly more cost-efficient to have viable safety measures. But because point 4 is very difficult to enforce, and even to estimate in money, then usually only points 2 and 3 enter in the computations.