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 Lessons of the Exxon ValdezPosted on Mar 24, 2009By Amy Goodman Twenty years ago, the Exxon Valdez supertanker spilled at least 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s pristine Prince William Sound. The consequences of the spill were epic and continue to this day, impacting the environment and the economy. Instead of seeing it as just a pollution story, Riki Ott considers the Exxon Valdez disaster to be a fundamental threat to U.S. democracy. Ott, a marine toxicologist and commercial salmon “fisherma’am” from Cordova, Alaska, opens her book on the disaster, “Not One Drop,” with the words of Albert Einstein: “No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.” The massive spill stretched 1,200 miles from the accident site, and covered 3,200 miles of shoreline and an incredible 10,000 square miles overall. Early on March 24, 1989, Ott, who was on the board of the Cordova District Fishermen United, was airborne, surveying the scene: “[I]t was a surreal scene. It was just drop-dead gorgeous, March, sunrise, pink mountains glistening with the sunrise. And all of a sudden we come on the scene, where there’s this red deck of this oil tanker that’s three football fields long; flat, calm water, dark blue; and there’s this inky-black stain that’s just stretching with the tide.” News of the spill went global, and people poured into Valdez, Alaska, to start the cleanup. Sea life was devastated. Ott says up to half a million sea birds died, along with 5,000 sea otters, 300 or so harp seals, and billions of young salmon, fish eggs and young juvenile fish. The death of the fish eggs created a long-term but delayed impact on the herring and salmon fisheries in Prince William Sound. By 1993, the fisheries had collapsed. Families lost their livelihoods after taking huge loans to buy boats and expensive fishing permits. While the salmon fishery has improved, the herring have never come back. This economic disruption is one basis of legal action against ExxonMobil, the biggest oil corporation in the world. Complex litigation has dragged on for two decades, and ExxonMobil is winning. There are 22,000 plaintiffs suing ExxonMobil. A jury awarded the plaintiffs $5 billion in damages, equal to what was, at the time, a year’s worth of Exxon profits. This was cut by half by a U.S. appeals court, then finally lowered to just over $500 million by the Supreme Court. During the 20 years of court battles, 6,000 of the original plaintiffs have died. ExxonMobil, with its billions in annual profits and armies of lawyers, can tie up the Valdez case in the courts for decades, while the injured commercial fishers slowly die off. Advertisement  Corporations’ “free speech” is interpreted to include making campaign contributions and lobbying Congress. People who break laws can be locked up; when a corporation breaks the law—even behaving criminally negligently, causing death—rarely are the consequences greater than a fine, which the corporation can write off on its taxes. As Ott put it, “If ‘three strikes and you’re out’ laws can put a person in prison for life, why not a corporation?” So-called tort reform in U.S. law is eroding an individual’s ability to sue corporations and the ability for courts to assess damages that would actually deter corporate wrongdoing. Ott and others have drafted a “28th Amendment” to the Constitution that would strip corporations of their personhood, subjecting them to the same oversight that existed for the first 100 years of U.S. history. With the global economic meltdown and welling public outrage over the excesses of executives at AIG as well as over other bailout beneficiaries, now just might be the time to expand public engagement over the imbalance of power between people and corporations that has undermined our democracy. Distributed by King Features Syndicate Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig. Add Your Comment
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By msavage, March 31 at 2:12 pm #
Amy, I enjoyed your article, because it is truth. Exxon has gotten away with murder and I do mean murder. The 11,000+ workers who sprayed toxic chemicals to clean the beaches, which was authorized by Exxon, have been suffering for 20 years with different health problems, http://www.silenceinthesound.com/stories.shtml
Report thisMany have died. We are much more than just Exxon’s collateral Damage. How does a corporation get away with using toxic chemicals in a work place?
http://www.silenceinthesound.com/valdez-oil-spill-workers-vs-exxon.shtml
By CityKid, March 31 at 12:56 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
Another spill in Alaska may be in the making as I write this. The Drift River Terminal, a transit terminal for oil extracted in Cook Inlet sits at the base of the currently erupting Mt. Redoubt volcano. Just outside of The Lake Clark National Park the terminal currently contains 6.2 million barrels of “sweet crude.” Why Chevron was allowed to continue to store oil there after Mt. Redoubt became active is anybodies guess. Efforts are under way to determine if the oil level of the tanks can be safely “drawn down.” For more information search on “drift river”, “oil”, “volcano”, “alaska”. I have some information and a number of links on our website: http://www.ptarmigannest.net/?p=1324 . Good luck to us all - have a nice day.
Report thisBy Jim Yell, March 29 at 10:18 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
Very good comments and article. Bringing up many questions about the corruption of our country, by our elected officials and the corporations that abuse the public domain and as we watch the bail out of banks, raid our treasury under the disguise of saving a vital national business.
If Bush/Cheney wanted to destroy this nation, as their actions and words seemed to suggest than their administration has been a great success.
As to Exxon, remember the newscaster that labeled Exxon as the “sign of the double cross”; today, yesterday and tomorrow. Nothing will change without recovery of our government from the direction of corporations.
Report thisBy wildflower, March 29 at 1:55 am #
RE ElDuderino: “These bourgeois citizens of course could never have imagined what would become of this idea, and EXXON certainly does not fall into this category of public welfare.”
Thanks, for the information. There seems to be a number of double standards when it comes to corporations like EXXON, which is really puzzling.
This business of being able to take a tax “write off” on a fine they’ve received for criminally negligence behavior is ludicrous. When individuals are involved in criminally negligence behavior not only do these individuals receive jail time, their assets and property are often seized as well. If we can seize the assets of criminals like Madoff, why can’t the assets of corporations be seized when they behave criminally and/or negligently?
Report thisBy Amy Murphy, March 28 at 9:02 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Once again, Amy Goodman has the courage to speak out when others shrink from their responsibilities. Ott is cut from the same courageous cloth, and we are fortunate to have their voices. I first saw Ms. Ott in the Sierra Club Chronicles doc, “The Day the Water Died”, which is sad and depressing but a must-see. Thank goodness for “Free Speech TV” and “Link TV”. They are the only stations worth watching. Keep up the great work, Amy! Amy Murphy, St. Marys, GA.
Report thisBy wildflower, March 27 at 9:03 pm #
I greatly appreciate this effort:
According to the AP, lobbyists are irate about the Obama administration’s restrictions against lobbyists trying to get a piece of the stimulus package, which bars them from speaking to administration officials but instead forces them to issue their statements in writing:
“What disqualifies lobbyists from exercising their First Amendment rights?” said J. Keith Kennedy, a top lobbyist for the Washington firm Baker Donelson.
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=03&year=2009&base_name=lobbyists_strike_back
Report thisBy tp, March 26 at 10:55 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
The first words of the book called “Not One Drop”:
Report this“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.” Statement by Einstein. That’s good. Obama should have taken that advice before he filled his cabinet with the same minds that created our global economic woes.
I also liked the idea of taking away the status of “person” away from corporations who are now using the 5th amendment to retain their assets which they lost in wild gambling orgies after being deregulated, by Phil Gram, trying to get rid of their toxic assets in foreign banking markets. But, now since they have been bailed out with our money they want all their stuff back as the Fifth Amendment states that the government cannot take the assets as if the banking corporations were people instead of institutions in which money is the only goal of its existence.
Good article. This new amendment might be an answer that helps solve the problems!!
tp
By ElDuderino, March 25 at 5:30 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
@wildflower
Check out the movie “The Corporation” for the first ten or twenty minutes, in which it gives a historical overview over the person status of a corporation.
Report thisThe point was to protect groups of engaged citizens, for example a group who wanted to build a bridge or a road (yeah, that is how long ago that came into being, could you imagine just building your own roads these days?). If the bridge collapsed, all these well-meaning citizens would have to be sentenced to jail time or worse. That was seen as a perversion of public engagement. So they created the legal personhood for corporations, exactly to protect the individual members of this corporation from persecution. These bourgeois citizens of course could never have imagined what would become of this idea, and EXXON certainly does not fall into this category of public welfare. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood)
By BruSays, March 25 at 4:23 pm #
1. My brother worked for Exxon for 20+ years, including the time of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. He drank from the Exxon Kool-Aid and would point out how minor the spill area was when compared to vastness of Alaska. He spoke of the media hype surrounding the incident and I suspect most at Exxon/Mobil continue to this day to believe the incident was minor and that greedy Alaskans conived to pick the deep pockets of their oil company.
What he and others miss is that despite the vastness of the area, nature is in an incredibly delicate balance there…it’s a very unforgiving region. Everything takes longer to heal - man’s footprint lasts longer, travels deeper and does more harm in what many dismiss as a barren wasteland. An environmental “event” in these regions can carry far more impact than elsewhere.
2. Last year I was on a cruise to Alaska and a Naturalist was on board holding seminars and talks thoughout the trip. During one talk she held up a jar of what looked like brown muck. She announced that the sample she held was taken from a beach some 50 miles from the oil spill. It wasn’t recovered in 1989. She’d picked it up off the beach 4 days earlier…almost 20 years after the event.
Report thisBy squeaky jones, March 25 at 3:46 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Sarah Palin is a joke! When asked about Supreme Court rulings, she could not even remember the most recent, and important ruling in Alaskan history, the Exxon Mobile ruling during her reign as Gov. of Alaska. Also, Sarah Palin likes killing wolves running in the wild. She is horrid. Squeaky.
Report thisshe is discusting
By ender, March 25 at 3:06 pm #
This is why drilling off the coast of Florida anywhere near the Everglades is insane. A spill of this size would finish what development and sugarcane almost have, and wipe out the most important fish hatchery on the southern Atlantic Coast.
Report thisBy Kris Knight, March 25 at 9:12 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
i do not remember even once during the last campaign that this crisis in Alaska was mentioned by Gov. Palin. Nor do I recall anyone ever mentioning that she is a champion for her constituents in this dreadful situation. Or the wildlife so tragically affected.
Report thisIf I had even an iota of respect left for this woman, which I pretty much did not, this removes any whatsoever.
And in terms of this article, seems to write about moving toward a dialogue about something this big is like pissing in the wind relative to the state of our nation. Seems we are left increasingly with no choice but to live our lives IN SPITE OF what we call our government, not BECAUSE OF.
By msgmi, March 25 at 8:58 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
Elected politicians such as Tom Delay and his cult of greed has left a footprint of hubris on Capitol Hill that is out of control.
Report thisBy G.Anderson, March 25 at 1:23 am #
Lessons learned?
The number one lesson learned here is that our government is a total failure. It lacks the political will, and the moral fiber to act in the public’s best interest, but insteads stumbles forward like a blind man in a coma.
Dreaming of the benefits, praying for the riches, and staffing our government from the wealthy classes, it no longer serves the people, but has become a burden to them.
Instead I propose a Committe for Public Safety, to begin by collecting names and addresses of those responsible. Robespierre would approve.
Report thisBy wildflower, March 25 at 12:43 am #
Re Amy Goodman: “People who break laws can be locked up; when a corporation breaks the law—even behaving criminally negligently, causing death—rarely are the consequences greater than a fine, which the corporation can write off on its taxes.”
The U.S. Internal Revenue Tax Codes also makes a clear distinction between Individuals and Corporations. Individuals are taxed under Section 1 of the IRS Code and corporations are taxed under Section 11. If ExxonMobil is legally a “person,” why is it taxed differently from other “persons?”
Section 1 imposes the Federal income tax on the “taxable income” of individuals:
For individuals, section 1 divides income earners into categories depending on whether they are married individuals filing jointly, married individuals filing separately, unmarried individuals, surviving spouses, or heads of households. Section 1 sets forth the formula for what amount of taxable income must be paid to the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Code_section_1
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