Sixteen Years and no justice for Prince William Sound

From Random Hipatia

It has been sixteen years since the Exxon Valdez spilled its oil in Prince William Sound. Sixteen years since the livelihood of Native Americans living in the sound were forever changed. Some may recall the massive destruction to fisheries and wildlife this single accident had caused.

Ten years ago a federal jury choose to award punitive damages to the fisheries and native americans living in the sound. This award was $5.2 billion dollars. This was to punish Exxon for its negligence, in the only language a corporation can understand, through dispensing some of its accumulated wealth.

In ten years, not a single dollar has been dispensed. Sixteen years, of waiting for justice that has as yet never come. What happened you may ask? The case has been in appeal, and been delayed, by every legal maneuver possible, for 10 years now. But, that is not the only crime.

As each year passes, Exxon is able to earn money on the interest of the judgment as the case is delayed. Of course, Exxon is under statutory obligation to also pay interest on the original award. The statutory interest is 6% per year. Exxon, however, has however been able to earn 14% per year on those funds. Exxon now earns over $400 million dollars per year, simply on the difference between what it must eventually pay and what it can earn off the blood money of those who’s lives it destroyed. Indeed, Exxon has made in ten years time a complete mockery of the original jury “punitive” award, and continues to do so even as more of the original claimants die off. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Meanwhile, 16 years later, oil still covers the beaches, now only a foot beneath the sand, and still coats the sea beds, with no funds to clean it in site. Yet, Exxon is simply doing what it is meant to do, by the ethics of capital accumulation, just as Union Carbide does in regard to Bhopal. The problem is not specific to these companies, but are the very basis of the capital accumulation model and its expression through corporations based on a sociopathic disconnect between rewarding capital accumulation and removing all human moral and criminal responsibility. And people wonder why I feel and say the corporate model is itself completely morally indefensible?