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The Exxon Valdez Resurfaces In The Gulf Of Mexico…And The Hazards Of "Megasystem Centripetal Di-Polarity", Zygmunt J.B. Plater Oct 2011

The Exxon Valdez Resurfaces In The Gulf Of Mexico…And The Hazards Of "Megasystem Centripetal Di-Polarity", Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon blowout spill in the Gulf of Mexico shocked the nation with the amount of oil and harm it unleashed upon the Gulf and its natural and human ecosystems. As details of the calamity became available, they revealed frustrating parallels to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in the Gulf of Alaska in terms of causation and impaired response capability. Similar systemic deficits characterized the actions of corporate managers and state and federal regulators in the oil industry of both Gulfs. In a “di-polar” system where industry and government regulators come too close together, responsible overall …


Keynote Essay: A Modern Political Tribalism In Natural Resources Management, Zygmunt J.B. Plater Oct 2011

Keynote Essay: A Modern Political Tribalism In Natural Resources Management, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

The first law of ecology holds that everything is connected to everything else. This conference addresses the challenges and dilemmas of resource management policy on America’s public lands, but it seems useful both for the purposes of the conference and in broader terms to note how resource management is connected to larger questions of global integrity and human governance. This essay explores a troubling fact of modern political life: As the problems of managing the economy and ecology of this nation become ever more complex, subtly-interrelated, pressured and demanding, our processes of legal and political governance might be expected to …


Coal Law From The Old World: A Perspective On Land Use And Environmental Regulation In The Coal Industries Of The United States, Great Britain, And West Germany, Zygmunt J.B. Plater Oct 2011

Coal Law From The Old World: A Perspective On Land Use And Environmental Regulation In The Coal Industries Of The United States, Great Britain, And West Germany, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

America’s reentry into the Coal Age has been one of the major consequences of the Mideast oil-producing nations’ discovery of their collective marketing power, and in this new emphasis on coal the United States is not alone. Like the United States, many industrialized nations with domestic coal reserves had allowed their coal industries to languish under the influence of low-priced, petroleum based energy economy and are now hastening to strengthen their coal production. Different nations approach the regulation of their resurgent coal industries in varying ways, however, and these differences can be instructive to American observers, particularly as they relate …


The Exxon Valdez Resurfaces In The Gulf Of Mexico ... And The Hazards Of “Megasystem Centripetal Di-Polarity”, Zygmunt J.B. Plater Oct 2011

The Exxon Valdez Resurfaces In The Gulf Of Mexico ... And The Hazards Of “Megasystem Centripetal Di-Polarity”, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon blowout spill in the Gulf of Mexico shocked the nation with the amount of oil and harm it unleashed upon the Gulf and its natural and human ecosystems. As details of the calamity became available, they revealed frustrating parallels to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in the Gulf of Alaska in terms of causation and impaired response capability. Similar systemic deficits characterized the actions of corporate managers and state and federal regulators in the oil industry of both Gulfs. In a “di-polar” system where industry and government regulators are supposed to counterbalance one another, …


Learning From Disasters: Twenty-One Years After The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Will Reactions To The Deepwater Horizon Blowout Finally Address The Systemic Flaws Revealed In Alaska?, Zygmunt J.B. Plater Oct 2011

Learning From Disasters: Twenty-One Years After The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Will Reactions To The Deepwater Horizon Blowout Finally Address The Systemic Flaws Revealed In Alaska?, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Twenty years ago, after the calamitous Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, the pervasive systemic flaws—that according to the Alaska Oil Spill Commission had made a major calamity not just possible but probable—were largely cloaked behind the figure of a captain with a drinking problem. In 2010, after suffering another horrific oil incident—this one almost 20 times! larger than the Exxon Valdez spill—the question for national energy law and policy is whether, this time around, we’ll acknowledge and implement the hard systemic lessons largely avoided two decades ago. The Deepwater Horizon blowout will be a doubly disastrous …