Why Louisiana’s ecosystems should sue BP
Thomas Linzey
Daily Comet
07/15/2010
For months, BP’s oil spill has dominated the news.
The blame game between the government and the corporation began mere minutes after the Deepwater Horizon explosion — the corporation blaming the regulators, the regulators blaming the corporation.
Been there, done that.
The only exceptional thing about the finger-pointing is that it isn’t exceptional at all.
Although it’s rarely said out loud, the regulators allow the energy corporations to write their own regulations — and when it becomes too expensive to comply with the regulations, the regulator simply exempts the corporations from them or the corporations simply rewrite the regulations to eliminate the added cost.
In the eyes of the regulators, after all, it’s the energy corporations that are the experts on methods for extracting oil, gas, and coal, not the government.
What gets missed in all of the blather is the recognition that “we the people” can’t protect ourselves through the regulatory system.
In fact, most of us aren’t even awake enough to understand that the regulatory system is used by corporations to legalize practices that would otherwise be harmful and illegal.
It’s not called “permitting” for nothing.
But that’s not the only problem with the way that the system works.
Consider this — for the past 3,000 years, nature and ecosystems have been defined under the law as mere property.
