Corporations Can't Be Trusted to Police Themselves
The Unlearned Lessons of the BP Oil Spill
The BP disaster taught us many things: Giant corporations cannot
be trusted to behave responsibly, and have the ability to inflict
massive damage on people and the environment. We need strong regulatory
controls to curb corporate wrongdoing. We need tough penalties to punish
corporate wrongdoers. There is no way to do deepwater oil drilling
safely. And it is vital that citizens harmed by corporate wrongdoers
maintain the right to sue to recover their losses.
Unfortunately, Congress and the Obama administration have refused to learn the lessons from the BP disaster:
1. BP’s reckless actions and inactions caused the Deepwater
Horizon disaster — a reminder that corporations cannot be trusted to
police their own activities.
BP made a conscious decision not to install a $500,000 safety device
that could have prevented the blowout. BP pressured its contractors to
skirt safety measures, and those contractors made multiple mistakes
leading up to the disaster.
The lesson that corporations can’t be trusted to police themselves
should be blindingly obvious. Yet the Obama administration is now
proposing to take government inspectors out of poultry processing plants
— and give Big Chicken responsibility for ensuring poultry safety.
2. Strong regulatory controls over corporate activity are necessary to ensure health, safety and planetary well-being.
To its credit, the Obama administration acknowledged that the pre-BP
disaster oil drilling regulator — the Minerals Management Service,
probably the most compromised regulatory agency in Washington — couldn’t
be reformed, specifically because it had the duty both to collect oil
royalties and regulate oil drilling. It split the agency apart, creating
the new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement
(BOE) to regulate drilling. But Congress has failed to ratify the change
in law, which means it could easily be undone by subsequent
administrations.
Meanwhile, the Republicans in Congress are pushing legislation that
would effectively make it impossible for BOE — or any other regulatory
agency — to issue new regulations.
3. We need tough penalties to curb corporate wrongdoing.
The Obama administration still has not issued criminal or civil
charges against BP for the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The longer it
waits, the more removed we are from swift justice, the less the
penalties will serve a broad deterrent effect. And there is some reason
to be concerned about whether the administration will require BP to
plead guilty to criminal (as opposed to civil) charges.
Remarkably, the administration continues to do business with BP, with
key officials refusing to invoke their authority to “debar” BP from
government contracts. BP is one of the Pentagon’s largest fuel
suppliers.
Too much forgotten in the saga of watching oil flow into the ocean
for months is that 11 workers died from the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
Reckless corporate activity that causes workers to die should routinely
be criminally prosecuted, but such prosecutions are instead the very
infrequent exception. We need legislation — as proposed by
Representative John Conyers, HR 322 — establishing that it is a crime
for corporations to recklessly endanger the lives of workers or
consumers.
4. Deepwater drilling disasters are inevitable.
When it comes to energy policy, the real lesson from the BP disaster
was that deepwater drilling will inevitably lead to catastrophic spills
and blowouts. The drilling technology has simply far surpassed control
technologies. Since the predictable catastrophes are unacceptable, there
is a good argument that deepwater drilling itself should not permitted
at all. At minimum, any company undertaking a deepwater drilling project
should be exposed to unlimited liability for any damage it causes; it
should be required to have a spotless, company-wide safety record as a
condition of receiving a lease; and it should have a well-funded, proven
disaster response plan in place.
In a rational world, the Deepwater Horizon horror would have been
another reminder of the imperative of a rapid transition from dirty
fuels to the clean energy sources of the future. Unfortunately, the
power of money is having more sway over policy than the power of common
sense.
After the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the administration imposed a
moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf, but it was soon lifted,
and deepwater drilling in the Gulf is proceeding apace. On the broader
transition away from dirty energy, the administration has adopted
important rules to improve auto fuel efficiency, but we are far off
course if we are to avert the worst harms from catastrophic climate
change.
5. Victims of corporate wrongdoing deserve their day in court.
Under political pressure, BP established a claims fund to compensate
victims of the oil disaster. But if victims hadn’t maintained the right
to sue BP in court, there’s no good reason to expect they would have
received adequate compensation.
Right now, however, Congressional Republicans are working to shrink
the rights of victims of wrongdoing, as they aim to restrict rights of
victims of medical malpractice. A House-passed bill would shield nursing
homes, hospitals, insurance companies, physicians and pharmaceutical
and medical device manufacturers from legal accountability for any
misconduct.
A tragedy of the scale of the BP disaster, one that cost 11 lives and
transfixed the nation for months, should have altered policy in
fundamental ways. Instead, another truth trumped the lessons from the
disaster: powerful corporate lobbies exert a stranglehold over
policymaking. Only an aroused citizenry — organized and mobilized with
sustained and focused demands — has the power to break that grip.
Robert Weissman is president of Public Citizen, www.citizen.org.
