Force the oil companies to

- plan their pipelines to go through disposable land with low biodiversity, like the Dakotas, or along major roads
- eat up the costs to really make their pipelines as tight as possible, even if it isnt the economically optimal approach for them and cuts into their profit margin
- pay those affected by oil spills an appropriate compensation in unbureaucratic fashion (i.e. not tying up the cases in court via an army of corporate lawyers)

that has to be one of the most asinine takes on this topic i have ever encountered. seriously... obviously it's cheaper for them to 'lose' the oil (even the largest spills, that can contaminate huge areas and freshwater reservoirs for decades, require just a fraction of the oil that flows through such a pipeline in its lifetime) than to build more secure pipelines and maintain them properly (which is possible, but expensive). always blows my mind how dumb people have to (pretend to) be in order to whiteknight for their corporate overlords. i mean, you can't possibly have made that post thinking that actually was a good argument, can you?

my point is not that those companies spill the oil on purpose, just to spite everyone living in the area and people who care about this planet in general. my point is that it's cheaper for them to build crappy pipelines, maintain them poorly, and pay the occasional fine if caught (the oil lost is by far the most negligible factor regarding their losses in this whole equation), than to do their best to protect the environment and keep the people living near pipelines (often minorities and poor people, who had no say in where they are built) safe. fines, reporting requirements, and general safety standards are all too low, thanks to deregulation and the corporate monopoly in legislation. that's why those spills keep happening while the companies responsible are some of the most profitable enterprises in the world that, just to add insult to injury, are additionally subsidised by literal billions of taxpayer dollars. all the downsides for the people, all the profits for the rich...

Basically it all boils down to not letting companies get away with passing costs onto surrounding communities. Make them and their customers pay the real cost of their product.

That's the real crux: making sure that the cost of externalities like environmental damage are really shouldered by the corporations, not their customers.

If a corporation incurs too much cost too quickly it will fold, and if it incurs cost consistently and passes them to its customers it will be out-competed.

This is one of the ways you keep the market place competitive. By not letting big companies get away with things, even if that big company now has to pass the cost to its consumers.

Me seeing the anti-monarchist uprising this morning after the Oprah interview

Not in an oligopoly where the market is divvied up between a handful of megacorps which can easily collude, and particularly not when the product on this market is indispensable, like gas/fuel.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 8 2021 12:38pm

Part of this is also that you need to enforce anti-trust laws (something basically absent from the American system since the 90's).