(07-13-2010 04:55 PM)emmiesix Wrote:  

(07-13-2010 11:59 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  As for the Lester Brown quote, the historical record is crystal clear--capitalist societies have done a much better job protecting the environment than societies that have followed of socialism or communism or any other politico-economic system.

That's about to become (or already has?) patently untrue.

How so? You saying this oil spill will change everything?

(07-13-2010 04:55 PM)emmiesix Wrote:  http://cleantech.com/news/554/oil-indust...or-dummies

While this article, interestingly, quotes $15 B to $35 B in oil subsidies.

This article gives no source for its specific claims, but cites generally to Greenpeace (!). And even Greenpeace admits that the number is a wild guess. According to the article, "subsidies" include:

Quote:1. Construction bonds at low interest rates or tax-free
2. Research-and-development programs at low or no cost
3. Assuming the legal risks of exploration and development in a company's stead
4. Below-cost loans with lenient repayment conditions
5. Income tax breaks, especially featuring obscure provisions in tax laws designed to receive little congressional oversight when they expire
6. Sales tax breaks - taxes on petroleum products are lower than average sales tax rates for other goods
7. Giving money to international financial institutions (the U.S. has given tens of billions of dollars to the World Bank and U.S. Export-Import Bank to encourage oil production internationally, according to Friends of the Earth)
8. The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve
9. Construction and protection of the nation's highway system
10. Allowing the industry to pollute - what would oil cost if the industry had to pay to protect its shipments, and clean up its spills? If the environmental impact of burning petroleum were considered a cost? Or if it were held responsible for the particulate matter in people's lungs, in liability similar to that being asserted in the tobacco industry?
11. Relaxing the amount of royalties to be paid (more below)

Most of these are too vague to really assess, or are not at all specific to the oil industry. "Constructing the highway system" could just as easily be called "investment in infrastructure", which "subsidizes" just about every industry I can think of, including education, art, medicine, entertainment, hospitality, and manufacturing. If making it easier for people and things to move around is bad, then I suppose we should tear up the National Road and fill in the Erie Canal while we're at it.
Many of these are not really subsidies. For #11, I didn't read the details, but it takes a rather skewed mindset to construe restraint in taxation as a "subsidy".

(07-13-2010 04:55 PM)emmiesix Wrote:  

(07-13-2010 11:59 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  (1) the failure to have implemented the 1994 recommendations for containment resources (only minimally Obama's fault, more Bush and Clinton), and

agree.

(07-13-2010 11:59 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  (2) the nit-picking refusals to accept aid from other countries (who have the assets we don't) and to permit defensive actions by the states.

Are we really refusing useful aid? Sources?

(07-13-2010 11:59 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I agree that the prices of oil and gas and derivative products have to rise in order to reflect their true costs and make alternatives attractive. So far, our massive spending to develop alternatives has produced essentially no viable alternative to oil.

Massive spending, you say? How massive? I'm curious. Is it as much as we spend on oil subsidies? I doubt that very much.

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_art...s&id=18003
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/11...01570.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20007344-54.html

The last link quotes about $5 B/year on alternative energy research.

http://cleantech.com/news/554/oil-indust...or-dummies

While this article, interestingly, quotes $15 B to $35 B in oil subsidies.

Color me unimpressed with our "massive spending".

(07-13-2010 11:59 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  As for the Lester Brown quote, the historical record is crystal clear--capitalist societies have done a much better job protecting the environment than societies that have followed of socialism or communism or any other politico-economic system.

That's about to become (or already has?) patently untrue.

I agree that Owl69 is pretty much right about this one. For a few high-profile examples, compare Three Mile Island to Chernobyl; or any construction in Western history to Three Gorges. Of course, the reason is not purely economic. It's not that capitalism makes people altruistic -- indeed, experience teaches (most of) us that making people altruistic is a fool's errand if there ever was one (and similarly, that giving power to altruism police in an attempt to enforce altruism is foolery within foolery). Rather, it's that truly free markets (1) tend AGAINST concentration of power, which is the real risk factor of evil; and (2) require as pre-requisites the twin virtues of liberty and law -- which are the greatest insurance man has ever devised against tyranny and destructiveness.

(07-13-2010 06:21 PM)d1owls4life Wrote:  

(07-13-2010 04:55 PM)emmiesix Wrote:  

(07-13-2010 11:59 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  As for the Lester Brown quote, the historical record is crystal clear--capitalist societies have done a much better job protecting the environment than societies that have followed of socialism or communism or any other politico-economic system.

That's about to become (or already has?) patently untrue.

How so? You saying this oil spill will change everything?

Yes. We've basically devolved into the point where massive negligence will go pretty much unpunished, as far as I've seen in this case. Do you really think keeping the media out of Louisiana beaches is about safety? Or government-sponsored PR mop-up? The lobbyists have their death-grip on our government and you can be damned sure they're not letting the environment get in the way of profits.

There was a point in history where corporations were specially created for short-term projects. Our own government grants the rights for these sick institutions to exist, and is apparently unable to revoke those rights even in the light of complete disregard for "negative externalities". BP should not be allowed to continue operations, and the executives should be in jail, in my opinion. There has to be a bottom. There have to be consequences at SOME point. At least make the fines for breaking laws equal to the monetary gain. And I'd also throw in the local government that is so happy to be working for BP when they should be watching out for their citizens:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_...0/07/05/bp

This is completely disgusting to me.

Honestly, Emmie, while I'm sure that there are overreactions to those charged with protecting these facilities, if people photographing any high-value target were not confronted about their purpose and identity, then the security folks would not be doing their job. A refinery is a high impact target for any type of terrorist organization. If we learned nothing from 9/11, the surveillance can come at any time and from any person. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, someone was found taking photographs of the building that my wife works in (multi-story, multiple thousands of workers, government office location). There really isn't much reason to take photographs, given that it's away from the historic downtown area and sits in the middle of a giant parking lot with nothing of note around it. But even more chilling is that apparently, it had been photographed before - found amongst some of the post-9/11 searches done done of Al Qaeda supporters. IMO, not a good choice of targets, but still obviously, someone thought it might someday be useful.

Again, if you take photos, even from public property, of something of high value like that, don't be surprised to get a little interview.

I cannot answer for the beaches and what's going on there. Not do I want to justify it - that's one area I agree shouldn't get blocked much, as long as they stay out of the way.

And Emmie, for just a simple example of the head in the sand approach on denying non-US skill and equipment, the Dutch offers of help immediately after the spill offer just one example.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/busi...43272.html

(07-13-2010 04:55 PM)emmiesix Wrote:  

(07-13-2010 11:59 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  (2) the nit-picking refusals to accept aid from other countries (who have the assets we don't) and to permit defensive actions by the states.

Are we really refusing useful aid? Sources?

Is this a serious question? You are a generally a reasonable poster, even when we disagree, so I assume that it is.

This is so well-documented that it would be hard to figure out where to start. It is so widely accepted that we have refused aid that the widespread discussion has focued on whether the refusals were justified.

A good example is the Dutch systems that were offered. They remove 90% of the oil that they process. EPA refuses to accept anything that doesn't remove 99%. Would it be useful to remove 90% of the oil? You bet it would. Particularly if it were used far enough offshore to cut down on the volume of oil moving toward land. But EPA refused to allow it on what can only be described accurately as the nit-picking ground that 90% isn't 99%. This is where Obama should have shown the leadership to say, "Hey, getting rid of 90% of the oil is a whole lot better than getting rid of 0%." But he didn't. Why not?

I am a huge believer that we should look at and learn from what other countries are doing. This is why, for example, I oppose Obamacare--it is emulating the worst aspects of health care systems that don't work, instead of the best aspects of systems that do work. Same here. The countries around the North Sea take envrionmental protection seriously, and they have developed a number of systems that have been used effectively to deal with the inevitable spills that they have encountered. We should have had the same systems in place here. We didn't. Because we didn't, we should have accepted assitance that was freely offered by countries that do have things we don't.

There is one other issue. By insisting on, for example, the EPA has undoubtedly prevented us from putting in place systems that would capture 90%. Other countries are glad to implement systems that capture 90%, figuring that doing so reduces the problems for the rest of their response capability.

To return to the comment that inspired this line of discussion, is this evil? Probably not, all things considered, but clearly incredibly stupid. I would attribute it to the tendency of regulatory agencies to adopt incredibly stupid policies far more often than they should, because of the nature of the process.

(07-13-2010 04:55 PM)emmiesix Wrote:  

(07-13-2010 11:59 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  As for the Lester Brown quote, the historical record is crystal clear--capitalist societies have done a much better job protecting the environment than societies that have followed of socialism or communism or any other politico-economic system.

That's about to become (or already has?) patently untrue.

Absolutely untrue. Not even close to true. The environmental devastation that was eastern Europe far exceeds this. Chernobyl exceeds this.

Had the response to this situation been to use all available resources from the start, the damage from this could and should have been contained within a 20-mile radius of the well site. That would have been a terrible situation, but the real damage would have been minimal.

Besides, a situation where every move made by BP was subject to federal agency approval, and where BP's liability was at least potentially limited by statute to a ridiculously low number, hardly qualifies as capitalism in my estimation. If BP had believed going in that there was no statutory cap on their liability, would they have been more careful? Not a certainty, by any means, but that's certainly the way most intelligent observers would lean.

The real problem here is that we weren't prepared to deal. We should have been. As far back as the mid 90s, we had a blueprint for what to do but a combinatoin of government and industry didn't get it done. You can split hairs over how much responsibility each should bear, but the bottom line is that either could have, but neither did, get it done. If the industry had been looking at potentially unlimited liability, and/or if the industry/government relationship had been more like the cooperative relationship that exists in the North Sea than the adversarial relationship that exists here, would it have gotten done? North Sea experience says yes. That slam dunks the argument for me.

(07-13-2010 07:40 PM)emmiesix Wrote:  Yes. We've basically devolved into the point where massive negligence will go pretty much unpunished, as far as I've seen in this case. Do you really think keeping the media out of Louisiana beaches is about safety? Or government-sponsored PR mop-up? The lobbyists have their death-grip on our government and you can be damned sure they're not letting the environment get in the way of profits.

There was a point in history where corporations were specially created for short-term projects. Our own government grants the rights for these sick institutions to exist, and is apparently unable to revoke those rights even in the light of complete disregard for "negative externalities". BP should not be allowed to continue operations, and the executives should be in jail, in my opinion. There has to be a bottom. There have to be consequences at SOME point. At least make the fines for breaking laws equal to the monetary gain. And I'd also throw in the local government that is so happy to be working for BP when they should be watching out for their citizens:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_...0/07/05/bp

This is completely disgusting to me.

But this is not capitalism. Capitalism is a system where you are responsible for your actions. We have bastardized capitalism by adding layers of government regulation and in return insulating people from their responsibility. Basically, if the regulator signs off, you skate.

That might work if regulators were somehow altruistic people driven solely by a desire to make the world a better place. They aren't.

I fail to understand people who can attribute the worst possible motives to people in private industry, but at the same time assuem that if only we have government regulate them, then everything will be okay. That fails to account for human nature. The people who work for regulatory agencies are no better than the people who work in private enterprise. If anything, they are slightly worse, because many of them tried and could not make it in the private sector before gravitating to government.

If you want to advance the proposition that people who work for government are somehow more ethical or honorable or reliable than people who work in the private sector, please explain why.

(07-13-2010 07:40 PM)emmiesix Wrote:  And I'd also throw in the local government that is so happy to be working for BP when they should be watching out for their citizens:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_...0/07/05/bp

This is completely disgusting to me.

The fact that government so often uses its authority to serve the few and the powerful is an age-old indictment of government. Increasing the heft of government hardly lessens this tendency.

It has been stated many times, and proven even more times than that: the ONLY sure way to reduce the (corrupting) influence of wealth upon government is to reduce the influence of government upon wealth.

(07-13-2010 04:55 PM)emmiesix Wrote:  

(07-13-2010 11:59 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I agree that the prices of oil and gas and derivative products have to rise in order to reflect their true costs and make alternatives attractive. So far, our massive spending to develop alternatives has produced essentially no viable alternative to oil.

Massive spending, you say? How massive? I'm curious. Is it as much as we spend on oil subsidies? I doubt that very much.
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_art...s&id=18003
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/11...01570.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20007344-54.html
The last link quotes about $5 B/year on alternative energy research.
http://cleantech.com/news/554/oil-indust...or-dummies
While this article, interestingly, quotes $15 B to $35 B in oil subsidies.
Color me unimpressed with our "massive spending".

Sorry, but you're making an illogical apples-to-oranges comparison. Oil subsidies (which I believe have unrealistically reduced the price of oil and oil products) are related to an ongoing product which is used to the extend of 20 million barrels per day. Spending on alternatives research is more of a laboratory exercise at this point, and you simply cannot spend as much on lab science as you can on something that is in widespread use. The incredible difference in volume means that the comparison is simply disingenuous.

If you wanted to bring the two more in line, my solution would be to reduce the oil subsidies. That would mean higher prices at the pump--not lower profits for oil companies--and that impact would be "regressive." So what. I'm really tired of the overworked progressive/regressive argument. Europe doesn't mind collecting a lot more taxes from those with lower income---with much less progressive income tax rate structures and a regressive VAT and high fuel taxes. We should learn from them. Put a real safety net in place to protect those who need it, and let everybody--including the "poor"--pay their fair share.

We've spent a lot of money to support an orgy of research on alternatives over the last 40 years, and so far it has produced nothing of value. Literally nothing. The best alternative to gasoline developed by anybody in that time frame is sugar cane ethanol by Brasil, and they did it on a fraction of what we spent. It's tempting to argue that if we had somehow spent more on alternatives technology, we'd have something to show for it, but that simply isn't justified by the facts. It's tempting to argue that if JFK could get us to the moon in less than 10 years, we should be able to solve this. First, JFK didn't get us to the moon in 10 years; we had 40+ years of work on the effort before JFK ever made his "why does Rice play Texas" speech; we already had astronauts, three of them had already flowin in space, and the hardware that ultimately got us to the moon was already on the drawing boards--if not in place. We have 40+ years working on alternative energy, but are simply nowhere nearly as far along as our space program was when JFK laid down the gauntlet.

We have spent lots of money on alternative energy research. The results have been corn ethanol (which now appears to do more harm than good) and nothing else of much use. It is convenient to argue that if we had somehow spent more, we'd be faurther along. But why? On what would we have spent the money?

Sorry, it's a compelling argument in the abstract, but it just doesn't stand up to much scrutiny.

(07-13-2010 04:55 PM)emmiesix Wrote:  Massive spending, you say? How massive? I'm curious. Is it as much as we spend on oil subsidies? I doubt that very much.

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_art...s&id=18003
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/11...01570.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20007344-54.html

The last link quotes about $5 B/year on alternative energy research.

http://cleantech.com/news/554/oil-indust...or-dummies

While this article, interestingly, quotes $15 B to $35 B in oil subsidies.

Color me unimpressed with our "massive spending".

Emmie... This is like asking if we spend as much on developing artificial replacements for major organs as we do on over the counter cold and pain medications. One is research, and more doesn't mean better or faster when it comes to innovation... and the other is actual usage. While we can argue about exactly what constitutes a subsidy, we don't need to. These aren't just checks to reduce the cost of gas, but they are businesses... many US businesses.. in other words, there is likely SOME return in the form of economic activity. I'm not arguing it pays for it... but there is really no way to know.

As for the environment... Chernobyl still ranks pretty high in my opinion. Worse, I don't know... it still remains to be seen. This is absolutely AWFUL... and it's far from over.... I think mines in the US are safer than mines in Russia or China... but that doesn't mean they're safe.

I don't really see how BP isn't paying a pretty significant price already, and will continue to do so until it is settled. They may well be put out of business, but that won't really change many things. We DO have to have a trial before we convict their executives... and I'm sure we'll get there. I'm not saying they SHOULDN'T be... merely that it is a process, not an edict. Bp is writing big checks, and if it takes them writing checks forever, I'm okay with that. I want them to pay until it is clean, and there is NO WAY this hasn't already cost them more than they could ever hope to reap from this one well.

(07-13-2010 04:55 PM)emmiesix Wrote:  Are we really refusing useful aid? Sources?

Three days after the incident, the Dutch offered their skimmers, which were rejected because they didn't meet regulations. Fortunately, as the severity of the situation became apparent with multiple failures to close off the leak, someone either in the EPA or above waived those regulations to get the skimmers airlifted in, and they've been availabe and at work for the past two months.

(07-13-2010 10:38 PM)At Ease Wrote:  

(07-13-2010 04:55 PM)emmiesix Wrote:  Are we really refusing useful aid? Sources?

Three days after the incident, the Dutch offered their skimmers, which were rejected because they didn't meet regulations. Fortunately, as the severity of the situation became apparent with multiple failures to close off the leak, someone either in the EPA or above waived those regulations to get the skimmers airlifted in, and they've been availabe and at work for the past two months.

My understanding is that we are not using the full number offered. And there are other offers that we are not using, or only partially using.

But even with the Dutch skimmers, the delay means that thirty days worth of oil removal was foregone, that we cannot replace. That could easily translate into one or many unnecessarily spoiled marshes or beaches.

I believe that there are people in decision-making positions in regulatory agencies that saw this as their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play nit-picking martinet, and jumped on it. I also believe that there are people in those agencies who want offshore drilling outlawed completely, at all costs, and to them the Gulf coast would have been a cheap price to pay. I believe that there were people at BP who put profits ahead of safety and reasonable precautions.

What I don't understand is why some people believe the latter of those propositions implicitly, but refuse to believe the former two. The people working for regulatory agencies are no better than the people working in private industry, if anything they are more despicable. That's been my experience anyway, and that experience is considerable.

(07-14-2010 07:18 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I also believe that there are people in those agencies who want offshore drilling outlawed completely, at all costs, and to them the Gulf coast would have been a cheap price to pay.

I don't want to open up a discussion on conspiracy theories, but I have heard it questioned that if the spill had happened opposite Massachusetts or some other blue state(s), would the governmental response have been different? Quicker? We'll never know for sure, but I have wondered at times about the lack of government response or (what i consider to be) inappropriate responses.

IMO, no need for conspiracies, other than the fact that these folks really never planned for - or even imagined - something like this happening. If they had really considered and planned for high risk and/or impact scenarios (appropriate risk planning), they would have been better prepared, with at least an outline of some of the things to consider and what corners they'd be willing to cut. Or who they'd consult with to get up to speed. Or anything. But it almost appears like no one ever imagined something like this happening.

It's kind of sad that it appears that such planning has never happened, despite other countries being prepared for it and having a similar blow out occurring only about 35 years ago (or whatever the timeline was) in the Gulf, albeit in shallower waters. Both BP and the US government should be ashamed of this.

(07-14-2010 01:02 PM)gsloth Wrote:  IMO, no need for conspiracies, other than the fact that these folks really never planned for - or even imagined - something like this happening. If they had really considered and planned for high risk and/or impact scenarios (appropriate risk planning), they would have been better prepared, with at least an outline of some of the things to consider and what corners they'd be willing to cut. Or who they'd consult with to get up to speed. Or anything. But it almost appears like no one ever imagined something like this happening.
It's kind of sad that it appears that such planning has never happened, despite other countries being prepared for it and having a similar blow out occurring only about 35 years ago (or whatever the timeline was) in the Gulf, albeit in shallower waters. Both BP and the US government should be ashamed of this.

Americans want everything cheap. Planning for contingencies like this is expensive, and that expense looks foolish as long as nothing happens. But when something does, like 9/11 or Katrina or this, we always wish we had planned better.

Like the commercial, "You can pay me now or you can pay me later."

Getting off the spill for a moment - Something intriguing to consider, not that it probably has immediate practical implications. But definitely shows how some things are definitely learned about how to really improve fuel efficiency in cars and what is likely and not likely.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...05697.html

(07-14-2010 01:24 PM)gsloth Wrote:  Getting off the spill for a moment - Something intriguing to consider, not that it probably has immediate practical implications. But definitely shows how some things are definitely learned about how to really improve fuel efficiency in cars and what is likely and not likely.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...05697.html

Great idea about how to get research done, too.

Instead of the highly political grant game that we've played for 40 years, come up with some specs, post a prize, and first one to hit the specs wins the prize. If we'd done it that way 40 years ago, we'd be way ahead of where we are now.

(07-13-2010 09:09 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(07-13-2010 04:55 PM)emmiesix Wrote:  

(07-13-2010 11:59 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  (2) the nit-picking refusals to accept aid from other countries (who have the assets we don't) and to permit defensive actions by the states.

Are we really refusing useful aid? Sources?

Is this a serious question? You are a generally a reasonable poster, even when we disagree, so I assume that it is.

Apologies - it was a serious question. I knew there were some refusals, but I apparently missed the big flap over it. (Last few months I had been working away, no TV and not a lot of internet time, my knowledge of the situation has increased a lot over the last few weeks now that I have more time).

Anyway, no I don't think people are inherently more altruistic because they have a government job versus a corporate one. I think the "evilness" comes in different forms. For the former, it appears to me that job security creates a situation where people push things to benefit themselves, while in the latter, the opposite situation prevails so you get "I was only following orders" all the way to the top where the tune changes to "We have to please the shareholders... (environment, underpaid workers, etc, be damned)." So yes, you could suppose these two situations could produce equally bad effects for society (often in concert, I agree). I just happen to think the way the modern public corporation is set-up nearly guarantees it, and as the power is concentrated you have an "individual" who is much more powerful than most government employees, no matter how corrupt.

This is obviously my view as a total outsider to both environments.

Now, for something lighter in the spirit of the X-prize, this news really made my day a while back:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/world/...plane.html

I'm not sure I agree that the heads of corporations are more powerful than Presidents, VPs and Senators... but I agree that corporate heads have become much more powerful recently. Of course, PART of this is related to the tax code that encourages "business expenses" over "personal ones". Where deferred compensation/company stock is preferred and guaranteed... just look at our sports figures... same idea...