“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Thursday, November 29, 2012

Cultures of Energy Liveblog 7

Self referencing citational loop of industry scientists
>> scientific legitimacy and technical protection of industry
>> hide controversy

Shift in US regulation in mid 2000s to assess petroleum << fractions: an industry strategy to contain
TPH group 1993 just after Exxon Valdez spill, with witness to financial liability of contaminators

Measured action in the context of indeterminacy
Plaintiffs: Chevron's experts attempt to distort what contamination is; to relativize it, when it's actually absolute
logic contrary to science: the Ecuador decree established a one size fits all limit, 1000ppm
April 2009: independent court appointed expert submitted a report to Ecuador's court
--an interesting move is that he determined the TPH limits of 2001 to be equivalent to a toxic threshold level
Classified maximum permissible TPH values alongside the internationally sanctioned limits
--the levels can be used to evaluate soil, groundwater and surface water

Chevron took many more times as samples and all of them virtually exceeded the 1000ppm limit

Court: liability and causation: because Ecuador doesn't allow for legal retroactivity >> reason that Chevron can't be expected to comply with legislation a decade after it finished
They will instead take the limits as reference parameters

But a number of limits were in force: obligation not to deprive the local inhabitants of their livelihood rights

Foreclosure: "TPH measures a good indicator and give certainty that conditions are similar in all sites"

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