Archive for May, 2010
At Nimonik, we strive to help canadian businesses better manage their environmental compliance issues. To do that, we have partnered with a number of organisations and are now offering live updates on their websites. If your association is interested in this kind of partnership, please contact us.
We offer live updates on Federal and Ontario issues on the following websites:
A terrifying (and timely) presentation by Jeremy Jackson, a world expert in marine biodiversity and conservation from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In this Ted Talk, Jackson shows how much marine environments, particularly coral reefs, have been drastically altered before his own eyes. He describes an environment in extreme decline that began two centuries ago but that continues to accelerate, principally because of overfishing, pollution and ocean warming. The most telling images are the photos of amateur fish catches today compared to those of 40 years ago. It’s grim, very grim — but he does hold out hope that it’s possible to reverse the trend if we succeed in changing our own habits. Then again, that would take laws that involve unprecendented international cooperation.
I recently had a chance to interview Ryan Penn, President of Thindesk, a company that offers IT solutions that help you reduce your energy costs. Their solutions offshore the computer power to servers and you only have clients sitting on your desk. Though energy savings are a big attraction, the reduced maintenance required is even more impressive. By sending maintenance off-site and to a centralized systems, the environmental impact is further reduced. Take a look at the video to get more info on their system and how it might help you.
More information on the ThinDesk platform and how it can help you save energy.
ThinDesk manufacturer explains the differences.
Jeff Bezzos explains why cloud computing is the future.
Ford claims to have saved millions by turning their computers off at night. article here.
Watching the slow motion accident that is the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the question on our minds is: What kind of legal action will be taken against BP? And, will it matter?
Dianne Saxe rightly notes that major spills are, in and of themselves, illegal. Though the assertion that BP is one of the most environmentally conscious of the oil company majors doesn’t stand up well to scrutiny when one considers how much lobbying in the U.S. went into opposing drilling safety rules. Saxe also question whether prosecuting BP will improve our standard of care to prevent disaster in the future.
The truth is that prosecuting BP will, of course, be politically expedient. But as Riki Ott, the author of two books on the Exxon Valdez spill, points out, there are some eerie parallels between the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 and the BP spill, namely with respect to the underreporting of spill volumes:
“Still, penalties are based on spill volume: Exxon likely saved itself several billion dollars by sticking with its low-end estimate of 11 million gallons and scuttling its high-end estimate of 38 million gallons, later validated by independent surveyors.
Sadly, it’s a foregone conclusion that BP’s promise to “do everything we can” to minimize the spill’s impact and stop the oil still hemorrhaging from the well nearly one mile under the sea off Louisiana’s coast will fade as its attention turns to minimizing its liability, including damaged public relations.
BP will likely leverage the billions of dollars it will spend on the cleanup to reduce its fines and lawsuit expenses, despite later recouping a large portion of the cleanup cost from insurers or writing it off as a business expense as Exxon did.
Such tactics saved Exxon billions of dollars in the civil settlement for damages to public lands and wildlife (in which damages were estimated at up to $8 billion; but for which Exxon paid just $900 million) and in the class action lawsuit filed by those whose livelihoods were curtailed by the spill (for which the original jury awarded $5 billion in punitive damages; but which Exxon fought for 20 years until the Supreme Court lessened its burden to just $507 million).
That Supreme Court decision strictly limited corporate liability and essentially removed the ability of future oil spill victims to hold corporations accountable to the people and the law.”
At the end of the day, the lesson from Exxon Valdez — in spite of the many health problems suffered by communities and wildlife — was that there is no appropriate compensation regime in place to cover the extensive damages sustained when an oil spill of this magnitude occurs.
