As some of you may know, several years ago, there was a terrible oil spill up near Alaska. It was devestating to the environment, coating birds and other sea animals in oil and killing many of them. This happened when an oil tanker from Exxon Mobil crashed and spilled its dangerous cargo all over the ocean.
The company, of course, was supposed to pay for the cleanup of the environment, and it was also supposed to pay a large fine. But now the Supreme Court is saying that they may not make Exxon pay the rest of the fines (because Bush has all of his people in the courts and he doesn't want to punish oil companies for anything they've done wrong).
I don't know about you, but this makes me furious. How can they just let these people off! It's terrible that the Bush administration wants to let these people off paying the rest of the fine, even after they caused so much damage to the eivironment.
Well, here's the link to the actual article.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_7319369?source=rss&nclick_check=1
Sigh. None of my articles have been very cheerful. That just shows how easy it is to find sad stories in the news. Oh well.
4 comments:
Yeah. It is pretty obnoxius when companies like this pretty much get away w/ murder(well of the environment I guess?). Perhaps it just shows how powerful interest groups are?
I think it is saddening that Exxon is not taking responsibility in cleaning up the environment or paying the fine. It is even more saddening that the president is letting Exxon off the hook, which shows how much he really cares about our environment and promoting responsibility and good morals in our nation. It is unfair that citizens have to pay higher gas prices on behalf of Exxon's mistake.
I agree that its unfair that Exxon doesn't have to pay the entire fine. It just shows how money-minded people are these days, the company obviously doesn't care about the environment, if they did they would pay the fine and do something to help clean up the spill and restore the environment. Its not fair that big companies can get away with things, by letting the fine go the Supreme Court is setting a bad precedent for future oil spills , because if theres another spill in the future the oil company may just appeal to the supreme court to have the charges dropped.
I think Exxon should have to pay the rest of the money but let me throw this out there. When a natural disaster happens, who pays for the expenses. I am not calling this a natural disaster, but I am saying that Exxon did not try to cause the spill, or at least I would assume not. So is it fair that they have to pay for a misfortunate accident? And although Exxon will not become bankrupt from this, if a company that was going to have to become bankrupt from one accident, would that then be fare? Maybe Bush feels that they will not have to carry over their loses onto the gas prices, he probably is not thinking that, but still there might be some reason for letting them off.
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