Internet Reacts To The Ocean Being On Fire, Which It Should Surely Not Be
Last Friday, the ocean was on fire, which is not something you typically expect the ocean to be.
The footage above was taken in the Gulf of Mexico and was caused by a gas pipeline rupture. Firefighters were able to put the fire out after five hours using nitrogen and, incredibly, water.
Somehow, the gas from the pipeline had "enough stream of natural gas [methane and probably other wet gas components like ethane and propane] in the one place to sustain the fire and keep it churning" in the middle of the ocean, according to CNET.
In the midst of extreme heat waves, hurricanes and other natural disasters, the image of the ocean literally on fire due to oil seemed the perfect encapsulation of the frustrating lack of drastic action on climate change. At the striking image, many social media users were reminded that they were told to stop using plastic straws to save the planet, though few figured the use of plastic straws caused the ocean to be on fire.
Luckily, the ocean is not on fire anymore, and apparently, the fire did not cause a spill, according to the executive director of Mexico’s oil safety regulatory agency. In the meantime, the world has to live with the fact that the ocean was on fire and that's just part of 2021.
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A Concerned Rifleman
I like how this is a talk about climate change instead of, you know, safer systems for the transport of petrol.
Timey16
The general problem is that the extraction and transport of crude oil has almost zero regulations, privatized or not.
It basically just goes "da free markut will regulate itself" (and other fairy tales you can tell yourself).
This is also why there was so much opposition by the tribes regarding Keystone XL. Every oil pipeline that was ever built, EVERY SINGLE ONE, at one point or another had oil spills of various sizes.
Something makes me think that if proper regulations were in place, the phaseout of fossil fuels would happen much faster, just because dealing with oil is now such a pain in the ass…
Lonefirebearer
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Timey16
Still works on a "for profit" basis, and it still has shares you can buy on the free market (government just has majority shares, therefor: it has capital and is still overall part of a privately controlled market)
Capitalism and free market are aligned but not the same. Capital, shares and profit maximization motives are what makes capitalism. Capitalism in a state owned market may be "weaker", but it's still capitalism if everything else fits the bill. (usually called State-Capitalism, then). It's not just "mark all these boxes and it's capitalism, if just one box isn't marked it's Socialism"… Socialism has it's own array of checkboxes that need to be filled.
"Free market" is the most top layer of capitalism. The Cold War propaganda machine has simply reduced capitalism to be nothing more than "free market and democracy" and Socialism to "state owned market and dictatorship", even though there is much, MUCH more to them each, down to how hierarchies work between bosses and employees inside of companies.
Chewybunny
The issue shouldn't be squared on either as a feature of capitalism or socialism. It is a feature of industrialization which neither socialist or capitalist societies can avoid. Lack of regulatory policy, poor judicial process of holding offenders properly responsible can, and does lead to ecological accidents and disasters. At the same time, command-based economies that prioritize industrialization and meeting the oft times bureaucratic needs of their society can also lead to massive disasters. The real differences come with how does societies deal with the accidents or disasters – and for the most part, the capitalist societies (for the most part) tend to deal with it a bit better, imo. This is because many capitalist societies come with a more flexible political and economic systems (allowing private citizens opportunities to engage in addressing these issues, while also allowing politicians leeway in taking responsibility if things go wrong), liberties such as free-press which can highlight these disasters as they unfold, judicial structures which can hold up ecologically-harmful projects for a long time and demand better outcomes, creating economic demand for "cleaner" products, which transform into political will…This cannot be said of places like the USSR's command economy, and looking at the horrible disaster that is the Aral Sea, or Mao's Four Pests project, rapid desertification, deforestation issues, etc.