A tale of profit, pollution and who pays to clean up the messes

“Social responsibility is a fundamentally subversive doctrine" in a free society, and have said that in such a society, "there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” ― Milton Friedman, The Ethics of Competition and Other Essays, 1935 (Businesses do not stay within the rules of the game, and they probably never did. Deception and fraud have always been there. They were and still are important, not trivial aspects of normal business operations. And, most or nearly all businesses hate open and free competition.)

In America there are hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells. Many of them continue to emit into the air and/or ground the potent greenhouse gas methane and/or toxic compounds such as xylene. In coming years, millions of wells will be abandoned as the economy transitions from carbon energy to other energy sources. This 13 minute video shows that private funds and taxpayers pay ~$30,000 to $1,000,000 each to plug and cap wells that drillers and well owners abandoned. 

Most owners of abandoned either cannot afford to cap their wells or they cannot be found and the land sold to other people, many of who are not aware that they have one or more abandoned wells on their property. The problem is left to the states, which choose to not fund well capping.

An obvious solution to this problem, assuming one sees it as a problem worth solving, is to (i) require plugging and capping before a well is abandoned, and (ii) tax what each well produces so that there is money to properly plug and cap old and newly abandoned wells. 

Obviously that solution is politically impossible. Oil and gas companies will scream bloody murder and unleash their hordes of lobbyists and campaign contributions to kill any such measure. On top of that massive barrier, the Republican Party will scream bloody murder, accusing the effort as more evil socialist tyranny, pedophilia, cannibalism, satanism and whatever else they come up with in their raging ideological fever dreams and crackpot conspiracy theories.

This is just another example of how callous and irresponsible people and companies that profit from pollution are. They could not care less about environmental or human damage. That is the heart and soul of energy sector capitalism. Laws could have and should have been passed decades ago making it mandatory to plug and cap wells. 

But as usual for most American capitalism, there is no such thing as social conscience. Social conscience is subversive to profit. Despite contrary capitalist public relations* rhetoric, social conscience is intolerable. It is blasphemy to core capitalist dogma of profit above all else. 

* Public relations from big corporations is mostly just propaganda, largely consisting of lies, deceit, opacity, deflection, flawed motivated reasoning, etc. 

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Peach Freeze for bringing this video to my attention.

A list of the 100 biggest greenhouse gas polluters

The Political Economy Research Institute at U. Mass. Amherst compiles polluter lists and updates them periodically. The Greenhouse 100 polluters index 2021 report is based on 2019 data. Clicking on a polluter opens a list of facilities and the town and state they are located in. PERI compiles other lists such as the top 100 air polluters and water polluters. Some of the Greenhouse gas polluter list is shown below:

Some of the air polluter list is shown below.

Humans are why it is hard to prosecute criminals

One thing that  criminal law usually requires is intent to commit the crime shown by evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt.” That is a very high standard. It is a major reason why prosecutors often choose not to prosecute a case. A Washington Post article about radical right representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) highlights this issue. The WaPo writes:

Career prosecutors have recommended against charging Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in a long-running sex-trafficking investigation — telling Justice Department superiors that a conviction is unlikely in part because of credibility questions with the two central witnesses, according to people familiar with the matter.

Senior department officials have not made a final decision on whether to charge Gaetz, but it is rare for such advice to be rejected, these people told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations. They added that it is always possible additional evidence emerges that could alter prosecutors’ understanding of the case.

A criminal defense lawyer commented that when a witness changes their story, their credibility is damaged or completely blown. That is usually enough for defense lawyers to create a “reasonable doubt” in the mind(s) at least one of twelve jurors. That is all it takes for a criminal to get away with crime.

In this case, credibility issues were probably not because the witness is a sex worker. Instead, she probably either (1) gave inconsistent interviews during the investigation, and/or (2) gave one version, was shown some evidence, and with a refreshed recollection gave another. Either way, that’s a defense attorney’s bread and butter. That’s the case right there. Defense lawyers love going to trial where no matter what the alleged victim says, there is at least one prior inconsistent statement. And, the fact that her second story would be consistent with the documentary evidence makes it worse, not better.

This is a common example of how ordinary and easy it is to erect plausible deniability in criminal cases. Matt Gaetz is probably not going to be prosecuted for crimes he probably committed.[1]

If you’re interested -- a personal anecdote about witnesses

About 35 years ago, I witnessed a bad car accident on my drive home from San Francisco one night. Two cars were racing, going at least about 100 mph, my guess in court was about 110 mph. After the two cars blew past me going 72 mph on cruise control, one lost control. That car swerved across 4 lanes from the fast lane into the slow lane and broadsided a car in the slow lane. Both vehicles were totaled. I was one of the cars that stopped to see if anyone was hurt. The guy in the slow lane was hurt, bleeding and panicking because he could not open his door, which was smashed in. A couple of us forced the door open and that calmed the guy down. No one in the wrecked race car was hurt. I witnessed the whole thing with amazement.

I waited for police and medics to arrive and take care of the hurt person. Then the cops asked for witnesses. People were eager to tell their story, but I sort of hung back and just listened. The accounts that each of three witnesses gave were not only quite different from each other, they were just wrong based on what I saw. I was amazed again.[2] If that personal experience is probative evidence, many or most human witnesses are amazingly unreliable. 

Footnotes: 
1. Despite being a high burden of proof that prosecutors must show to get a criminal conviction, the system does sometimes convict innocent people. From what I can tell, there is significant bias in wrongful criminal convictions. A 2018 research paper’s abstract summarizes the issue:

We examine the extent to which DNA exonerations can reveal whether wrongful conviction rates differ across races. We show that under a wide-range of assumptions regarding possible explicit or implicit racial biases in the DNA exoneration process (including no bias), our results suggest the wrongful conviction rate for rape is substantially and significantly higher among black convicts than white convicts. By contrast, we show that only if one believes that the DNA exoneration process very strongly favors innocent members of one race over the other could one conclude that there exist significant racial differences in wrongful conviction rates for murder.

2. For the rest of the story: I started to slink away, but one of the cops was watching me and he stopped me. I gave him my version of events. When the court case came up, I was the only witness called, so my version of the event was on display. The race car driver’s defense attorney was unhappy with my version, especially the amount of detail about the accident I was able to recall. For example, I knew my exact speed due to my cruise control. So, he impugned my credibility by asking if I was some sort of scientist, and when I said yes, he dropped that line of attack and tried another. 

He asked me for the details of what was on each side of the highway in the area of the accident, stuff like what kind of trees, what buildings were like, etc. I could not answer that very coherently even though I could picture it in my mind pretty well. And that is where he left it. I could not answer what was on the sides of a road I had been driving 4-5 times per week for several years. That undermined my credibility. 

Satanic panic is making a comeback, fueled by QAnon believers and GOP influencers

PROVO, Utah — On June 1, David Leavitt, the prosecuting attorney for Utah County, stood behind a lectern in his windowless Provo office before a gaggle of reporters. Wearing a gray suit and an exasperated look, he wanted to make something categorically clear: Neither he nor his wife were guilty of murdering or cannibalizing young children.

It was, by all accounts, a strange declaration from the progressive Republican prosecutor, a Mormon and younger brother of a former Utah governor, Mike Leavitt, who had earned a name for himself by prosecuting a well-known polygamist in 2001. But David Leavitt was up for re-election, Utah County voters would start casting ballots the next week, and the allegations, ridiculous as they may have sounded, had started to spread online and throughout the community. 

Some of Leavitt’s most high-profile political opponents were willing to at least wink at the allegations against him: Utahns for Safer Communities, a political action committee opposing Leavitt’s re-election, posted his news conference to YouTube with the caption, “Wethinks He Doth Protest Too Much,” and on their website, the group wrote that Leavitt “seems to know more than he says.” 

Leavitt lost the election, most likely not just because of the allegations against him but because of his liberal style of prosecution in a deeply conservative county where opponents labeled him as “soft on crime.” But the allegations’ impact on Leavitt was clear. After decades of serving as a city and county attorney with grander plans for public office, Leavitt now doesn’t think he’ll run again. 

“The cost is too high,” he said recently in an interview from his home.

Leavitt’s experience is one of a spate of recent examples in which individuals have been targeted with accusations of Satanism or so-called ritualistic abuse, marking what some see as a modern day version of the moral panic of the 1980s, when hysteria and hypervigilance over protecting children led to false allegations, wrongful imprisonments, decimated communities and wasted resources to the neglect of actual cases of abuse.

While the current obsession with Satan was boosted in part by the QAnon community, partisan media and conservative politicians have been instrumental in spreading newfound fears over the so-called ritualistic abuse of children that the devil supposedly inspires, sometimes weaving the allegations together with other culture war issues such as LGBTQ rights. Those fears are powering fresh accusations of ritual abuse online, which are amplified on social media and by partisan media, and can mobilize mobs to seek vigilante justice. 

The daily invocations of Satan by the biggest players in conservative politics and media are too numerous to catalog in full. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Ga., credited the devil with whispering to women who choose to have abortions and controlling churches who aid undocumented immigrants. In June, she tweeted a video of a man dressed as the devil, stating that the mythical creature would be the next witness called by the House Jan. 6 committee. “They all know him, they all love him, and some even worship him,” she wrote.

Charlie Kirk, the president of one of the largest conservative groups in the country, Turning Point USA, recently opined that Republicans should “use the law to shut down Satanism.” Last year, Fox News host Tucker Carlson expressed his opinion on trans people, telling his viewers, “When you say you can change your own gender by wishing it, you’re saying you’re God, and that is satanic.” The Republican nominee for Missouri’s St. Louis County executive, the top job in the local government, is currently suing her former employer over its mask mandates, citing their use in “satanic ritual abuse.”

And after President Joe Biden’s recent speech on the threat that “MAGA Republicans” pose to democracy, the very subjects of his warnings framed the president’s address as “satanic,” because of the red lights illuminating the backdrop of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.  (As an aside, that red background was definitely bad optics, just sayin')

In the U.S., a Republican candidate for governor in Georgia, Kandiss Taylor, campaigned on demolishing the Georgia Guidestones, a tourist attraction known by some as American Stonehenge. When the mysterious monument — made up of massive granite slabs etched with innocuous rules for living — was blown up in July, Taylor seemed to celebrate, calling them “satanic.” 

Much more on this story:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/satanic-panic-making-comeback-fueled-qanon-believers-gop-influencers-rcna38795