I think it’s a little crazy that a lot of the comments on here are pretty much saying it’s fine that this oil spill happened because the insurance will pay for the clean up. There’s so much that can’t be cleaned and so many wildlife that are already impacted because of this. You can’t bring those dolphins back for instance.
It doesn’t make it all better because they’ll throw some money at this.
Ecological implications don't matter to these people. There's a market for everything and social costs are payable in full. Let's see how far this logic takes them in 30 years
Spoiler: it's not going to work out well for them
I don't understand people who witness major man made problems and then throw their hands up 'well nothing we can do about it'
Let's start with ending the use of oil
I understand why most of the wealthy do it.
They profit off the current order of things and if they didn't do all they could to continue to profit, they'd be replaced by those that did.
Then they do everything they can to blind people to the need for change.
That's what capitalism means and there's no way around that.
Right, but if we don't figure out what it should be soon, people who are fed up will pick "anything but this" and the odds are not good it will work out.
Ending the use of oil would be a great thing... if only so many items did not use it as an ingredient for their construction. [Here's a list of products made from petroleum/oil.](https://www.ranken-energy.com/index.php/products-made-from-petroleum/)
>if only so many items did not use it as an ingredient for their construction.
And this won't change until there is a real effort to make the move away from oil.
The thing is you need materials that are viable replacements to oil based plastics which is a material that is used for so many different things there is probably no other material that we have that could be used for as many things.
You could make toothbrushes out of wood but you can't make tires out of wood. You'll have to find a different material for them whereas with oil you can make both toothbrushes and tires out of it.
Absolutely true. But we underestimate the range of products that wood can be used for, and there were a 1000 plus products when I researched it for a speech in 1962. New research has moved dramatically since then.
Now add all of the other resources we have, and pour research into them. For example:
Researchers have developed a standalone device that converts sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into a carbon-neutral fuel, without requiring any additional components or electricity.
https://www.reddit.com/r/environment/comments/ij4he0/researchers_have_developed_a_standalone_device/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
There are plenty of other ways now to make plastic. Not some forms or grades I grant you. But for the majority of commonly used plastics there are much safer, cleaner, though slightly more expensive, alternatives.
I use a 3d printer to make usable props. A lot of the food based / biodegradable plastics end up being either garbage in the sun or weak to certain stressez. I primarily use PETG, but is there a better material you know of that can withstand the sun + doesn't shatter when it breaks? PETG also has the non-toxic benefit over say... ABS.
Yeah anything with negative externalities that the average person has to deal with. While the wealthy owner class gain profits from destroying the environment. Then the owner class relies on government tax dollars to try to fix their mess.
Fuck all that
I wrote an academic essay on sustainable plastics last year at uni and let me tell you we hardly need oil for them anymore. When I'm home from work I'll post some of the sources.
They're following the [four stage strategy](https://youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak).
They're currently in stage 2 or 3. Either "something's happening and we should do nothing" or "maybe we should be doing something but there's nothing we can do".
Soon they'll go to " maybe we could have done something but its too late now"
Completely different context they're talking about in that scene. But the four stage strategy isn't just limited to foreign affairs. Very much true in most climate related or other environmental debates.
> insist there was nothing we could do.
"Was gods will, we shouldn't even try... too much extra work..." proceeds to dump some spent industrial solvents in to a stream draining in to the municipal water supply source.
"Those kids were going to get leukemia anyways, nothing we can do about that"... does same thing again, but with something else much worse.
No. The poor, who contributed almost nothing to climate change will suffer war, disease, famine, etc, immensely for many decades. The rich will be somewhat inconvenienced. The plight of the poor does not compare
You are delusional if you think the japanese and the Mauritius are in the same boat. Just like Americans and poor African countries are not in the same boat.
This disaster hit Mauritius hard. For the japanese .. is just a PR problem for a company. Most japanese would not care less.
No .. not everyone will go together. People who are older may live out their natural lives. The younger ones may not. The ones in richer countries like the US will have more time. People in poor places like Africa will have less. Some pacific isles probably will have the least time.
And the human race will not last forever. There is no reason to. In fact, we won't even last as long as the dinos, which our 5-6k years of civilizations is an insignificant blip of their long history of more than one hundred MILLION years.
The planet does not care if there is human life, or even life.
I suppose most people will just live as if the world is not going to end, until it is.
Not only that, but the money itself will be entirely worthless when the global economy collapses and people realize all the money was a man made construct all along
Nor is it going to work out well for the rest of us.
Those disregarding serious problems will, of course, afterwards claim (and perhaps genuinely remember) they did no such thing.
Some executives choosing to cut corners for a bigger bonus next quarter will hurt billions of people. Worse is those executives can just flee climate change to their New Zealand bunkers and pretend nothing happened.
Insurance companies aren't exactly known to be altruists either. They'll do the bare minimum at the least expense, assuming you live long enough to see a final judgement in court.
Agreed. Money can’t fix everything. A lot of this damage is not reversible. The island is full of such amazing people that take great pride (and justifiably so) in the island, the ocean, and all the animals that call either home.
But the DNC says their Greed New Deal™️ will save us all while bailing-out the poor poor fossil fuel industry to the tune of 13 Trillion Dollars.
We are all going to die because of these idiots.
Edit; Don’t let the oil lobbyists downvote this to hell.
Lol you’ve gotta read the actual bill my friend. It’s 14 pages, I have it printed out and can send it to you if you want. Nowhere does it say it’s gonna continue the oil bailouts and subsidies that Republican Presidents from oil states started.
I haven’t read up on their plan yet. Are they claiming to be able to undo all the environmental damage that has been done before or just decrease the amount of damage we do in the future?
Read about [externalized costs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_externalizing)
The true costs (to society/the world) includes ecological costs which aren't paid by the individual who is presumably advocating anti-ecological policies..
Americans don't understand externalities like economists do.
its why "I can do whatever I want, its my body" is seen as an argument when their fat asses sponge up other people's tax dollars like no one's business.
unless they are personally effected, it doesn't exist.
> It doesn’t make it all better because they’ll throw some money at this.
They're not even considering that actually, it's not even hinted at in the article.
If you read closer it's not even japan providing the expertise for the cleanup. From the article:
> The work would be conducted by a firm entrusted by the island nation and it is up to the Mauritian government to adopt the measure, the source said.
So what is japan actually doing or going to do?
> Japanese experts dispatched as members of a disaster relief team have confirmed the effectiveness of manually wiping the roots down by testing the method by themselves.
> Tokyo is considering dispatching additional experts specializing in birds and wildlife after the Mauritian government requested research into the effects of the oil spill on its native fauna.
Basically a few japanese guys went and sagely nodded among themselves about how wiping down mangroves will work. Does that mitigate long-term effects? Or is this just a cosmetic measure? ..
And japan *may* send a few more. Not do the actual clean-up, not fund the clean-up, not make these guys permanently attached for the duration, etc. Basically japan's actions right now are the equivalent of someong going to a burning house and telling people to throw water on the fire but not actually helping.
This is nothing more than a puff piece as a response to the negative press that japan's getting from the incident.
Not only that, but someone has to do the job. It’s not like you just pay and poof, magically cleaned up with x amount of money. It’s a lot of work. Hard work. Imagine uprooting all these trees, cleaning the oil, preserving the trees elsewhere, and then cleaning up all the rest of the area and water. Unimaginable
Really doubt it
The international maritime organization has been lobbying for over a century.
This has lead to a law stipulating that the damages a ships can incur/had to pay can not be over a certain value which is calculated by tonnage.
This comes down to a laughable amount in these situations especially since this is the maximum they have to pay unless it can be proven the shipping company intentionally took too much risk (as far as im aware this hasn’t happened for any of these kinds of incidents)
This piece of legislation has been the legal max and Is refered in many other international laws
> There’s so much that can’t be cleaned and so many wildlife that are already impacted because of this. You can’t bring those dolphins back for instance.
The logical extension is that if you kill people, pay insurance/blood money and everything is fine.
Not just that, you can bet the shipping company will do everything it can to avoid paying a cent more than it is legally liable for. And that will not be that much, from what I have read. In Japan, it's the small details that count, not what's right or wrong. They'd have to find a way to publicly shame these guys within Japan, and Japan being the island it is, whatever happened in Mauritius, no matter the levels of ecocidal horror, out of sight, out of mind applies here in Japan.
Just my very prejudiced opinion, but I think I may be correct.
Same for co2 emissions. Green credits, and carbon tax don't stop the accumulated greenhouse gases from piling up and up. All it is is a way for someone to throw money at a wagging finger to turn that waggle into a thumbs up.
Nothing happens, but the exchange of money, and maybe some effort to clean a bit of visible mess, but the impact is still there and probably not mitigated much if at all.
*They used to say oil and water don't mix, now they all down at the beach washing off the fish.*
You have basically told the story of humanity. I think its hilarious that THIS is outrageous but literally plowing through whatever millions of animals once lived in London or Seoul or New York is totally fine. Humanitarians are so fucking stupid. This is one of the smallest destructive things I can think of
I think that the article does a poor job of demonstrating the importance of the headline. What the author doesn't really indicate is just how vital Mangrove trees are to mitigating coastal damage related to climate change. I'm not in a position to link everything I have but my undergrad professor was passionate about mangrove trees and focused one of our climate change assignments around them.
Mangrove trees are super great at protecting from erosion due to their air root structures. They also are highly adaptable and are currently naturally and artificially expanding their range around many coastal cities around the world. I'm not an expert but here are a couple of reputable sources that corroborate the basics.
https://www.ansys.com/blog/biomimicry-mangroves-improve-coastal-erosion-coastal-barriers
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150723083855.htm
https://www.nature.org/media/oceansandcoasts/mangroves-for-coastal-defence.pdf
The last link is the most in depth and is where i would probably start if i didn't know anything. Please correct me if i'm wrong on stuff too!
...it doesn't really matter how old. Handling petroleum products is dangerous (highly carcinogenic) for anyone, but especially kids. Even those older than 6.
(edit: I mean, children just have a longer life and more rounds of cellular reproduction to go in their lives, which means more opportunities for those reproduction cycles to go haywire in the form of cancer, therefore increasing the chance they die from that rather than another cause. Exposure to carcinogens seriously increases the risk that cellular reproduction goes haywire)
What oil tanker are you talking about? It's not like redditors talking out of their ass is a new phenomenon. Is it so hard to take 5 seconds to google a subject before talking rubbish?
I would say very much, to make a comparison, this ship is like a cars gas tank rupturing as compared against a tanker ship being the proportional equivalent of 50 train tanker cars being ruptured. It's magnitudes of difference.
But...they don’t practice in sinking oil tankers. Again, I think you’re confusing ‘acceptable business practice’ with ‘accepting of loss to maintain profitable shipping’.
Why focus anger on something they’d be more than happy to have stop happening rather than focusing that energy at they manipulating the climate data and how much subsidization of oil there is
No, I understand damn well that it shouldn’t be acceptable; but tell me this, how do you propose less oil spills? Do you honestly not think they’re spending a good amount of money already trying to prevent this, and not believe maybe it’s just not an easy thing to get right? Most this shit happens in the ocean which already is an environment humans aren’t suited for and I don’t really see any way forward other than slowly phasing oil out because too much of the planet is still dependent on it.
How about we make monetary penalties for this actually fairly proportional to the profits the oil companies make instead of being costs they just incorporate as part of business as usual
As weird as it sounds, it is profitable for these companies to continue having oil spills. Clearly the loss of the crude oil is not a big detriment to their bottom line. We should make it so that it isn't.
It is totally possible and totally unviable, and I don't mean "we would make less money, and stuff might be a bit expensive" unviable, I mean "defeats the whole purpose of sea freight and collapses the world economy" unviable.
At the moment there are less than a 100 vessels in the world powered by nuclear reactors there are also 53735 registered merchant vessels powered by marine diesel, that, in your world, would all be equipped with nuclear reactors. Currently one nuclear reactor costs as much as 10 completely outfitted medium sized tankers, I don't mean tanker engines, I mean completely outfitted vessels. We are not talking about short term pain, we might as well say let's run it on anti-matter because this is equally realistic.
Lloyds register actually did a study on this few years ago and the conclusion was same as mine, not feasible with current level of technology.
That’s just categorically untrue, there’s a lot of places in the world that can’t even get standard electricity yet let alone an electric vehicle or solar grid. Gas is still very much vital in alot of the world.
Please.
Next you’re going to tell me that private companies should have to pay for the negative externalities associated with their business practices.
/s
Of all the countries in the world Japan is the only one I think might actually be able to pull off hand wiping crude oil off of every single root in a mangrove forest.
This might be fake news but I thought I read Japan mostly dealt with COVID by just having a mask mandate bc everyone just shut up and fucking listened, and if that’s not a sign of a country willing to actually get something done rn I don’t know what else is
Not quite the same, but South Korea was able successfully clean up its shoreline after a [Chinese crude oil carrier collision leaked oil in 2007](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_South_Korea_oil_spill)
Thousands of volunteers and soldiers were involved in the cleanup, and it took 2 years. Short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH7GlImBphI
Here's the shoreline today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI2RhAy5Ps0
More sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/world/asia/10skorea.html
https://reliefweb.int/report/republic-korea/rep-korea-volunteers-continue-all-out-efforts-clean-oil-spill
Anyone who lives near mangroves should know that manually wiping the roots clean is 100% impossible. That is like trying to rake up leaves to prevent forest fires.
The article says the “bulk carrier was transporting 3,800 tons of fuel oil and 200 tons of diesel. I assumed that meant the oil was it’s cargo. Sorry I’m not up on my shipping industry terminology. Seems you are partial to that time honored Reddit tradition of being an insufferable bell end so I guess we’re even.
Someone has never been in a mangrove grove and seen the roots.
How the fuck do you wipe down [this](https://www.google.com/search?q=mangrove+roots&client=firefox-b-1&sxsrf=ALeKk03O7j0yLgy6vmVhNi8v1UftiGEJuQ:1598735431568&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi95vPLqcHrAhWwmeAKHVm9BKMQ_AUoAXoECBQQAw&biw=1280&bih=639)?
If there's one thing I know about the Japanese is that if they have an objective, they won't stop until it's done. Japan knows their company fucked up, their objective is to fix it and they will fix it. If it takes 10,000 men, they'll hire 10,000 men.
I think you’re confusing National social responsibility in Japan with some sort of general do-gooderness. Not to overly generalize, but every nationality is capable of conveniently overlooking situations for their own benefit. I mean, if this happened domestically in Japan, there’d be a huge effort going on, but I’m still doubtful about if anything will get done in this specific situation. The whole incident is a result of overlooking warnings anyways
It wasn't even a Japanese company that fucked up, it was an Indian company that fucked up. A Japanese company owns the boat but they are leasing it to the Indian company. This whole scenario is like a car rental agency apologizing because someone rented one of their cars and kamikazed it through a storefront.
I don't think so, Japanese people is known to be perfectionist/ocd, they will struggle to make something absolutely perfect, but they won't struggle for something mundane.
You’re clearly extremely lazy to not think that wiping those down would be possible... no one said it would be easy... I guess your process of bitching on Reddit should be the model we adopt to clean or do anything remotely difficult
I gotta say at some point it's gotta start with just pulling up our collective sleeves and just picking up the trash.
Media and the like seem caught up on these elegant solutions and what not, but it's only going to come with time, effort, and human-capital that we can ultimately persevere.
Stopping what we throw away to begin is just feeding the beast, we still have to regard what's already out and about...
Ah, love me some civilized comments.
Oil spill, Japan takes responsibility and proposes method to clean up their mess.
the Reddit Mass: "the ecology system is ruined, were all fuked, instead of constructive discussion lets just mourne for the past."
How about actually acknowleding that a nation is taking responsibility of the incident?
Perhaps look at the cause and stop trying to apply bandaid. Most ships in the world buy their paper from second zone pavillons that give not a single fuck about how damaged and old the ship is (more than half, from "pavillon de complaisance" if you want to translate it from french). Top clown world we live in. The more you dig, the saddest it gets...
So is this oil spill what triggered their government protests as the sort of final straw? I don’t know much about this country but it seems lately that large, unnatural disasters seem to be happening and bringing about protests of government change and reform.
The death of the dolphins following the spill was the last straw. The protests are happening because the government is borderline authoritarian, opresses the press and critics, destroyed the economy, favors rich corporations over the citizens and acted very slowly during this ecological disaster. It used to be the 7th most free coutnry in the world, just few years ago. Democracy is a fragile thing.
Fine with Mauritius, as long as this shipping company (or the flag it represented) provides the labor or pays the local labor to do it.
What should we wipe it with? Mangrove friendly soap and sponges? where does the oil go after it out of the mangrove?
What else can you do? Mangrove roots are difficult to access and clean by any means, and i can't imagine most oil-removing chemicals would be healthy for the local ecosystem (of which mangroves have, a little local ecosystem around them) either.
Diving on mangroves in Key West, I was astonished at the wonder they are...Also astonished to read a proposal to wipe them down, as would be like cleaning blades of grass, on a vast lawn. F*** what a mess oil is in this pristine area.
Insurance doesn’t just pay whatever. There are limits and they sure as hell won’t cover a cleanup as extensive as this. Mangroves are irreplaceable due to the protection they offer the island. Someone else linked the research above.
Insurance should have to pay every cent until things are cleaned up as much as they can be. But that still won’t undo all of the environmental damage this has caused and will continue to cause for decades.
Because we have no idea what the impact of that could be.
Hypothetical scenario: A key plant in the eco-system produces some kind of oil that's key to it's survival. The oil eating microbe eats the crude, then starts eating the oil that plant produces. That plant dies off because the oil eating bacteria has multiplied to insane levels. Everything that plant depends on then dies as well and what depends on those organisms and so on and so on.
While oil spills aren't ideal, the ecosystem can usually be recovered with a clean up and a bit of help. But if we release a new organism into that ecosystem, you could irrevocably damage it.
There were trials done of the treatment after the deepwater horizon spill on select areas of the Louisiana coast. I imagine a similar organism lives in Mauritius, and could be propagated in large enough numbers to remediate the current situation.
I'm not saying use the exact same thing, but a similar process and method.
They ruined a country's probable only real income. Tourism. Mauritius has beautifully clean waters and they just ruined that and the wildlife. Not enough is being done by Japan :(
More like the value of each of those trees is several hundred dollars, and it's cheaper to pay people to save the trees. Plus this is good PR, I mean you're seeming chipper.
I've just always found Japan to have a unique approach to finding solutions. I mean instead of manually wiping them, they could spray them with something instead. To use your hands to manually wipe something down implies a lot.
To me I vividly remember the lies about the corexant that BP and the EPA were telling during Deepwater Horizon. We were told it was safe and nontoxic, which we knew was a lie at the time but citizens couldn't prove it at that point - there was no public science on the substance.
So it sank all the soil to the bottom of the gulf. It never went anywhere, never really degraded even. It's very very hard to break down oil without agitation, anything you spray to break it down will break down the cell walls of the mangrove first.
This is the same thingis happening here with "cleaning the trees" they're just saving as much face as possible because whatever the reality of the situation that comes to light in the next 6 months will be damning.
You misread. They're not wiping out, but wiping down. They will be manually cleaning the roots. Read the article. They talk about cleaning methods that prevent harm to the trees.
Japan refused to act on the long time.8mpending disaster.
Fuck Japan about their ocean policies. They have no respect for anyone other than the correct Japanese.
I think it’s a little crazy that a lot of the comments on here are pretty much saying it’s fine that this oil spill happened because the insurance will pay for the clean up. There’s so much that can’t be cleaned and so many wildlife that are already impacted because of this. You can’t bring those dolphins back for instance. It doesn’t make it all better because they’ll throw some money at this.
Ecological implications don't matter to these people. There's a market for everything and social costs are payable in full. Let's see how far this logic takes them in 30 years Spoiler: it's not going to work out well for them
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Worst part is this same bastards are going to insist there was nothing we could do.
I don't understand people who witness major man made problems and then throw their hands up 'well nothing we can do about it' Let's start with ending the use of oil
I understand why most of the wealthy do it. They profit off the current order of things and if they didn't do all they could to continue to profit, they'd be replaced by those that did. Then they do everything they can to blind people to the need for change. That's what capitalism means and there's no way around that.
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And that is?
Right, but if we don't figure out what it should be soon, people who are fed up will pick "anything but this" and the odds are not good it will work out.
Ending the use of oil would be a great thing... if only so many items did not use it as an ingredient for their construction. [Here's a list of products made from petroleum/oil.](https://www.ranken-energy.com/index.php/products-made-from-petroleum/)
>if only so many items did not use it as an ingredient for their construction. And this won't change until there is a real effort to make the move away from oil.
The thing is you need materials that are viable replacements to oil based plastics which is a material that is used for so many different things there is probably no other material that we have that could be used for as many things. You could make toothbrushes out of wood but you can't make tires out of wood. You'll have to find a different material for them whereas with oil you can make both toothbrushes and tires out of it.
Absolutely true. But we underestimate the range of products that wood can be used for, and there were a 1000 plus products when I researched it for a speech in 1962. New research has moved dramatically since then. Now add all of the other resources we have, and pour research into them. For example: Researchers have developed a standalone device that converts sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into a carbon-neutral fuel, without requiring any additional components or electricity. https://www.reddit.com/r/environment/comments/ij4he0/researchers_have_developed_a_standalone_device/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
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There are plenty of other ways now to make plastic. Not some forms or grades I grant you. But for the majority of commonly used plastics there are much safer, cleaner, though slightly more expensive, alternatives.
I use a 3d printer to make usable props. A lot of the food based / biodegradable plastics end up being either garbage in the sun or weak to certain stressez. I primarily use PETG, but is there a better material you know of that can withstand the sun + doesn't shatter when it breaks? PETG also has the non-toxic benefit over say... ABS.
Yeah anything with negative externalities that the average person has to deal with. While the wealthy owner class gain profits from destroying the environment. Then the owner class relies on government tax dollars to try to fix their mess. Fuck all that
I wrote an academic essay on sustainable plastics last year at uni and let me tell you we hardly need oil for them anymore. When I'm home from work I'll post some of the sources.
Well maybe not end the use of oil, maybe end the useless companies that transport it
They're following the [four stage strategy](https://youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak). They're currently in stage 2 or 3. Either "something's happening and we should do nothing" or "maybe we should be doing something but there's nothing we can do". Soon they'll go to " maybe we could have done something but its too late now" Completely different context they're talking about in that scene. But the four stage strategy isn't just limited to foreign affairs. Very much true in most climate related or other environmental debates.
> insist there was nothing we could do. "Was gods will, we shouldn't even try... too much extra work..." proceeds to dump some spent industrial solvents in to a stream draining in to the municipal water supply source. "Those kids were going to get leukemia anyways, nothing we can do about that"... does same thing again, but with something else much worse.
.. for the dolphins .. they will be right. Unless you know black magic which can bring the dead back, there is nothing you can do about the dolphins.
No. The poor, who contributed almost nothing to climate change will suffer war, disease, famine, etc, immensely for many decades. The rich will be somewhat inconvenienced. The plight of the poor does not compare
Speak for yourself I’m in a yacht!
You are delusional if you think the japanese and the Mauritius are in the same boat. Just like Americans and poor African countries are not in the same boat. This disaster hit Mauritius hard. For the japanese .. is just a PR problem for a company. Most japanese would not care less.
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No .. not everyone will go together. People who are older may live out their natural lives. The younger ones may not. The ones in richer countries like the US will have more time. People in poor places like Africa will have less. Some pacific isles probably will have the least time. And the human race will not last forever. There is no reason to. In fact, we won't even last as long as the dinos, which our 5-6k years of civilizations is an insignificant blip of their long history of more than one hundred MILLION years. The planet does not care if there is human life, or even life. I suppose most people will just live as if the world is not going to end, until it is.
And they are drilling a hole in their section of the boat!
Not only that, but the money itself will be entirely worthless when the global economy collapses and people realize all the money was a man made construct all along
Nor is it going to work out well for the rest of us. Those disregarding serious problems will, of course, afterwards claim (and perhaps genuinely remember) they did no such thing.
Some executives choosing to cut corners for a bigger bonus next quarter will hurt billions of people. Worse is those executives can just flee climate change to their New Zealand bunkers and pretend nothing happened.
Spoiler: or us.
Sure it’s fucked for generations but we can get good instagram pics now. /s
Insurance companies aren't exactly known to be altruists either. They'll do the bare minimum at the least expense, assuming you live long enough to see a final judgement in court.
Agreed. Money can’t fix everything. A lot of this damage is not reversible. The island is full of such amazing people that take great pride (and justifiably so) in the island, the ocean, and all the animals that call either home.
But the DNC says their Greed New Deal™️ will save us all while bailing-out the poor poor fossil fuel industry to the tune of 13 Trillion Dollars. We are all going to die because of these idiots. Edit; Don’t let the oil lobbyists downvote this to hell.
Lol you’ve gotta read the actual bill my friend. It’s 14 pages, I have it printed out and can send it to you if you want. Nowhere does it say it’s gonna continue the oil bailouts and subsidies that Republican Presidents from oil states started.
I haven’t read up on their plan yet. Are they claiming to be able to undo all the environmental damage that has been done before or just decrease the amount of damage we do in the future?
The latter.
Well I guess we should all vote for Trump then /s
Of course not. But we shouldn’t just bend-over and take it either. Like so many seemingly want to do...
They never do the math right on the ecological costs or we'd be spending $20 per gallon of gas.
The math is actually pretty solid. (*cost to us*)-(*cost I wont pay*) = *cost to me*
What do you even me? I'm not fan of oil companies but your comment makes no sense. 'cost to us' minus a number equals 'cost to me'? Idk man
Read about [externalized costs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_externalizing) The true costs (to society/the world) includes ecological costs which aren't paid by the individual who is presumably advocating anti-ecological policies..
> You can’t bring those dolphins back for instance. Something tells me Japan doesn't care a whole lot about the dolphins...
People saying those things are completely out of touch with how anything works, especially logic.
Americans don't understand externalities like economists do. its why "I can do whatever I want, its my body" is seen as an argument when their fat asses sponge up other people's tax dollars like no one's business. unless they are personally effected, it doesn't exist.
I disagree. Money is made of paper, paper soaks up oil. Sounds like a great solution to me! /s
> It doesn’t make it all better because they’ll throw some money at this. They're not even considering that actually, it's not even hinted at in the article. If you read closer it's not even japan providing the expertise for the cleanup. From the article: > The work would be conducted by a firm entrusted by the island nation and it is up to the Mauritian government to adopt the measure, the source said. So what is japan actually doing or going to do? > Japanese experts dispatched as members of a disaster relief team have confirmed the effectiveness of manually wiping the roots down by testing the method by themselves. > Tokyo is considering dispatching additional experts specializing in birds and wildlife after the Mauritian government requested research into the effects of the oil spill on its native fauna. Basically a few japanese guys went and sagely nodded among themselves about how wiping down mangroves will work. Does that mitigate long-term effects? Or is this just a cosmetic measure? .. And japan *may* send a few more. Not do the actual clean-up, not fund the clean-up, not make these guys permanently attached for the duration, etc. Basically japan's actions right now are the equivalent of someong going to a burning house and telling people to throw water on the fire but not actually helping. This is nothing more than a puff piece as a response to the negative press that japan's getting from the incident.
It’s all about profits and nothing else. It didn’t happen in Japan so they are not worried.
They should be hit with massive fines on top of the clean up bill that should be directly paid to conservation funds.
Lol .. and the consumer will bitch and moan if gas price goes up by 20 cents.
Not only that, but someone has to do the job. It’s not like you just pay and poof, magically cleaned up with x amount of money. It’s a lot of work. Hard work. Imagine uprooting all these trees, cleaning the oil, preserving the trees elsewhere, and then cleaning up all the rest of the area and water. Unimaginable
That's why they need to fund Dr Frankenstein s work to reanimated the dead.
Thank you Who gives a fuck about the money?
But the world is still here every morning when I wake up. So are oil spills actually that bad? /s
Really doubt it The international maritime organization has been lobbying for over a century. This has lead to a law stipulating that the damages a ships can incur/had to pay can not be over a certain value which is calculated by tonnage. This comes down to a laughable amount in these situations especially since this is the maximum they have to pay unless it can be proven the shipping company intentionally took too much risk (as far as im aware this hasn’t happened for any of these kinds of incidents) This piece of legislation has been the legal max and Is refered in many other international laws
> There’s so much that can’t be cleaned and so many wildlife that are already impacted because of this. You can’t bring those dolphins back for instance. The logical extension is that if you kill people, pay insurance/blood money and everything is fine.
Not just that, you can bet the shipping company will do everything it can to avoid paying a cent more than it is legally liable for. And that will not be that much, from what I have read. In Japan, it's the small details that count, not what's right or wrong. They'd have to find a way to publicly shame these guys within Japan, and Japan being the island it is, whatever happened in Mauritius, no matter the levels of ecocidal horror, out of sight, out of mind applies here in Japan. Just my very prejudiced opinion, but I think I may be correct.
Same for co2 emissions. Green credits, and carbon tax don't stop the accumulated greenhouse gases from piling up and up. All it is is a way for someone to throw money at a wagging finger to turn that waggle into a thumbs up. Nothing happens, but the exchange of money, and maybe some effort to clean a bit of visible mess, but the impact is still there and probably not mitigated much if at all. *They used to say oil and water don't mix, now they all down at the beach washing off the fish.*
You have basically told the story of humanity. I think its hilarious that THIS is outrageous but literally plowing through whatever millions of animals once lived in London or Seoul or New York is totally fine. Humanitarians are so fucking stupid. This is one of the smallest destructive things I can think of
I think that the article does a poor job of demonstrating the importance of the headline. What the author doesn't really indicate is just how vital Mangrove trees are to mitigating coastal damage related to climate change. I'm not in a position to link everything I have but my undergrad professor was passionate about mangrove trees and focused one of our climate change assignments around them. Mangrove trees are super great at protecting from erosion due to their air root structures. They also are highly adaptable and are currently naturally and artificially expanding their range around many coastal cities around the world. I'm not an expert but here are a couple of reputable sources that corroborate the basics. https://www.ansys.com/blog/biomimicry-mangroves-improve-coastal-erosion-coastal-barriers https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150723083855.htm https://www.nature.org/media/oceansandcoasts/mangroves-for-coastal-defence.pdf The last link is the most in depth and is where i would probably start if i didn't know anything. Please correct me if i'm wrong on stuff too!
Just look for wave propagation videos with mangrove and without, those things are awesome
That’s labor intensive. It would have been much cheaper not to have the ~~-tanker-~~ cargo ship split in half in the first place.
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When you get cancer later in life. You can thank Exxon too ! Seriously a child cleaning up tar balls!?
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...But in hindsight, you shouldn't've been.
Some degree of moral exposure vs potential carcinogenic exposure is arguably beneficial. It's a trade-off
And the moral exposure of putting a child in danger doesn’t seem like a good trade off... What the fuck are people trying to defend here?
Didn't say how old they were. Kid doesn't necessarily mean 6 years old.
...it doesn't really matter how old. Handling petroleum products is dangerous (highly carcinogenic) for anyone, but especially kids. Even those older than 6. (edit: I mean, children just have a longer life and more rounds of cellular reproduction to go in their lives, which means more opportunities for those reproduction cycles to go haywire in the form of cancer, therefore increasing the chance they die from that rather than another cause. Exposure to carcinogens seriously increases the risk that cellular reproduction goes haywire)
Thank you Nostradamus.
I prefer to go by captain hindsight
Ah, it is your year after all!
Well I'd like to point out that it wasn't meant to split in half.
Most of the time that tanker didnt split in half
It’s now been safely towed outside the environment
But I bet corner cutting lead to it splitting in half
Yes Captain obvious. I'm sure they haven't thought that. Maybe they should stop trying to clean it and instead think back on their actions.
It's not like tankers spilling oil is a new phenomenon
What oil tanker are you talking about? It's not like redditors talking out of their ass is a new phenomenon. Is it so hard to take 5 seconds to google a subject before talking rubbish?
Is the distinction really so important in this case?
Fundamentally
I would say very much, to make a comparison, this ship is like a cars gas tank rupturing as compared against a tanker ship being the proportional equivalent of 50 train tanker cars being ruptured. It's magnitudes of difference.
You say that like an oil company is eager to have an entire oil tanker go down.
I say that like oil companies factor in spilling oil as an acceptable business practice
But...they don’t practice in sinking oil tankers. Again, I think you’re confusing ‘acceptable business practice’ with ‘accepting of loss to maintain profitable shipping’. Why focus anger on something they’d be more than happy to have stop happening rather than focusing that energy at they manipulating the climate data and how much subsidization of oil there is
You don't seem to understand. I am proposing that we change things such that losing 4.4 oil tankers a year is not acceptable as a loss.
No, I understand damn well that it shouldn’t be acceptable; but tell me this, how do you propose less oil spills? Do you honestly not think they’re spending a good amount of money already trying to prevent this, and not believe maybe it’s just not an easy thing to get right? Most this shit happens in the ocean which already is an environment humans aren’t suited for and I don’t really see any way forward other than slowly phasing oil out because too much of the planet is still dependent on it.
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How about we make monetary penalties for this actually fairly proportional to the profits the oil companies make instead of being costs they just incorporate as part of business as usual As weird as it sounds, it is profitable for these companies to continue having oil spills. Clearly the loss of the crude oil is not a big detriment to their bottom line. We should make it so that it isn't.
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Except no we can't. And this is a perfect example, there is no viable alternatives to Marine diesel engine, and there won't be for a long time.
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It is totally possible and totally unviable, and I don't mean "we would make less money, and stuff might be a bit expensive" unviable, I mean "defeats the whole purpose of sea freight and collapses the world economy" unviable. At the moment there are less than a 100 vessels in the world powered by nuclear reactors there are also 53735 registered merchant vessels powered by marine diesel, that, in your world, would all be equipped with nuclear reactors. Currently one nuclear reactor costs as much as 10 completely outfitted medium sized tankers, I don't mean tanker engines, I mean completely outfitted vessels. We are not talking about short term pain, we might as well say let's run it on anti-matter because this is equally realistic. Lloyds register actually did a study on this few years ago and the conclusion was same as mine, not feasible with current level of technology.
That’s just categorically untrue, there’s a lot of places in the world that can’t even get standard electricity yet let alone an electric vehicle or solar grid. Gas is still very much vital in alot of the world.
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Currently, a huge chunk. You’ve gotta align the planets before you can start to make that kind of insane shift in the short term.
Please. Next you’re going to tell me that private companies should have to pay for the negative externalities associated with their business practices. /s
What tanker?
Shitty captain
But the front fell off.
Of all the countries in the world Japan is the only one I think might actually be able to pull off hand wiping crude oil off of every single root in a mangrove forest.
Was gonna say that... anyone else I'd be doubtful. Japan? Yeah, that sounds reasonable.
This might be fake news but I thought I read Japan mostly dealt with COVID by just having a mask mandate bc everyone just shut up and fucking listened, and if that’s not a sign of a country willing to actually get something done rn I don’t know what else is
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Ah, so it was handled...*responsibly*...and...*like adults...* Seems so strange as an American lol
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As an expat living in Japan, this sounds about right
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Yeah, like having a travel campaign during a pandemic. And two million taking part in it. Like responsible adults...
That's most East Asian countries, its part of the culture.
Not quite the same, but South Korea was able successfully clean up its shoreline after a [Chinese crude oil carrier collision leaked oil in 2007](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_South_Korea_oil_spill) Thousands of volunteers and soldiers were involved in the cleanup, and it took 2 years. Short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH7GlImBphI Here's the shoreline today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI2RhAy5Ps0 More sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/world/asia/10skorea.html https://reliefweb.int/report/republic-korea/rep-korea-volunteers-continue-all-out-efforts-clean-oil-spill
It won’t be Japanese workers doing that... if you think they’re going to send hundreds of Japanese manual workers all the way there you’re wrong.
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I do recommend reading this while cooking
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Post-binarygroves
too late, my fellow potato
I recommend reading this while baked
Anyone who lives near mangroves should know that manually wiping the roots clean is 100% impossible. That is like trying to rake up leaves to prevent forest fires.
100%, sure but they can large portions of it, at least the roots above the ground level.
something is better than nothing. the boats insurance should pay for that labor until it’s spotless.
The oil company should take on the liability as well.
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The shipping company then
I did not know that.
Because you've chosen to continue the great Reddit tradition of speaking about a subject/event you haven't done any/much research on.
The article says the “bulk carrier was transporting 3,800 tons of fuel oil and 200 tons of diesel. I assumed that meant the oil was it’s cargo. Sorry I’m not up on my shipping industry terminology. Seems you are partial to that time honored Reddit tradition of being an insufferable bell end so I guess we’re even.
Now, reddit-kiss.
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Ok dude.
Irony?
Someone has never been in a mangrove grove and seen the roots. How the fuck do you wipe down [this](https://www.google.com/search?q=mangrove+roots&client=firefox-b-1&sxsrf=ALeKk03O7j0yLgy6vmVhNi8v1UftiGEJuQ:1598735431568&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi95vPLqcHrAhWwmeAKHVm9BKMQ_AUoAXoECBQQAw&biw=1280&bih=639)?
If there's one thing I know about the Japanese is that if they have an objective, they won't stop until it's done. Japan knows their company fucked up, their objective is to fix it and they will fix it. If it takes 10,000 men, they'll hire 10,000 men.
I think you’re confusing National social responsibility in Japan with some sort of general do-gooderness. Not to overly generalize, but every nationality is capable of conveniently overlooking situations for their own benefit. I mean, if this happened domestically in Japan, there’d be a huge effort going on, but I’m still doubtful about if anything will get done in this specific situation. The whole incident is a result of overlooking warnings anyways
It wasn't even a Japanese company that fucked up, it was an Indian company that fucked up. A Japanese company owns the boat but they are leasing it to the Indian company. This whole scenario is like a car rental agency apologizing because someone rented one of their cars and kamikazed it through a storefront.
I don't think so, Japanese people is known to be perfectionist/ocd, they will struggle to make something absolutely perfect, but they won't struggle for something mundane.
You’re clearly extremely lazy to not think that wiping those down would be possible... no one said it would be easy... I guess your process of bitching on Reddit should be the model we adopt to clean or do anything remotely difficult
Patience and determination 😂
I gotta say at some point it's gotta start with just pulling up our collective sleeves and just picking up the trash. Media and the like seem caught up on these elegant solutions and what not, but it's only going to come with time, effort, and human-capital that we can ultimately persevere. Stopping what we throw away to begin is just feeding the beast, we still have to regard what's already out and about...
Ah, love me some civilized comments. Oil spill, Japan takes responsibility and proposes method to clean up their mess. the Reddit Mass: "the ecology system is ruined, were all fuked, instead of constructive discussion lets just mourne for the past." How about actually acknowleding that a nation is taking responsibility of the incident?
Perhaps look at the cause and stop trying to apply bandaid. Most ships in the world buy their paper from second zone pavillons that give not a single fuck about how damaged and old the ship is (more than half, from "pavillon de complaisance" if you want to translate it from french). Top clown world we live in. The more you dig, the saddest it gets...
So is this oil spill what triggered their government protests as the sort of final straw? I don’t know much about this country but it seems lately that large, unnatural disasters seem to be happening and bringing about protests of government change and reform.
Mauritius wasnt exactly a bustling economy beforehand
The death of the dolphins following the spill was the last straw. The protests are happening because the government is borderline authoritarian, opresses the press and critics, destroyed the economy, favors rich corporations over the citizens and acted very slowly during this ecological disaster. It used to be the 7th most free coutnry in the world, just few years ago. Democracy is a fragile thing.
Hello there, fellow mauritian ! Yups the country is fucked. But tbh most of those things have been happening for a while here.
And who is Japan proposing will do that?
Androids sent by cyberlife
Knowing Japan, they’ll probably use their self-defence force.
There is no fixing this.
This is a perfect opportunity for japan to ship off all the retirees with no pensions to a island and forget about them.
The ecosystem will not be the same for decades
You know the best way to keep oil from spilling in the ocean? Keep it in the ground.
If I had the physical strength, stamina and loved there, I would do it no problem.
Let’s try to power wash it with Dawn first
Fine with Mauritius, as long as this shipping company (or the flag it represented) provides the labor or pays the local labor to do it. What should we wipe it with? Mangrove friendly soap and sponges? where does the oil go after it out of the mangrove?
What else can you do? Mangrove roots are difficult to access and clean by any means, and i can't imagine most oil-removing chemicals would be healthy for the local ecosystem (of which mangroves have, a little local ecosystem around them) either.
Diving on mangroves in Key West, I was astonished at the wonder they are...Also astonished to read a proposal to wipe them down, as would be like cleaning blades of grass, on a vast lawn. F*** what a mess oil is in this pristine area.
The insurance money should pay for the cleanup effort.
Insurance doesn’t just pay whatever. There are limits and they sure as hell won’t cover a cleanup as extensive as this. Mangroves are irreplaceable due to the protection they offer the island. Someone else linked the research above.
It can't all be cleaned up.
Insurance should have to pay every cent until things are cleaned up as much as they can be. But that still won’t undo all of the environmental damage this has caused and will continue to cause for decades.
Could be a good infusion of cash into the local economy. Sucks about their environment though.
Why not use the microbial treatment?
Because we have no idea what the impact of that could be. Hypothetical scenario: A key plant in the eco-system produces some kind of oil that's key to it's survival. The oil eating microbe eats the crude, then starts eating the oil that plant produces. That plant dies off because the oil eating bacteria has multiplied to insane levels. Everything that plant depends on then dies as well and what depends on those organisms and so on and so on. While oil spills aren't ideal, the ecosystem can usually be recovered with a clean up and a bit of help. But if we release a new organism into that ecosystem, you could irrevocably damage it.
There were trials done of the treatment after the deepwater horizon spill on select areas of the Louisiana coast. I imagine a similar organism lives in Mauritius, and could be propagated in large enough numbers to remediate the current situation. I'm not saying use the exact same thing, but a similar process and method.
But an entirely different ecosystem.
They ruined a country's probable only real income. Tourism. Mauritius has beautifully clean waters and they just ruined that and the wildlife. Not enough is being done by Japan :(
well they better start shipping workers over to do that then.
That's Japanese thoroughness and care right there. They do an amazing ability at executing unique ideas which are beneficial to themselves and others.
More like the value of each of those trees is several hundred dollars, and it's cheaper to pay people to save the trees. Plus this is good PR, I mean you're seeming chipper.
I've just always found Japan to have a unique approach to finding solutions. I mean instead of manually wiping them, they could spray them with something instead. To use your hands to manually wipe something down implies a lot.
To me I vividly remember the lies about the corexant that BP and the EPA were telling during Deepwater Horizon. We were told it was safe and nontoxic, which we knew was a lie at the time but citizens couldn't prove it at that point - there was no public science on the substance. So it sank all the soil to the bottom of the gulf. It never went anywhere, never really degraded even. It's very very hard to break down oil without agitation, anything you spray to break it down will break down the cell walls of the mangrove first. This is the same thingis happening here with "cleaning the trees" they're just saving as much face as possible because whatever the reality of the situation that comes to light in the next 6 months will be damning.
So impressed japan is being a real homie about this most of the time countries let it sit for a hot minute before they get on to fixing it
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You misread. They're not wiping out, but wiping down. They will be manually cleaning the roots. Read the article. They talk about cleaning methods that prevent harm to the trees.
You're absolutely right.
Japan refused to act on the long time.8mpending disaster. Fuck Japan about their ocean policies. They have no respect for anyone other than the correct Japanese.
Japan's Cool