Great Seattle-PI piece on SCOTUS slashing to $500M what were punitive damages of $2.5B which had been an original jury award of $5B against Exxon for glopping up Prince William Sound and countless wildlife with crude oil.  I mentioned on the show how little this hurts a corporation that makes $1,300 per second and how a mere 4.5 days-worth of profit isn’t enough of a punishment to force them to change their ways.  It becomes a simple cost/benefit analysis where it’s cheaper to hire lawyers than to make safety and environmental improvements.  Now, the original jury award of $5B, that’s half of an earnings quarter, and shareholders would feel that.

Toward the end of the piece, though, there’s a bit that feels like one of those “green” commercials big oil and big coal put on during the political debates and network news shows — you know, the PR campaign to make you think fossil fuel providers really want thriving solar and wind power while funneling big ad dollars to corporate media to make sure the talking heads don’t raise any questions about climate change.

Exxon Valdez ruling worries environmental watchdogs
But for Alaska Tanker’s Mathur, that kind of thinking is foreign to a stronger-than-ever safety culture. He points out that in the past six years, the company’s ships have not spilled a drop of crude oil. It mirrors improvements in much of the industry, environmental regulators say.

And Mathur said young sailors are a new breed.

This week, he was talking to a young seaman, telling him how he should take care to “protect the environment.”

“This 20-year-old, able-bodied seaman puts up his hand and says, ‘Mr. Mathur, would you mind calling it our environment instead of the environment?’ ” Mathur said.

I will take that last sentence to heart.  That’s good framing.  The environment is something outside of you; our environment means we all have responsibility to save our selves.