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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dan6 who wrote (96148)	11/1/2012 9:36:25 AM
From: Maurice Winn	3 Recommendations Respond to of 219648

Some industrial messes are best left alone. The cost of cleaning up exceeds the value. I can think of several precious things of mine which were destroyed but I don't want more more cost to follow previous harm. Better to put up a sign. "This mess is because of bad ideas from 1950. Do not make the same mistake in your life." The Rena was ship wrecked a year ago on Astrolabe reef. There was general hysteria. My personal beaches were coated in muck. I said it would not be a big deal. Same with the BP accident in the Gulf of Mexico. I explained within days how it would not be a biggie. But there was mass hysteria and great profits resulted. It was a large economic plus for the USA and local yokels as $billions were taken from BP and transferred to lawyers, all and sundry. The losers were those killed and shareholders of BP, Transocean. With Rena, they gave up using dispersant as it cost heaps and didn't really improve the situation. Mostly, nature did the clean up. Now, finding any oil is a bit tricky though I notice I get black feet which I guess is residual oil in sand. A LOT of it came ashore, right on the main beaches. I picked up little oil patties as I walked along the beach. Give it a couple more years and even chemical detection methods will show nothing much. The main problem is often the silly reaction and cost incurred. You are right of course that governments are the ones to clean up the commons if needed. Fortunately, nature does most of the work normally. Best to punish polluters and prevent the harm in the first place by making financial consequences certain. Over-loading the risk is bad though. For example, a nuclear reactor operator should not be able to have a melt-down, declare bankruptcy, and get away with it. They should have to commit funds sufficient to cover the hazards. For example, they could commit $1 billion in assets such as shares in Qualcomm which would be held in trust in case of disaster. They would enjoy the profits but would be able to fund clean up if needs be. I objected to people polluting my Manukau harbour, air, drinking water and leaving me with the problem while they took the profits. But I don't want to now pay to clean them up. Fortunately, nature is doing a good job of it. The totally dead Manukau is coming back quite well. 20 years ago, it was dead. Not even algae growing in the oozing mud. Now there are shellfish, crabs, fish, birds and seething life. But there is still another decade or two to go. It was Auckland's lavatory, and general sewer. As a child 60 years ago there were cockles and seething fish. Shelly Beach turned into toxic mud. Mqurice