In a deep, dark part of the Gulf of Mexico, the number of marine animals plummeted by about 60% in the years following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, a new study found.
In a crucial part of the Gulf between the light surface and the darkest depths, where the BP-operated well failed and dumped 134 million gallons of oil, the number of fish found dropped by 63.5% from the year after the spill to 2015. Crustaceans, including shrimp and krill, a key food for whales, went down 62%, and larger animals like squid and octopuses fell 59.7%, according to a study published Monday in the journal PNAS.
And those populations haven’t come close to recovering, the study found.
I bought some BP stock at that low. I knew. I fucking knew there would be no real consequences.
I would have been ecstatic to lose every single dime I put into that. That was built into the plan. I could lose that money and be ecstatic , or I could be dejected, but at least dejected with a little bit of money to show for it.
I bet on my skepticism of having a healthy, functioning government. If investors had lost everything, other investors would have begun to value safety and regulatory compliance a little more.
As it is, even if it’s the company itself that blows up instead of the common good, they can just expect a bailout.
Did that not make you feel bad? I’d feel bad making a profit off death, even if it was going to happen anyways
You could think of it as taking profit away from someone else who would have owned and traded the stock. Basically a scalper for unethical stock
Ooof… That is not a consistent moral framework. At least I hope not, you can justify anything
ICE sometimes offers a large signing bonus. If you don’t apply, someone certainly will. And you’d probably be much less brutal than the average brown shirt, right?
But you’d personally have a long list of victims just following orders, even if you minimize your impact. You’d still be the one contributing to something horrible.
It’s Moloch, the demon of the race to the bottom. It’s why companies knowingly allow people to be poisoned… If you’re the decision maker and you refused to increase profit through suffering, you’d just end up replaced by someone more willing to cross lines, right?
The difference here is it’s very indirect. You’re just one tiny drop in the bucket. You’re not even the one pulling the trigger. Others have already decided to make a third person pull the trigger, because they expect to profit off the death
Your investment, even if someone else would have taken it at the same price, you got there first. You made the investment value grow a little faster, which means the stock climbs faster, which means the stock has a higher peak, which means the profits made by ultraweathy investment groups that enrich the people lobbying for war profit more. Which makes it just a little more appealing for them moving forward
In some small way, you do increase the cycle of war profiteering. In absolving the practice for others, you make others more likely to do the same
And more importantly, if you profit off suffering, I firmly believe it makes you a worse person. Not because of the act, but because you get yours when people die. That whittles down your compassion for the people you will never meet
Just like if you were a nice ICE agent, trafficking children from their parents will undeniably rob you of compassion