An oil rig collapses, sending 30,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico. Attempts to shut down the well with direct injections of mud and junk only seem to slow it down a bit. Governments mobilize to handle the devastating environmental damage.
The year is 1979....
.... and the oil rig is owned by Pemex, the Mexican state oil company. This incident was the Ixtoc I oil spill, and it kept going for ten months until two relief wells were finished and deep sea divers finally plugged the original hole. A study of this particular incident should teach us a few things about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It's not a perfect comparison. The Deepwater spill is 20005000 feet deeper, which makes it much harder implement the Ixtoc fix. The oil from the Deepwater spill is spilling in lesser volume, but the oil may be more toxic. Finally, the Ixtoc spill hit Mexican and Texas coastlines; this one is probably going to coat the US coastline in oil from East Texas to DC.
Nonetheless, there are two big lessons here, and I think they're both well worth heeding.
The first is that this really, honest to Pete, is not the end of the world. It's really, really bad, but not the end of the world. We've already been through this, and come out worse for wear, but ultimately the Earth recovered and we moved on.
The second is that corporations and governments didn't learn from the Ixtoc spill thirty years ago. If they did, then there would have been thirty years of studying Ixtoc and taking meticulous care to make sure that it never happens again. And that's not going to change unless we change and we force them to change.
Getting rid of the liability cap would be a good start.
(Crossposted at maxomai.org)