Obama, Bush Exempt Offshore Drilling from Env. Impact Studies - Oil Spills & Paper Mills

[Capitalocracy]

Run time: 10:59 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFT6cdzwBQQ   Posted on YouTube: May 14, 2010 By YouTube Member: Capitalocracy Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: May 14, 2010 By DU Member: Capitalocracy Views on DU: 429

 
Oil spills and paper mills, blowing up hills and corporate shills, what do they all have in common? Lack of regulation, private profit, and public risk.

Permits for offshore oil drilling, including deep water drilling and specifically the Deepwater Horizon, were rubber stamped without environmental impact studies under the Bush administration, and shamefully, under the Obama administration as well. These so-called "categorical exclusions" exempting them from an environmental impact study are reserved for projects that could never possibly harm the environment, like building a hiking trail or an outhouse. Well, we've built a very big outhouse, and its contents have hit the fan.

How many trees have died to print these meaningless permits that we rubber stamp with no government oversight? Well, this video contains a little information on the paper industry as well, specifically on Botnia, the Finnish paper mill in Uruguay that was recently the center of international controversy, at least here in South America, due to accusations of treaty violations and pollution of a shared river on the border between Uruguay and Argentina. The international court just passed down a ruling... and showed a clear bias in favor of big business. They claimed the evidence of pollution presented by Argentina was unreliable because Argentina has an interest in protecting its people from pollution... but the evidence presented by Uruguay, compiled BY THE PAPER MILL ITSELF, was admissable and proved that there was no contamination.

The governments of the world have been taken over by big business interests, and every industry, from the coal industry to the oil industry to the financial industry and every other major industry, the CEOs will take huge risks and make as much money as they can until the whole thing blows up, then take the money and run while we're left to clean up their mess. Private profit and public risk is a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth from the common people to the super-rich.