I have lived in New York City all of my life and have always known that the city’s air is full of pollutants. But what exactly are “air pollutants” and where do they come from? I had always assumed it was just car exhaust and fumes from the factories. I did not have a single iota of a clue what it was actually doing to the human body.

What it all comes down to is chemistry. Mercury, cadmium, copper, arsenic, lead,  PCBs, sulfur-, nitrogen-, and carbon-oxides, all of the above have some adverse effect on the body over a certain level. What is scary about this information is that it is not confidential or hidden. People know that the concentration of car exhaust in the city is harmful. Companies know that pollutants are released into the air if the proper filters are not attached. Yet…there seems to be this attitude of turning a blind eye towards these unpleasant facts. It is almost as if this is just another part of “the cost of living.”

But what is the cost? From an economic standpoint, using cheaper methods of manufacturing (i.e., ones that release more pollutants) will drive down the price of the product. The problem here is that people cannot put a price tag on health. Health, whether it is personal health or the health of the population, cannot be quantified with precise numbers. It is as if health, without a number, does not factor into the economic equation. This seems to be why it is always forgotten.

Another part of the problem is that, below a certain threshold, pollutants do not cause alarm but they still inflict harm. If the amount of pollutants in the air is just tolerable enough to ignore, then any attempt to neutralize the threat seems like an unnecessary hassle. Even when someone’s personal health is at stake, they are willing to sacrifice a little bit of health in exchange for material comfort or a little extra pocket change.

Also note that air pollutants are not some distant concern we can ship to a landfill in Texas; it is right outside your door. It would be easy to argue “out of sight, out of mind” for a number of pollutants, but even when the damage is done on a daily basis, it seems to not bother most people.

In the previous paragraphs I realize that I have only spoken about the harmful effects and people’s attitudes in a very generalized manner. The next step is to look at the origin of the problem to figure out where to solve the issues. In the previous lecture, we started a discussion about the study of Central Park’s lake. Lead is known neurotoxin and was removed from gasoline in the late seventies to the early eighties in order to minimize its emission into the air. But did it work? We ended the class with one hint: the decline in lead concentrations of the lakebed started to decrease in the early sixties, more than a decade before lead was removed from gasoline. So where did it come from? My guess is lead-based paint.

Just as water pollution is a monumental issue in environmental awareness, air pollution is also a major issue that affects us every time we take a breath. Air is another quantity that I believe many people consider infinite, since there is so much or it and it surrounds us at all times. However this is not true, our air supply is limited and dwindling more and more every day. We must ensure that we work to protect the air supply we have instead of continually pumping it full of pollutants.

Just from my own limited knowledge, I would think that one of the biggest issues with air pollution is that it seems almost inevitable that everything we create, including chemicals or pollutants, will come into contact with our air. Air is all around us, how are we to prevent something from reaching something so ubiquitous? The air seems to be sensitive to all sorts of processes-both natural and unnatural, from the methane being released by cows to fuel combustion, to spray paints and dry cleaning. These all release harmful toxins into the air that pollute it and make it unsafe for us. How are we to avoid all of these processes? Fuel combustion can release a number of chemicals into the air including nitrous oxides and HS, or even CO when it is incomplete. Yet we cannot not expect people to forgo driving their cars. Air pollution coincides with processes that have great instrumental value. Another problem with air pollution is that it is more harmful when the toxin particles are smaller than PM 2.5, rather than when the pollution is larger in size. The larger particles are caught by the nose and prevented from entering the lungs, while the smaller particles are able to slip through the body’s natural defenses. This presents a problem because the smaller particles, the harder it is to filter them out from the air by artificial means and the harder it is to notice the particles before it is too late. Air pollution seems to be filled serious issues that may prove difficult to solve.

I was very interested by the study conducted in central park, determining whether or not gasoline use was the source of increased atmospheric lead. To determine the decrease in lead over the course of the 20th century they drilled a core of sediment out of the bottom of the lake in central park. They divided the sample into 2 cm segments and had each segment represent a period in time, starting in the late 1800s. I thought it was especially clever how they determine which segment represented which years based off of what they found in the sample. The used the levels of cesium they found to indicate that those samples represented the years 1954 to 1963, when nuclear testing began to when the ban on testing was enacted. The results of this test showed that lead levels decreases while lead gasoline was still in use, showing that this was not the case. This test also shows how air pollution is can affect all other parts of the environment. Lead in the air is able to enter the lake in central park, and settle as sediment to the bottom. The cesium found in the lake is a result of nuclear testing in a different region of the country. Pollution to one part of the environment has far reaching consequences to other areas.

Air pollution is a serious problem that is hard to fix. The quote by Richardo Navarro, “In our free enterprise economy, the benefits are privatized but the costs of pollution are socialized” truly describes the state of environmental ethics today. It is difficult to enact programs to benefit the environment when the benefits of pollution go directly to the company that is polluting while the consequences are shared by everyone and left for the government to deal with. This is especially true of air pollution which is a product of so many of the processes which we consider to be essential to our lives.

This week we discussed the pollution of Arthur Kill by the Mobil Oil Corporation. In 1993, EPA caught Mobil discharging waste containing benzene into open-air ponds without a hazardous waste permits. In 1996, EPA filed a hazardous waste case against Mobil alleging they mismanaged the disposal of the waste. Not until 2001 was the case settled and Exxon Mobil had to pay 11.2 million dollars in fines. This entire situation seems ridiculous to me. For one, it should not have taken 3 years for the EPA to file a claim against Exxon Mobil. The EPA had to catch Exxon repeat their offense 2 more times before anything was done. The amount of damage Exxon has done to the water system is ridiculous and the EPA should have taken immediate action to make sure the damage did not continue. Also, it should not have taken 5 years for the case to be settled. Exxon could have been continuing dumping without any repercussions. Another severe problem is that regardless off the fines, Exxon Mobil still had billions of dollars worth of profit. Obviously having to pay a fine will not hurt the company making them stop dumping. Big companies do not have a hard choice between free enterprise and government regulation because no fine will be big enough to truly affect them.
We also discussed air pollution in urban environments and the dangers they cause. The primary pollutants are S, N, C oxides, toxic gases, and particulate matter. Many of these toxins come from human activities, such as the release of toxic gases from water treatment plants. Some of the gases are colorless and cause severe damage if not captured before emitted into the atmosphere. These gases cause heart disease, cancer, and various other illnesses. Obviously something must be done. People cannot be afraid to go outside and be kept indoor at the risk of being poisoned by a gas. That is ridiculous and highly illogical. Something more practical should be done, like forcing companies to not release the gases the way they do now.
I think that the policy to ban lead in gasoline is a good idea. Even if it may not be the solution to all problems, it may help a little bit. Any little bit of effort can make a difference. It is a comfort to know that scientist continue to test for gases and to see their effect on the environment, such as the experiment conducted in Central Park. Although the highest portion of lead was not due to gasoline, we still can now understand a little more of the affect it has.
The most important thing I learned in seminar this week was the on November 25th, 1968 the White Album came out by the Beatles. The Beatles are my favorite band so I am always happy when I meet new people who appreciate their genius. Although the White Album is not my favorite album by the Beatles, (mine in Abbey Road) I think that the album is a masterpiece and all should appreciate its greatness.

This past lesson felt to me to be mostly fact based, with limited extrapolation of practical uses of this information, up until the end portion of the lesson.  A lot of the information I took down in my notebook was definitions or lists.  For example, my first definition is of air pollutants, substances not found naturally in air or not naturally in concentrations found.  Before coming to class I knew what air pollutants were, yet I was never taught the formal definition, nor the pollutants themselves in great detail.  It was beneficial to have the primary pollutants broken down in a simplified and unified way.  I found this method of teaching to best reach me as a student.  Subdividing pollutants into oxides, toxic gases, and particular matter helped my understanding of the material as well as the organization of my notes.  I appreciated the exposition on this information outlining the differences between fuel and incomplete fuel combustion.  Beyond learning what air pollutants are, what the main ones are, I also benefited from delving deeper and learning the sources for these primary pollutants.  Having the sources of primary pollutants listed out for me, I was able to take this information and apply it to a practical aspect of my thinking.  In that I mean understanding that SO2 is a source of pollution does not help me in terms of my every day living as much as knowing that things such as car exhausts, or spray painting are sources of pollutants, as I can reduce my own use of such items.  I also found it useful to know the way particles of pollution are measured.  Last class was the first time I had ever heard of particulate matter (PMs).

The most interesting point made in class for me had to be the inclusion of dry cleaners on the list of sources of pollutants.  As I have always walked near dry cleaners and felt the rush of warm air, I am happy to now know the air emitted is filtered as per a government law to decrease emissions of pollutants.  A similar point made in class in terms of relativity to my life, the removal of lead from “leaded” gasoline was news to me.  As much as I hate to admit my weaknesses, I had never thought of the reasoning behind the name “leaded” or “unleaded” and I was not surprised, but I was happy to have had that connection made between the name and the implementation of lead in gasoline.  The tubes put in the Central Park pond show a practical application of the chemical knowledge it takes to become an environmentalist.  Finally, the most interesting and most surprising thing I learned in class last lesson is that the most important date in history is November 22, 1968.

Looking back at my notes from last Thursday’s class session, I cannot help but notice the numerous toxic products released into the air by none other than…us, the humans! Interestingly, air pollution is, perhaps, one of the more personal types of pollution to us, with regards to our health and well being, because are not some forms and quantities of some of these chemicals present in the air that we breathe everyday? With this said, my next notion is to invoke some thought about how such personal problems should be dealt with on a governmental scale. That is, should the government be involving itself with the rights of the companies to do what they will with the air and the right of the people to invest in the products and services they wish, no matter their costs to the environment?

Many individuals feel that the government’s hand in anything, let alone the environment is an omen for destruction, because these people feel that the government is infringing upon their rights to free enterprise. What this notion translates to, in several cases, is the want for the government to not infringe upon the company’s rights to use the cheapest materials it wants, which in many cases are harmful for the environment. For example, after using the cheap materials in a certain process, a primary pollutant may be created, which consists of harmful oxides, gases, and particles. One may think then that, in the end, using such potentially harmful materials will cost the people, or society, much in the end, including their health and the money they will use to fix their health.

If the government, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), requires companies to amend harmful processes to mend our environmental crisis now and that of the near future, then why should we continue to suffer health risks? If personal liberties are at question here, I should note that our personal liberties rest on the state of the future. Currently, the environmental crisis does not make the future sound too great!

To this notion that the government should become involved brings me to a quote that we discussed in class. Ricardo Navarro stated, “In our free-enterprise economy, the benefits are privatized but the costs of pollution are socialized.” Navarro tries to convey that companies want the tangible profits for themselves but want the government to deal with the aftermath of the lengths at which the companies went to make their profits. If the companies, thus, turn to the government ultimately, then why not get them involved now?

I notice that I asked my myself many questions in this response regarding why we, humans, are not taking certain actions that can rectify or make lighter some of the problems we are dealing with now. This sheds light on the reality that, even though we believe we are doing something about the environment’s state, we clearly are not doing enough and acting faster, at that. For as I type this response, more and more pollutants, be they primary or secondary, are released into or formed in the air.

While it seems as though I ranted on about allowing the government to become more involved in the actions of companies with regards to the environment, be wary that I mean that government officials must do so with limits. Just as we must practice limits when it comes to our effect on the environment, so should the government when it comes to the rights of the people. That is, the government, the companies, and the people must all work together to find a balance that will help restore the Earth, including its atmosphere, to a proper state.

One might ask then what this proper state may be and if it is achievable. To me, a proper state is one that allows humans to exist on the Earth, for we are a form of life too, yet also allows the Earth to operate with minimal harmful effects from our actions. To achieve such, however, the key element rests at us humans putting aside our political biases and doing what is best and right for the environment.

Sherifa Baldeo

After last class, every breath I take on the streets of Manhattan I take with a little ease. I generally used to hold New York in relatively high regard when it came to environmental issues, but after gaining a better understanding of the air pollution problems I decided to do some more research and I found the results to be fascinating. I was not entirely wrong to glorify New York because the greenhouse gas emissions per person and our annual electricity consumption are actually quite low. New Yorkers are responsible for 7.1 metric tons per person per year, less than a third of the national average. The density of New York also allows it to have the largest mass transit system in the United States, meaning far less use of personal cars. For once this semester when I stopped to consider the environment and more specifically its relation to New York City I found myself happy. Maybe the PCBs were acceptable if we were so on game in other ways. Of course unfortunately I realized my mistake when I looked deeper into New York’s air pollution.

Our city’s amazing density may mean less pollution per person, however when factoring in the concentration of people and therefor pollution that it enables it becomes very worrying very quickly. An EPA study ranked Manhattan 3^rd in the nation for cancer risk from airborne chemicals with Bronx and Kings counties also coming in the top 10. In the American Lung Association’s (ALA) 2012 report on ozone levels and particle pollution not a single borough broke higher than C with the exception of Staten Island’s particle pollution ranking B; however their ozone levels earned them the five boroughs only F. Perhaps the saddest part is these are the highest rankings New York has ever seen since the ALA began writing these reports thirteen years ago. Rejoice as we may over low emissions and use of mass transit, the air we breath is slowly killing us, with 6% of annual deaths in NYC chalked up to air pollution by the New York Department of Environmental Protection.

The good news however, as proved by the ALA study, is that although New York’s air quality is still horrible it is improving, and the city is making a conscious effort to address the problem. In 2007, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched PLAnyc, a policy agenda intended to tackle many of the problems set to face New York in the future with environmental issues being one of the key platforms. The effort set the demanding goal of having the cleanest air of any big US city by 2030. According to the initiative’s 2011 report “over 97% of the 127 initiatives in PlaNYC were launched within one-year of its release and almost two-thirds of its 2009 milestones were achieved or mostly achieved.” Perhaps the initiative was simply made by Bloomberg to make himself look good (2009 was an election year) but the city has been putting forward a great deal of policy over the last ten years to move the city towards cleaner air. Hybrid buses and cabs now both represent large portion of their larger fleets and since 2005 top city officials have been mandated hybrid vehicles for their personal cars.

What I see to be one of the most potentially exciting improvements is the implementation of the new Citi Bike system set to launch in spring of 2013. Having seen similar bike share systems at work in other major cities in America and abroad I see massive potential in the program and think it is a fantastic alternative to cabs and cars. It provides just the right balance of personal direction and ease of use, allowing one to take a bike wherever they want at any time on a whim without having to worry about the hassle of locking it up and bringing it with them. Unless the program is greatly mismanaged I could see the Citi Bike system making a serious difference in further turning New York away cars which would cause a potentially drastic increase in air quality over time. At least I hope it will.

Reva McAulay

MHC 200 Weekly Write-up #3

9.24.12

The EPA is apparently a bunch of spineless wimps. Now admittedly they have huge corporations and even lots of politicians against them on the grounds that their policies interfere with economic growth but still.  I’m not even saying that they need to create more stringent regulations, although I think they should.  But when a government organization imposes such lax punishments on people who blatantly flaunt the rules and outright forge lab tests, that qualifies them as a bunch of spineless wimps.  It seemed bad enough last week that Gen Electric got to avoid cleaning up the river for decades, but at least that could charitably be considered some sort of due process.  Exxon Mobil did it one further by not only ignoring the law but by getting caught ignoring it several times and then forging test data to get around it.  The punishment for which was a relatively small fine that meant nothing to a corporation the size of Exxon Mobil and was probably less than the profits that came from the illegal act in the first place.

The EPA’s reaction to the first time they saw Exxon Mobil cleaning barges in Arthur Kill was reasonable: inform the company that they would have to stop.  The next time they caught them doing it should have resulted in a significant fine on top of having all the profits from the barge cleaning taken away.  The third time should have resulted in much larger fines, ideally in addition to fines and citations for the individuals responsible for running that operation. And the fraudulant lab tests should have gotten criminal charges for the people who ordered them and actually changed them and fines for everyone else who knew about it.

Yeah, its taking a hard line on it, but the EPA has so little power and authority that they have to take a hard line if anyone is to be reasonably expected to follow regulations.   There are dozens of laws out there that people don’t follow because they are so unenforced as to seem that it is almost encouraged to break them.  Say, for example, jaywalking (at least in New York City).  There’s no risk to jaywalking, and even if you do it in front of a police officer they won’t so much as tell you not to do it.  All of this makes it so that there’s nothing wrong with jaywalking on either a practical level or a moral level.  If the EPA does not enforce its own regulations, it almost seems like it is encouraging people to ignore them.  What moral imperative is there to follow the law if the law makers think it is so unimportant as to not even be worth taking action against?

One question remaining is where such barge cleaning operations should happen.  There hardly seems a safe place for these chemicals to be released.  The one ongoing point of uncertainty in this class is what exactly should be done with hazardous wastes, since we’ve seen so many examples of what should not be done.

The study of lead in Central Park lake was more interesting but less ire-inducing, so it goes last.  Although having to wait to find out the cause of the lead levels is about as annoying as finding the last chapter of a mystery ripped out and having to go back to the library to track down another copy.  The example of leaded/unleaded gasoline is I think a good example of why it is better to err on the side of caution when it comes to environmental policies.  Scientists discovered that lead in the air had a negative effect on health, so policy-makes decided to eliminate what seemed like a large source of lead: leaded gasoline.  That unleaded gasoline did not actually improve air quality is not so important when seen from the future perspective that the economy recovered quite well from switching to unleaded gasoline.  Although it probably hurt the US auto industry, they would have run into other troubles anyway, probably sooner rather than later.  That is a much better outcome than would have happened if leaded gasoline did turn out to be dangerous but continued to be used anyway.  If the government decides to wait for incontrovertible truth on every public health or environmental issue, there will be even less progress than there is now (which is very little).  At some point they just have to decide that the risks of doing nothing outweigh the consequences of action.  Otherwise you end up with results like the one we learned about last week, with General Electric spending years arguing that the high levels of dangerous chemicals weren’t their fault, and that even if it was it wouldn’t be their responsibility to fix it, and even if it was there wasn’t anything they could do so the best course of action would to do nothing and allow the environment to fix itself.

In this week’s session we began along the same line of thought as last time, discussing the case of the Mobil company’s barge cleaning business. After being caught dumping waste without a permit, the company lied and subsequently dumped their waste directly into the Arthur Kill rather than properly store it or dispose of it.

This seems outrageous, as if Mobil deliberately flaunted the law merely for its own gain. It seems insulting to the public, shortsighted irresponsible. But in the end, when Mobil finally agreed to a settlement with the EPA, it was fined only $11 million – an insignificant sum to a company of that size. A public company is beholden to its shareholders, not the American people, and it makes its decisions based on costs and benefits. If Mobil can operate a business making tens, hundreds, or thousands of millions of dollars by avoiding paying for cleanup, it will gladly pay $11 million in fines. If the fine is smaller than the benefits of avoiding cleanup, which is assuredly is, the fine is nothing more than a small tax (and the company didn’t even need to admit wrongdoing!) The business is still worthwhile, and any smart business owner would make the decision to dump in the future if the opportunity arose.

In recent times awareness campaigns have brought attention and criticism to companies that do things like this, so businesses have to consider a bit more scrutiny when deciding whether to obey environmental restrictions or not, or risk the curse of bad public relations. But there’s no guarantee that even an educated consumer base will choose to, or even be able to avoid doing business with shady companies. People have their own cost/benefit analyses to do when deciding where to buy from, and an economy that is often oligopolistic in nature makes it hard to avoid a company even if they wanted to. We can’t rely on such considerations when determining how to stop companies from placing unpaid for costs on the public. If we want companies to make the right decision for the environment, the fine for breaking rules must be higher than the profit they get from breaking them, adjusted for time and the risk of getting caught.

Later that day we delved into the details of air-borne pollutants. Such pollutants are not really subject to bioaccumulation like water-borne pollutants are, but they also have a much greater ability to harm us directly. We can separate our reservoirs from the ocean, but we can’t separate the atmosphere we’d like to breath from the atmosphere we try to avoid.

We also have to consider how much each polluting source contributes to overall public health  problems. Banning a product is a big deal; it means disrupting an industry, ending jobs related to that product, and ultimately raising prices as a more expensive or less effective replacement is used, which may have its own negative side effects. So products should not be banned unless the scientific evidence shows that they have significant negative side effects. Even if we know a harmful chemical is present within the population, we must study how it got there before we jump to conclusions.

If we know that lead is a poison, and lead is found in gasoline, it does not necessarily mean that banning leaded gasoline will improve public health by a significant amount. Lead was used (until the 1980s) in myriad products, much of which entered the atmosphere or otherwise. If, for example, 90% of the lead found in people can be traced to lead paint in buildings, and the lead concentration in humans is 50% higher than the safe level, banning lead paint will have a much strong effect on public health than banning leaded gas.

In our latest installment, the saga of corporate destruction and irresponsibility continues. It is truly dumbfounding that the EPA found Exxon Mobil dumping hazardous waste without a permit on three separate occasions and, seemingly, no real disciplinary action came of it. On top of that, Mobil cooked their books on the matter to make the claim that benzene concentrations were not as high as the EPA found them to be, and the Agency learned of this as well. Isn’t lying to a government agency some sort of crime? I suppose it might not have been worth the government’s trouble to pursue in court. That’s scary: a company powerful enough to not only flout the government’s orders but also dissuade it from pursuing legal action.
There is a trend in these companies we have seen wreaking havoc over the past few classes: they are all corporations. Because they are entities unto themselves, the people running them are harder to hold responsible. Without internal documents to condemn people in power, no individuals can be held accountable. And unfortunately, despite the fact that corporations are real people with inalienable rights as of 2009, you can’t put them in jail. All you can do is fine them, taking what is probably a small chunk of change in corporate terms, and hope that that’s enough of a disincentive to keep them from doing it again. The efficacy of this is doubtful, however. It would probably have cost more than the measly ten million dollars the government fined Exxon Mobil for it to have run its barge-cleaning business in a way that didn’t pollute bodies of water.
Also, the consent decree is laughable. The government needs to stop handing them out to businesses that are royally taking advantage of the American public. The five big banks behind the 2008 crash, including Wells Fargo and Citi, were given a consent decree and fined. Money is hard to track as it makes its way through the bureaucracy, so who knows what fraction of the $20 billion allotted for mortgage relief will get to homeowners, and how it will be distributed. The consent decree is especially heinous in the case of Exxon Mobil and Arthur Kill, as the EPA found that they had altered their numbers to try to evade blame, so obviously they were conscious of what they were doing.
The later part of the class got into some of the logistics of how we can use science to shift public policy. The example discussed, in which lead deposition rates were dated and matched to changes in policies and historical events (e.g., World War II and the advent of nuclear weapons), seemed to work well. This got me thinking, though, about times when the science would not be as clear-cut. Lead has been known to be harmful to brain development for years, so showing health effects was not an issue in the example given. For the myriad other substances running rampant in the industrialized world, many of which we know very little about and all of which are assumed innocent until proven guilty, scientists would have to first make a convincing case for the danger posed by the chemical before regulations could be imposed and progress tracked. This is very difficult, as it is not ethical to purposely expose people to something you believe to be deleterious, and finding people who are already exposed to it introduces countless other variables that must be controlled for, such as lifestyle choices.

Seong Im Hong

September 24, 2012

Weekly Journal 3

            This week, we ended our discussion on water pollution and then continued on to the topic of air pollution. By the end of the class, I was, as usual, smarter than I was coming in. I encountered some interesting ideas such as profits v. fines, which I researched a little on my own. (I did not research, however, what the dominant source of lead was from the 60s to the 80s because I did not want to ruin the surprise. I look forward to it.)

One idea that was particularly intriguing to me the last lecture was the struggle between profits and fines. To the laypeople, $11.2 million is probably more than we will see in our lifetime. Because of that, when I first heard that Exxon Mobile was fined that amount, I felt vaguely pleased and vindicated. Surely, I thought, that was a hefty change. I was mistaken. One strange and alarming thing about our society is that there is a gigantic gap between the corporations and the laypeople. Because of that, those who are unfamiliar with what I call “corporation-money-unit” feel themselves removed from corporations and their doings. Take Exxon-Mobil’s fines, for example. $11.2 million is impressive by the sheer number of zeroes attached to the 1s and the 2, but compared to Exxon’s $40 billion profit in 2006, the fine for pollution was tiny. Miniscule. Insignificant. (I tried to compare the proportion of the fines to the profit to my own expenses. According to my calculations, I would lose $0.16 from the $570 I get every month from scholarships. Not $16, but $0.16. Well, heck, I lose more in change falling out of my pocket each month than that.)

This made me wonder exactly what the judge was thinking. Did the zeroes attached to “corporation-money-unit” made him think $11.2 million harsh enough? Even the wealthy does not earn as much as corporations do. Or did Exxon-Mobile’s “freedom of expression” sway him? (And this is a whole another can of worms that is, though juicy, too sticky to deal with in a journal.)

This is why I think a policy of proportional fines (as in Switzerland and Finland) may be a good idea for this time in our society.

If we fined Exxon-Mobil (and any corporations or private citizens) an amount proportional to their income for a particular wrongdoing, I think that we won’t have a problem of repeat offenders such as Exxon-Mobil. Like Professor Alexandratos pointed out, Exxon-Mobil continued to illegally pollute the Arthur Kill because its profits were simply too big to not. What if the fine was $11.2 billion rather than $11.2 million? That means 28% of its profits, gone. (That percentage for me would mean a loss of $160, or my groceries exchanged for ramen noodles.) That means angry stockholders for executives to deal with. That means a warning shot.

However, I doubt that this will be adopted into our rightist politics anytime soon. In an era in which the wealthy are constantly told that they are under attack by the 47% of the American population who want to destroy their hard-earned success that they alone are responsible for, we will never even convince a congressperson to consider sponsoring the bill, let alone actually have their names appear anywhere near it. It probably would spell out an end to their political career after being labeled a socialist-communist-Muslim-atheist-foreigner. I read that the American Dream is a myth now, and that class differences are far too big for anyone talented and hardworking to actually climb up the social ladder as they did a hundred years ago. I read that the reason the poor vote Republican is because they genuinely believe that they will one day become part of the wealthy caste. Maybe that is so. Maybe the only way we can realize a policy of proportional fine is by having a vast majority of Americans realize that life isn’t as it was years ago. Money isn’t even vaguely worth the same for everyone, and that there really is a corporation-money-unit that is wildly bigger than a private-citizen-money-unit. I doubt many Americans will listen, though.