Who bears the costs of oil spills aside from the environment? Like the taxpayers who foot the bill for wrongful death suits among other damages when police shoot unarmed civilians, we are the beneficiaries of long-run social costs from negative externalities. Imagine the multiplier effects then of environmental racism or the other scalar, long-term effects of major oil spills. Even any social benefits aside from the obvious ones fail with the light of further scrutiny. And unintentional spills are like auto accidents or the choke hold, implying no one was at fault means that human actions transporting or drilling for oil get a pass from a supreme being (since there are acts of God/Nature) incapable of stochastic terror to the environment.
As with National Security implications of climate change, the weapon is even bigger and the victim even greater and the losses no less immoral than the unarmed individual gunned down. The social benefits of enforcement bring with them their own new costs making cost-benefit analysis problematic at best.
Working around the clock, cleanup crews spent a third day Thursday sopping up gobs of sticky, pungent oil along 9 miles of California coast, and investigators began excavating a ruptured 24-inch pipeline to figure out why it broke.
Coast Guard Capt. Jennifer Williams said 7,700 gallons of "oily water mixture" had been removed — a small fraction of the 105,000 gallons of oil that may have emptied before the spill was stopped.
She said the oil that had leaked into the Pacific Ocean was dissipating and spreading out, complicating the cleanup.
On land, crews began digging to excavate the pipeline, dumping contaminated soil into bins as they went. The excavation job was about a quarter complete, said Rick McMichael, a senior director at Plains All American, which operates the pipe.
Five oil-coated brown pelicans were taken to a wildlife care facility to gain strength before they can be cleaned, said Mark Crossland, an official with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. He said dead lobster and kelp bass had been discovered.
Social Cost- The cost to society, not included in the price of a product.
Social Benefit- What society gains form something that is produced.
The social cost does not include a price value taken into effect when the issue affects society. When an oil spill occurs the social cost to society would be the sacrifices made in order to clean up the spill.
The people affected by the spill may have to evacuate from their homes, giving up their income temporarily, affecting their finances. Members owning businesses around the spill area may have to close down. Owners of industrial fishing companies will be temporarily out of business due to the infected fish. This is because areas affected by the spill can be contaiminated anywhere from months to years.
The contamination period does not depend on the size of the spill, but rather the location of the spill and the season the spill occurred in are used to determine the damage. The spills cause pollution, forcing society to take action against environmental hazards, putting in money to something that was never before taken into account.
There is no set job for cleaning up an oil spill, therefore, members of the community and volunteers are the only people who take their own time and money to sanitize the infected areas. With oil spills being a contribution to pollution, the risks of global warming are increased, affecting the economy globally. There is no social benefit to this issue because there are no positive affects that society can redeem from it.
Even before the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, Procter & Gamble was using Dawn's oil spill credentials to sell its detergent. It also has raised $500,000 for wildlife groups.
Dawn spokeswoman Susan Baba says all the attention Dawn is receiving because of the spill helps get out the message that Dawn is a strong cleaner with a gentle touch.
"This tension between toughness and mildness has always been something that's kind of challenging to communicate to consumers," Baba says. "So in a communications standpoint, it's been great."
She says the reason Dawn is so good at cleaning birds without hurting them is that it was designed to erase grease from dishes without harming hands. The exact formula is a secret, but she says the key is balancing the surfactants — the chemicals that cut the grease.
What the company doesn't advertise — and these days is reluctant to admit — is that the grease-cutting part of the potion is made from petroleum.