The way government regulation is currently set up in regards to the environment is clearly not working. What Mobil was able to do, even after getting caught multiple times and receiving numerous warnings is perfect evidence of current government regulation procedure failing.
The government caught Mobil three times discharging benzene containing waste into open-air ponds without a permit. After catching them once, the government should have the power to force Mobil to stop committing the violation and find an alternative way. After getting caught the second time, the government should be able to institute crippling fines to destroy the company. If the company manages to recover, it should be mandated and enforced that they must continue using an approved method for waste disposal.
The fact that Mobil altered their test results to make it seem as if they did not detect hazardous benzene levels is insane. Mobil should have been shut down for committing serious fraud. The other side of this is that the economy and our government rely so much on these large corporations that shutting one down would be detrimental to our economy and the government.
It did make me a little happy to learn that Mobil was forced to pay fines in the end. The problem with fines is that they are so insignificant to these large corporations that bring in an annual profit of over 40 billion dollars. Mobil was fined 11.2 million dollars, which is nothing for them.
This is very similar to fines in professional sports. In the NFL, player safety has become the primary focus, so fines have started being handed out for outlandish illegal hits. The problem is that since these players are making millions of dollars, small fines of a few thousand dollars are insignificant to these players. They shake it off without much care. The NFL has recognized this, and has considered implementing suspensions as punishment as well. This may actually work because players do not want to miss games.
I found it fascinating that we used radioactive metals that we found in the Central Park Lake to date the layers of water. Radioactive metals have specific half-lives so you can use simple math to determine how long they have been there. The scientists were able to date the layers very accurately, which helped us determine if leaded gasoline was the reason for lead being so prevalent in the air.
Based on the test results, we reasoned that leaded gasoline was not the reason for so much lead being present and that there must have been other causes. This leads to the question where did the lead come from? Did we need to remove lead from gasoline, or could we still be using leaded gasoline today?
We need to find the answers to these questions because they will affect our lifestyle. Leaded gasoline would be cheaper (I think) than unleaded gasoline because it costs money to remove the lead and dispose of it. This would help citizens save money on gasoline and have more money to spend on other items. It would also present the next step to removing lead from the air and preventing it from filling the air again because we would know where it primarily came from. Hopefully, eventually we can just send all of our pollutants to space and be rid of them forever.
