Notes
Put the overconfidence cards with the case neg
The ptx links is a separate file for like xo affs and courts affs
Overconfidence Cards
Overconfidence bias in our actions just lead to more and more disastersmessages of safety are just a façade to improve market efficiency- BP proves
Shefrin 13 (Hersh, Mario Belotti Chair in the Department of Finance at Santa Clara University's
Leavey School of Business, “Building On Kahneman’s Insights in the
Development of Behavioral Finance”, May 15, 2013
http://www.evoke.luc.edu/law/media/law/students/publications/llj/pdfs/shefrin.pdf\\CLans)
When I wrote Ending the Management Illusion, I analyzed the corporate culture at energy firm BP.83 The analysis led me
to conclude that BP had a weak corporate culture that featured excessive cost cutting, excessive risk
taking, and actions that were environmentally detrimental despite the firm’s public relations message
that it was environmentally friendly. Two years after the publication of my book, BP’s oil drilling activities in the Gulf of
Mexico produced the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States. The report to the President by
the committee charged with investigating the oil spill disaster concluded that BP’s risk management culture was highly problematic ,
and that BP was overly focused on cost cutting that led it to take excessive risk.84 In September 2012, the Justice
Department accused BP of gross negligence and a “culture of corporate recklessness” in a federal court filing.85 A major civil trial continues in New Orleans. In my book, I suggested that excessive
optimism, overconfidence, confirmation bias, and aversion to a sure loss permeated BP’s decisions.87 With
respect to recklessness, how should the legal system deal with corporate actions stemming from corporate cultures that nourish psychological pitfalls? It comes back to intent and reasonableness. There
is no evidence of ill intent on the part of BP’s managers. But did they act reasonably in their
Gulf of Mexico drilling activities? Ex ante people prone to psychological pitfalls often do not see
unreasonable risks as being unreasonable. My view is that BP’s decisions in the Gulf were consistent
with a problematic culture with deep roots that fostered taking unreasonable risks. These
roots extend to BP’s operations in Texas and Alaska and involve a major explosion at its Texas
City refinery in 2005 that killed fifteen people,88 the largest leaks in its Alaska pipeline in 2006 and 2010,89 and a large string of serious OSHA violations in the period
2008 through 2010.90 CONCLUSION The behavioral perspective stemming from Kahneman’s insights raises critical issues for the theory and practice of law. There is already considerable behavioral literature on
Issues of fraud-on-the-market, fiduciary responsibility of financial advisors, and recklessness are
primary examples of areas ripe for the application of behavioral ideas. As a general matter, my recommendation is that the
fairness and financial market regulation.
legal system utilize the concept of recklessness to foster incentives that encourage organizations to cultivate cultures that mitigate vulnerability to psychological biases. Organizations with healthy risk
healthy risk management culture requires that the general
counsel and the chief risk management officer both be behaviorally literate and both be on
the same behavioral page. Debiasing is difficult, and the legal system can urge organizations to recognize vulnerability to psychological pitfalls by name, and take steps to deal with
management cultures recognize unreasonable risks as unreasonable. At its core,
them. Courts have a bully pulpit. This recommendation for recklessness mirrors the recommendation I made earlier with respect to fraud-on-the-market. In its current form and implementation, my sense is that
fraud-on-the-market encourages excessive trading and legal settlements based on unwarranted
assumptions about market efficiency. Instead of assuming that market efficiency is the base case, with legal action required to redress departures from efficiency,
courts can use their bully pulpit. Specifically, they can explicitly articulate the behavioral position to discourage
excessive trading, let alone provide restitution for investors whose losses stem from excessive trading and the acceptance of sentiment-based risk that
proponents of the efficient market position downplay, if not outright deny.
Overconfidence specifically in oil tech leads to serial policy failure
Sylves and Comfort 12 (Richard Sylves is a Political Science and International Relations
Professor at the University of Delaware, Louise Comfort is a Professor of Political Science at the
University of Pittsburgh, PhD in Political Science at Yale University, “The Exxon Valdez and BP
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spills: Reducing Risk in Socio-Technical Systems”, January 2012
http://abs.sagepub.com/content/56/1/76.full.pdf+html\\CLans)
Perrow (1984) illustrates the risks of socio-technical systems in his book Normal Accidents, a
study that explores human and technological problems encountered in managing extremely
complex, high-risk, tightly linked technologies (i.e., high-reliability technologies and organizations). He claims that
production pressures and overconfidence in safety or warning technologies often encourage
people, including decision makers in corporate settings, to take unwise risks. Perrow maintains that too
often blame is attributed to “operator error” in major accidents, when instead, poor
regulatory and safety oversight, mechanical failures, and multiple system failures are the true
causes of disaster. He posits that tightly coupled systems with the potential to cause highconsequence calamities fail more often than many suspect, owing to an overconfidence in
both human judgment and technological safeguards. In many respects, Perrow (1984) is both a supporter and
critic of human factor analysis: the search for an optimum interface of humans with machines and with machine instrumentation.
Perrow’s claims have credence in explaining aspects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez case and the
2010 BP Deepwater Horizon case. Perrow’s early analysis illustrates the socio-technical
aspects of oil spill accident vulnerability, prevention challenges, and risk management.
The nature of the government makes oil spills intrinsic to federal management
– the BP incident proves that federal regulators have literally no control over
anything – that ensures environmental error replication which turns the case
Richman 10 (Sheldon, senior editor at the CATO Institute, journalist at the Institute for Human
Studies at George Mason University, editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for
Economic Education, Foundation for Economic Education, June 11, 2010, “You Really Want
Government Drilling for Oil? It's about incentives,”
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/tgif/government-drilling-oil/\\CLans)
You’ve got to hand it to the people who really dislike free markets. They see them everywhere (under every bed?) and especially
wherever any serious problem arises. That no free market exists within a thousand miles makes no difference whatsoever. Take
the oil spill in the Gulf. Market opponents are having a field day. They say this finally
demonstrates the need for government to run things. Private firms can’t be trusted. But it looks more like
government can’t be trusted. The central government is, in law and in fact, the owner of the
part in the Gulf where BP drilled for oil. (I didn’t say it was the legitimate owner.) The owner leased its
property to a private company, BP, with a bad safety record (though a good one for sucking up
to the environmentalist establishment and bureaucrats) and issued permits for the drilling
operation. It then failed to keep a sharp eye on what BP and subcontractors Transocean and Halliburton were doing to its property.
That might have something to do with the fact that government
regulators don’t have the sort of relationship
to “their” property that real private owners do, and they can always be counted on to get
friendly with those they regulate. The Minerals Management Service in the Interior Department has a
special conflict of interest: It makes money off the drilling it permits and regulates. Thus it could
benefit from decisions that are bad for the public. So what failed here, the market or the State?
The call isn’t even close. The free market was nowhere near the scene. It has an airtight alibi. It didn’t exist. Now with
some effort you might get a die-hard anti-market person to concede this. So we move to the next step. What should replace
the current hybrid (government-corporate) system? I see only two choices: full government
management or full market management. Full government management wouldn’t appear
terribly promising, considering that the current problems are traceable back to government
management already. How would things change substantially if, instead of contracting out the drilling to a nominally private
company, the government instead hired the personnel itself and paid them directly from the U.S. Treasury? Who cares if the
rig says “BP,” “Transocean,” or “U.S. Government” on it? The same fallible people would be in the
same position to make the same fateful mistakes. Not much would have changed.
Empirics prove that state intervention in environmental policy is the root cause
of oil spills – decentralization removes the incentive for government corruption
Richman 10 (Sheldon, senior editor at the CATO Institute, journalist at the Institute for Human
Studies at George Mason University, editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for
Economic Education, Foundation for Economic Education, June 11, 2010, “You Really Want
Government Drilling for Oil? It's about incentives,”
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/tgif/government-drilling-oil/\\CLans)
But, it will be said, the government workers will have a mandate to protect the environment
and the public. Okay, let’s go with that. Let’s say the decision-makers are environmental hawks who
really don’t like oil drilling anywhere. They’ll be tough: no drilling unless it’s 100 percent safe. Leaving
aside the obvious problem with this standard, that policy would have costs. The risk of oil spills may drop to
zero, but we might have to forgo certain important benefits in the process. Poor people, say,
might have their prospects dimmed by more expensive energy. Is the tradeoff worth it? How do we go
about answering that question? Government is no help here. It can certainly impose a plan, but constructing a plan
beneficial to the public would be like playing darts in the dark. What bureaucrats think is good for us may
not actually be good for us, no matter how much they care. Mises and Hayek covered this in their writings on state socialism and
economic calculation. Things are sure looking bleak. Government
assurances are worthless whether it
contracts out for drilling or does it itself. That leaves only the free market. Can it be trusted?
The way hubris permeates into the methodology of the aff means that the aff
can’t solve
Davis 12 (Mark, Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Tulane Institute on Water
Resources Law and Policy, Tulane University, “Lessons Unlearned: The Legal and Policy
Legacy of the BP Deepwater Horizon Spill”
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=jece\\CLans)
The point here is not to criticize individual laws or policies, but rather to place them on the table so
their roles and impacts can be assessed. Whatever their merits, there has been general expression of dissatisfaction
with their application in this case.132 That is understandable, as is the tendency to look for lessons that have been learned from this
tragedy.133 But, there
is an important difference between a lesson taught and a lesson learned.
a lesson to be learned, there must be some responsible actor capable of learning. In
the case of the Deepwater Horizon spill, where virtually all of the major actors are institutions of one sort or the
other,134 it is inconsistent with past experience to expect learning and change to flow naturally
from experience. With the exception of the administrative dismantling of MMS and the decision by industry to create an
independent spill response entity,135 very little has changed despite a plethora of reports, hearings, and
commentaries.136 That should not be a surprise. The legal framework that directed the actions
of the industry and governmental players is still the same after the accident as it was before.137 The
institutions themselves are very limited in their ability to learn from any event and to change
as a result of it, especially when that would require a change in underlying law or policy. Until the systemic
conditions, overconfidence, and hubris that paved the way to disaster on April 20, 2010, are addressed and
changed the only real barrier between ourselves and repeated avoidable tragedy will be good
luck. That does not have to be our path, but to change it will take real effort. The further we
get from the spill, the less likely it is that anything fundamental will happen. To be sure, there are still
efforts underway,138 but if they succeed, it will likely be because of an enormous effort on the part
of committed stakeholders and key elected officials to keep the issues alive. The takeaway here is that people learn, but
institutions react. Without concerted effort, one can only expect them to react in ways that
recreate the pre-event status quo. The Deepwater Horizon blowout may have taught many
important lessons, but as yet, most of them are still unlearned by those most responsible.
Indeed, for
Overconfidence that accompanies human nature leads to more and more
disasters
Lean 10 (Environmental Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, “A familiar, fatal chain
reaction” November 13, 2010 Accessed LexisNexis \\CLans)
There is one huge, unanswered - maybe unanswerable - question hanging over the painstaking inquiry
into the causes of BP's Deepwater Horizon blowout, "the Gulf of Mexico's Chernobyl". Investigators
have just about pieced together the physical events that led to oil and gas racing up through three and a half miles of pipework to
explode on the rig, killing 11 men and leading to the release of 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The inquiry in
Washington is also coming to the conclusion, as co-chairman William Reilly put it, that the
disaster resulted from a
series of decisions made by "competent persons" which "look like they were just plain
wrong". But nobody knows why they were made. One decision, the most crucial, is particularly puzzling. In
the hours before the accident, men on the rig carried out the essential test that would tell
them whether oil and gas were - potentially fatally - leaking into the well. Three times they
tried it and each time the result signalled danger. But they decided to proceed as if all was well.
"The well was blown," Sean Grimsley, one of the inquiry's deputy chief counsels told us. "Hydrocarbons were leaking in. But for
whatever reason, the
crew decided it was a good test. The question is why these experienced men
out on that rig talked themselves into believing that it indicated well integrity. None of them
wanted to die." The same question arose at another inquiry I covered, nearly a quarter of a century ago, into
Chernobyl itself. It is now fashionable to blame the accident on the Russian RBMK reactor design. But, though this was
not great, the world's worst nuclear disaster was, in fact, caused by a similar chain of human
errors. Under pressure to complete a test, the operators made six crucial mistakes, including progressively switching off every
one of the safety systems until, in the words of the chief investigator, Valery Legasov, the reactor "was free to do as it wished". In
the last second of its life - at three seconds past 1.23am on April 26, 1986 - its power surged to several
hundred times its normal level and an explosion blew its 1,000-ton lid clean off. As Dr Pierre Tanguy,
one of the chiefs of the world-beating French nuclear industry, acknowledged, the problem was "the kind of
operator error that we all experience in our plants and is hard to eliminate. But without it,
there would have been no accident." Page 1 A senior British nuclear engineer, Dr Brian Edmondson, put
his finger on the root cause. The operators had "lost their fear of the reactor" and "lost all
sense of danger", he said in an official summing-up. Why? Probably because their previous safety record
had led to "dominant over-confidence". There are many parallels with what happened in the
Gulf of Mexico. Here, too, the operators seem to have been anxious to finish the job, and quickly,
for reasons that are not yet clear. The accident stemmed from a series of errors - avoiding any one of
which, as Legasov pointed out over Chernobyl, could have averted catastrophe. And, again, the operators were doing a job they had
done many times, safely, before. Certainly
they were operating, as Reilly said this week, within a
"culture of complacency". BP before Deepwater, like the nuclear industry before Chernobyl, had insisted that such a
disaster could never happen (and that, even if it did, "no significant adverse impacts" could be expected because its response would
be so good). "Dominant
over-confidence" does not seem, in either case, to have been confined to
the operators. As bad as both accidents were, we escaped relatively lightly because of the weather. Chernobyl blew up on a
still, clear night which allowed the radioactive plume to rise almost a mile into the air, as if inside an invisible chimney, where it met
a gentle breeze which wafted it over relatively uninhabited marshes. Rain, which would have brought the danger down with it, did
not fall for days. In the Gulf, the winds, after driving the oil towards the vital Louisiana marshes, changed just in time and held it
offshore.
In both cases the peril was able to disperse naturally. As the nuclear renaissance
gathers pace, and oil drilling ventures into ever more difficult waters, we cannot rely on the
elements always bailing us out. The human errors that cause disaster, as Dr Tanguy said, are hard to
eliminate. So if we decide that our need for the energy outweighs the risks, we must, at least,
beware of overconfidence. When the industry says an accident is impossible, don your hardest
hat.
Safety measures are put to a side constraint to increase efficiency and is
justified by overconfidence
Seager 12 (Thomas P., Associate Professor, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built
Environment, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, “Integrating Risk
and Resilience Approaches to Catastrophe Management in Engineering Systems”, September
11, 2012, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2012.01885.x/full\\CLans)
Engineering design is typically understood as an exercise in problem solving, such as
optimization of a system with regard to known information in pursuit of maximum efficiency.
Subsequent to construction, an engineered system is typically modified incrementally to
accommodate new information on risks obtained during operation. However, an engineering problem in
a complex system can never be solved in a permanent sense, and an investment made for achieving maximized
efficiency generally leads to rigid operational structures by eliminating redundant and flexible
capacities. In this condition, modifications necessary for coping with changed conditions are constrained by the rigidity of the
system. Only through a disruptive transformation can the system escape such a rigidity trap. 2008
This explains, for example, why decisionmakers were reluctant to revisit the vulnerability of the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant until after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that
devastated the plant in March 2011.2011 In fact, earthquakes and tsunamis in the area of the
Fukushima plant were accurately predicted a decade prior,2001 but failed to result in new
protective measures, partly because of overconfidence in the inherent safety of backup and
redundant systems at the power plant. The multiple infrastructure failures caused by the disaster were never considered
sufficiently plausible to justify protective measures. Instead, disaster response planning was purposefully
avoided by the Japanese nuclear industry because of a feeling that it may undermine public
support for nuclear power. For example, the Japanese nuclear industry failed to develop robots capable of responding to
emergencies in high-radiation areas where humans cannot go—primarily because the presence of such robots would have been
perceived as an admission of the possibility of a safety failure.2011 Ultimately, emergency
response efforts were
severely handicapped by the lack of preparation that resulted from a false sense of security
prior to the disaster, exhibiting an overconfidence that is all too familiar in normal accident theory.1999 Similarly,
despite advances in deep ocean oil drilling, the frequency of off-shore well blowouts has
remained approximately constant for decades.2005,2011 Although it is widely acknowledged that
response to deep water blowouts may be extraordinarily problematic in comparison to
blowouts in shallow water, comprehensive response plans in the event of blowout preventer
failures were demonstrated to be inadequate in the aftermath of the failure of the Deepwater
Horizon—partly due to a misplaced overconfidence in existing blowout prevention
technologies.2011
AT Our methodology good
The nature of politics ensures overconfidence which means environmental
impacts are a side constraint to fuel business
Davis 12 (Mark, Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Tulane Institute on Water
Resources Law and Policy, Tulane University, “Lessons Unlearned: The Legal and Policy
Legacy of the BP Deepwater Horizon Spill”
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=jece\\CLans)
Few things are as driven by self-confidence as business and politics, so it should not be a surprise
to find that the decisions underpinning the Deepwater Horizon project were shot through
with boldness and certainty. Indeed, so characteristic has overconfidence become in economic
decision-making that it has, with a great deal of fairness, been referred to by a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics as “the engine
of capitalism.”72 The Deepwater Horizon is a case study in just how true that observation may be. The MMS Environmental Impact
Statements that have been prepared in connection with Gulf oil and gas development are voluminous tomes that describe at some length all of the
things that are important about the Gulf and the sorts of things that might occur as a result of
offshore activity that could harm them.73 Oil spills are one of those.74 How, then, could it be possible that a known risk could have
been so poorly planned for?75 The Environmental Impact Statements also provide an answer to that question.76 First and foremost, large oil spills are described by
MMS as “low probability events.”77 While this is undoubtedly true, it misses the critical
question of how much damage might be done by a truly large spill.78 MMS divides spills into two categories, those of less than
1,000 barrels and those of 1,000 barrels or more.79 No separate analysis of the harm from mega spills is done or required,
even those that are well within the realm of experience as evidenced by the Exxon Valdez and
Ixtoc I incidents.80 Similarly, no separate analysis was done to consider the risks—and response limitations—of
drilling in ultra-deep water. The Oil Pollution Act (OPA) does require “worst case” response planning, but it was left to MMS to determine what constituted such a worst case and
what an adequate Oil Spill Response Plan was.81 In the case of the Macondo well, the worst case scenarios ranged from 28,033 to 250,000
barrels,82 and the response plan was the now infamous cut and paste plan that included
referenced impacts to walruses, sea lions, and sea otters, creatures that do not exist in the
Gulf.83 That MMS signed off on this Oil Spill Response Plan (and virtually identical plans for other deep water drillers) signals a
lack of serious consideration by that agency.84 The fact that it was practice to approve Oil Spill Response Plans within thirty days of submission suggests that
cursory review was in fact policy.85 Clearly, the working assumption was that nothing really bad could happen and if it did, industry would be ready.86 No distinction was made
between spills of thousands of barrels and hundreds of thousands, and certainly not millions
of barrels.87 Despite a number of laws ostensibly promising that oil and gas exploration would be done in a cautious manner that was protective of the environment (and those industries and
communities that depend upon it), no site-specific analysis of the risks or harms from the Macondo well or any
other well was being done.88 In many ways, the industry, regulators, policy makers, and even much of the
environmental community had been lulled into a sense of security based on the experience of
the thousands of wells that had been drilled in the Gulf in the preceding decades.89 By assuming that past
was prelude and that the risks of a blow out or spill in the extreme conditions of ultra-deep
exploration were manageable through the same techniques used in less hostile environments, effective steps to prevent and
respond to the Deepwater Horizon blowout were not taken.90 By assuming that the vast scale
of harm that resulted was unthinkable, the seeds of disaster were sown.
AT Things have changed since BP
Overconfidence bias does not change- the same overconfidence that led to the
Valdez spill 20 years ago led to the Deepwater Horizon explosion
Sylves and Comfort 12 (Richard Sylves is a Political Science and International Relations
Professor at the University of Delaware, Louise Comfort is a Professor of Political Science at the
University of Pittsburgh, PhD in Political Science at Yale University, “The Exxon Valdez and BP
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spills: Reducing Risk in Socio-Technical Systems”, January 2012
http://abs.sagepub.com/content/56/1/76.full.pdf+html\\CLans)
As Table 2 shows, some 2,600 vessels were reported to have been involved with the BP spill cleanup.
By early June 2010, these vessels had deployed an estimated 4.4 million feet of sorbent and containment boom (with another 2.9
million feet of boom available). In addition, over
1 million gallons of oil dispersant have been used. Some 17
staging areas across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida were rapidly created to
defend sensitive shorelines. In all, some 20,000 people were working, some around the clock, to protect Gulf Coast
waters and coastlines. In contrast, during the peak of the Exxon Valdez cleanup in the spring of 1989, 10,000 workers, 1,000 boats,
and 100 airplanes and helicopters were involved (Levy & Kopalakrishnan, 2010). The scale of response in each case was massive.
In
many respects, from 1990 to the present, advances in oil discovery and oil drilling technology
have significantly outpaced government’s capacity, or willing- ness, to oversee and regulate
the industry. Table 5 presents socio-technical issues that pertain to each case. The Exxon Valdez grounding and
ensuing spill emanated from human error, mismanagement, and perhaps an overconfidence
in vessel auto-navigation. The BP Deepwater Horizon explosion and ensuing sea floor oil discharge
represented a high-risk engineering decision manifesting poor safety culture and
overconfidence in a blowout preventer used at extreme depths and under unanticipated horrific conditions
(explosion and sinking of its overhead platform) Both cases illustrate the interdependencies among federal, state, and municipal
authorities as they conducted response operations for the spill. Both cases also demon- strate the complexity introduced into
managing response operations when government and corporate actors possess different types and degrees of knowledge and skills
(dis- tributed cognition). Furthermore, both
cases demonstrate the interaction between lapses in human
judgment and massive consequences from the breakdown of large-scale technical systems,
illustrating Perrow’s (1984) thesis regarding “normal accidents.”
Courts/XO Ptx links
Generic links
Alternative mechanisms still get spun as blame and drain pc
Weaver 13 (Kent, Professor at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow in Governance
Studies at the Brookings Institution, “Policy Leadership and the Blame Trap:
Seven Strategies for Avoiding Policy Stalemate”, March 2013
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2013/3/29%20policy%20leadership
%20blame%20weaver/weaverpolicy%20leadership%20and%20the%20blame%20trapv5032813.
pdf\\CLans)
Negative messaging is not without potential costs to its perpetrators, of course. The most important
policy consequence of negative messaging is that it constrains future opportunities for
compromise. If Republicans blame Democrats for raising taxes and pledge never to support
any tax increase, for example, it will be difficult for them to agree to tax increases without
appearing to be liars, hypocrites, or a flip-floppers—all of which are charges that are likely to
be made by future opponents in Republican primaries. But in today’s polarized political climate, many
politicians actually view this as an advantage: by creating a narrow “zone of acceptable outcomes” for themselves, they hope to
force the other party to move closer to positions that they favor. America’s
politicians, in short, appear to be caught
in what can be called the “blame trap”: they generate blame against their opponents in order
to appease their political supporters and win enough support from undecided voters to win elections. But the
usual policy result, given America’s system of multiple veto points, is policy stalemate, which generates more
public cynicism and makes blamegenerating appeals even more credible for the electorate .
Executive Action links to politics and gets rolled back
Weaver 13 (Kent, Professor at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow in Governance
Studies at the Brookings Institution, “Policy Leadership and the Blame Trap:
Seven Strategies for Avoiding Policy Stalemate”, March 2013
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2013/3/29%20policy%20leadership
%20blame%20weaver/weaverpolicy%20leadership%20and%20the%20blame%20trapv5032813.
pdf\\CLans)
EXECUTIVE ACTION: If a hyper-partisan and divided Congress is unable to break policy stalemates,
what about executive action as an alternative? There certainly are some opportunities for breaking stalemate
through executive action, as President Obama showed in June 2012 when he suspended deportation of young illegal immigrants
who had entered the country illegally. Additional executive action by the Obama administration has been promoted by liberal
advocates of action in policy areas such as climate change, gun control home mortgage refinancing, and gay and lesbian rights. But
it clearly has limitations as well: most changes taken through executive action are reversible,
Policy Leadership and the Blame Trap 9 relatively modest, and risk being portrayed in
Republican blame-generating narratives as the actions of an arrogant president who skirts the
law.
Blame still gets tied back to Obama- 5 warrants
Weaver 13 (Kent, Professor at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow in Governance
Studies at the Brookings Institution, “Policy Leadership and the Blame Trap:
Seven Strategies for Avoiding Policy Stalemate”, March 2013
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2013/3/29%20policy%20leadership
%20blame%20weaver/weaverpolicy%20leadership%20and%20the%20blame%20trapv5032813.
pdf\\CLans)
In a period when hyper-partisanship, close partisan competition, divided government, strong
incentives for blame-generating, and a proliferation of blame generators have become the
“new normal” in Washington, there are no simple one-size-fits-all solutions to side-step the blame
trap and avoid policy stalemate. Ultimately, however, the blame trap will continue to bedevil policymakers in
Washington so long as they continue to believe any or all of the following: (1) the status quo is better
than any compromise that is likely to be acceptable to their partisan opponents, (2) any sign of deviation from
policy principle weakens your own bargaining position, (3) political and policy opponents can
be bullied or blamed into accepting a position that is closer to your own position, (4) better policy
terms are likely to be available after the next election, or the one after that, or the one after that, and (5)
policy compromise that reduces potential openings for future blame-generating is not worth
the political opportunity cost. So long as these beliefs remain dominant among American politicians, incentives for
compromise remain weak, and successful initiatives to dodge the blame trap and avoid policy
stalemate will be the exception rather than the rule.
Agency links to politics- influenced by Congress- backlash would shift to Obama
for Agency flip flop
Datla and Revesz 12 (Kirti and Richard, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW
PUBLIC LAW & LEGAL THEORY RESEARCH PAPER SERIES WORKING PAPER NO. 12-44 LAW &
ECONOMICS RESEARCH PAPER SERIES WORKING PAPER NO. 12-23t, “Deconstructing
Independent Agencies (and Executive Agencies)”, August 2012 \\CLans)
The ability of agency heads to adopt policies somewhat indepen- dently of presidential monitoring and control
matters only if agency heads will diverge from the President’s preferences in the absence of
direct presidential control. One might ask why the preferences of an agency head would ever diverge from those of the
President who ap- pointed him, given that the President presumably appoints agency heads who share his policy preferences. But
the President is not the only “principal” of an agency head. Congress, political parties, regulated interest groups, and the agency staff exert influence on the agency head.257 Congress
primarily exerts influence over agency heads (and pre- sumably also conveys the preferences of the political
parties) through the power of the purse. Thus “[an] agency has an incentive to shade its policy
choice toward the legislature’s ideal point to take advantage of that inducement.”258 The
preferences of members who serve on the agency’s appropriations committee will presumably carry more weight than those of
Congress generally. Congress also
can influence agencies through hearings and legislative proposals.
Political parties also influence agency heads and can cause an agency head to diverge from the
President’s preferences. Because agency heads tend not to retire from public life after their tenure, they therefore
consider the impacts of their decisions on future career prospects.259 Agency heads will consider the preferences of their po- litical
party, which controls (or at least influences) their potential for advancement. Decisions that will “optimize the agency head’s future
stream of income and reputational benefits will not necessarily be compatible with the [P]resident’s agenda at all times.”260
Interest groups also exert influence over agency heads. The phe- nomenon of interest group influence is
commonly referred to as agency capture. The capture thesis recognizes that because interest groups
representing regulated entities tend to be overrepresented in the agency decision-making
process compared to interest groups rep- resenting public interests, the outputs of agencies
will tend to be bi- ased in favor of those interests.261 Interest groups are overrepresented in agency decision
making because they are well or- ganized, well funded, possess an information advantage over the agency, and can offer perks such
as future employment.262 Finally, agency
staff members are able to influence agency heads as a result
of several factors. First, “government administrators will seek employment at an agency because of an ideological
identification with that agency’s mission.”263 Then, as agency heads serve in their positions, they gain expertise and “adopt the
preferences and perspec- tives of agency careerists on policy issues”—called “going native.”264 Finally, the agency staff simply
spends more time with the agency head than the President or his advisors can
Links to politics- Health Care proves it galvanizes Congress
Harnden 12 (Toby, Editor for Mail Online, “Romney raises $5million in backlash against
Supreme Court decision on Obamacare as right mobilises against health reform”, June 29, 2012
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2166815/Obamacare-ruling-Mitt-Romney-raises5million-Supreme-Court-decision.html\\CLans)
Mitt Romney has raised more than $5million since the Supreme Court upheld President Barack
Obama’s signature healthcare reform, a sign that the ruling could energise Republicans this
November. In a message to supporters on Friday morning, just over 24 hours after Chief Justice John Roberts had delivered his
majority opinion, the Romney campaign said it had raked in $5.5million from 55,000 supporters. The campaign also touted Mr
Romney's social media presence, which they said underlined the fact that Americans were mobilising against the Affordable Care Act
– better known as Obamacare – by backing the presumptive Republican nominee.The Obama campaign, which has sought to project
a high-minded message of ‘ordinary Americans are the winners’, attacked Mr Romney’s staff for boasting about his fundraising
success. ‘It's perverse that Mitt Romney won't share details about what he'd do for the millions he'd leave uninsured or at the whims
of insurance companies when he “kills Obamacare dead” but he'll share the hourly details of his fundraising after the Supreme Court
ruling,' said spokesman Ben LaBolt. Stand
your ground: Chief Justice John Roberts, who provided the
crucial tipping vote, is being branded by some conservatives as a traitor In his fundraising email to
supporters, Mr Romney had said: ‘Today, the Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare. But regardless of what
the court said about the constitutionality of the law, ObamaCare is bad medicine, it is bad policy, and
when I’m president, the bad news of ObamaCare will be over.’ The former Massachusetts governor said the landmark ruling had
injected fresh impetus into the presidential contest. 'What happened yesterday calls for greater urgency, I believe, in the election,'
he told donors in New York. 'I think people recognise that if you want to replace Obamacare you've got to replace President Obama.
And the
urgency of doing that is something which is galvanising people across the country.' The Supreme Court
has promised to repeal the measure if
elected, although he introduced a similar reform at the state level in Massachusetts. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsuerg,
upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare by a 5 to 4 majority. Mr Romney
a liberal, cited the Massachusetts law in her opinion, writing: 'Congress followed Massachusetts' lead.' Mr Obama also mentioned it
in his address after the decision was announced and is sure to raise it during the three presidential debates in the autumn. The
dramatic and historic Supreme Court decision represented a major short-term victory for Mr Obama and a potential boost to his reelection chances. Mr Roberts, appointed by President George W. Bush, enraged
conservative colleagues by
siding with the court’s liberals.
Executive action and executive agencies cause massive backlash
Davenport 13 (Coral, National Journal, “How EPA Fights Climate Change Even When Congress
Doesn’t Want It To”, June 14, 2013 http://www.govexec.com/oversight/2013/06/how-epafights-climate-change-even-when-congress-doesnt-want-it/64889/\\CLans)
Environmental groups have a tough time getting Congress to do what they want. Case in point: In
the early months of 2010, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Environmental Defense Fund
waged an all-out campaign urging the Senate to pass a sweeping climate-change bill backed
by President Obama and leaders in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The measure crashed and burned that
summer. But the green groups—and Obama’s top environmental officials—knew they could resort to a
different tactic: lawsuits to compel executive action. Toward the end of George W. Bush’s administration, the three big
environmental organizations and 11 states sued to force the Environmental Protection Agency to issue
new regulations reining in carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants and oil refineries. The
Bush EPA fought the suit, but the Obama EPA, full of top officials who had worked in these very nonprofits, took
a different tack. By December 2010, after the failure of the climate-change legislation, Obama’s first-term EPA
administrator, Lisa Jackson, settled the lawsuit—on the advocates’ terms. The settlement obliged the agency to
begin regulating carbon pollution from coal plants and oil refineries, an outcome with profound environmental and economic
implications. And in April 2012, EPA proposed a historic new rule to regulate global-warming pollution from coal plants. As
Obama’s second term unfolds, the agency is expected to finalize more rules that, thanks to lawsuits,
will give the green groups what they want. The climate-change settlement is just one in a series of recent so-called
sue-and-settle agreements since Obama took office. Between 2009 and 2012, EPA has settled at least 60 lawsuits from outside
groups, leading to dozens of new environmental regulations. A 2010 deal in another Sierra Club lawsuit led to a 2012 regulation on
mercury emissions from coal plants. A 2009 settlement with environmentalists led to a 2012 regulation governing pollution from
cement manufacturers. While
EPA could fight the suits, they often line up with the administration’s
agenda—to fight climate change and promote clean-air laws—so why bother? In many cases, the
federal government, as the loser in the legal settlements, has then paid the green groups’ legal fees.
Sue-and-settle lawsuits with like-minded groups as a way to advance common goals aren’t new. The practice dates back to the
Carter administration. But EPA’s
recent spate of agreements that have major environmental and
economic consequences have come as part of a broader flexing of executive authority,
particularly on the issue of climate change. Although Congress remains unlikely to act on the issue, the president vows to use what
power he has to address a problem he sees as urgent.
The EPA cases are spurring a big backlash from
industry and from Republicans on Capitol Hill . In May, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released
a report (“Sue and Settle: Regulating Behind Closed Doors”) slamming the practice. Last week, the GOPcontrolled House Judiciary Committee held an investigative hearing, calling the report’s author,
William Kovacs, the U.S. chamber’s senior vice president of environmental regulation, as a
star witness. Kovacs told Congress the sue-and-settle process gives outside groups an outsized, backdoor role in driving the
government regulatory agenda. They turn an independent agency into “an actor subservient to the
binding terms of settlement agreements,” Kovacs said. House Republicans have introduced
legislation to curb the practice.
CASE
US fails
Enviro turn – dispersants
U.S. response fails – standard dispersants result in more environmental harm
Hertsgaard, ’13. Newsweek. April 19, 2013. “Drowing in Oil: The 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill
was even worse than BP wanted us to know.” Mark Hertsgaard is an American journalist.
http://www.lexisnexis.com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/lnacui2api/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkI
nd=true&risb=21_T17870355127&format=GNBFI&sort=BOOLEAN&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey
=29_T17870355131&cisb=22_T17870355130&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=5774&docNo=1
4 – clawan
Yet the most astonishing thing about BP's cover-up? It was carried out in plain sight, right in front of the world's uncomprehending news media
(including, I regret to say, this reporter). The
chief instrument of BP's cover-up was the same substance that apparently
sickened Jamie Griffin and countless other cleanup workers and local residents. Its brand name is Corexit, but most news reports at the time
referred to it simply as a "dispersant." Its function was to attach itself to leaked oil, break it
into droplets, and disperse them into the vast reaches of the gulf, thereby keeping the oil from
reaching Gulf Coast shorelines. And the Corexit did largely achieve this goal. But the 1.84 million gallons of Corexit that BP applied
during the cleanup also served a public-relations purpose: they made the oil spill all but disappear, at least from TV screens. By late July 2010, the
Associated Press and The New York Times were questioning whether the spill had been such a big deal after all. Time went so far as to assert that rightwing talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh "has a point" when he accused journalists and environmentalists of exaggerating the crisis. But BP had a problem: it
had lied about how safe Corexit is, and proof of its dishonesty would eventually fall into the hands of the Government Accountability Project, the
premiere whistleblower-protection group in the U.S. The proof? A technical manual BP had received from NALCO, the firm that supplied the Corexit
that BP used in the gulf. An electronic copy of that manual is included in a new report GAP has issued, "Deadly Dispersants in the Gulf." On the basis of
interviews with dozens of cleanup workers, scientists, and Gulf Coast residents, GAP concludes that the
health impacts endured by Griffin
were visited upon many other locals as well. What's more, the combination of Corexit and crude oil also caused
terrible damage to gulf wildlife and ecosystems, including an unprecedented number of
seafood mutations; declines of up to 80 percent in seafood catch; and massive die-offs of the
microscopic life-forms at the base of the marine food chain. GAP warns that BP and the U.S.
government nevertheless appear poised to repeat the exercise after the next major oil spill: "As
a result of Corexit's perceived success, Corexit ... has become the dispersant of choice in the U.S. to 'clean up'
oil spills." BP's cover-up was not planned in advance but devised in the heat of the moment as the oil giant scrambled to limit the PR and other
damages of the disaster. Indeed, one of the chief scandals of the disaster is just how unprepared both BP and federal and state
authorities were for an oil leak of this magnitude. U.S. law required that a response plan be in place before
drilling began, but the plan was embarrassingly flawed. "We weren't managing for actual risk; we were
checking a box," says Mark Davis, director of the Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy at Tulane University. "That's how we ended up
with a response plan that included provisions for dealing with the impacts to walruses: because [BP] copied word for word the response plans that had
been developed after the Exxon-Valdez oil spill [in Alaska, in 1989] instead of a plan tailored to the conditions in the gulf." As days turned into weeks
and it became obvious that no one knew how to plug the gushing well, BP began insisting that Corexit be used to disperse the leaking oil. This triggered
alarms from scientists and from a leading environmental NGO in Louisiana, the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN). The group's scientific
adviser, Wilma Subra, a chemist whose work on environmental pollution had won her a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation, told state and
federal authorities that she was especially concerned about how dangerous the mixture of crude and Corexit was: "The
short-term health symptoms include acute respiratory problems, skin rashes, cardiovascular impacts, gastrointestinal impacts, and short-term loss of
memory," she told GAP investigators. "Long-term impacts include cancer, decreased lung function, liver damage, and kidney damage." (Nineteen
months after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, a scientific study published in the peerreviewed journal Environmental Pollution found that crude oil becomes 52 times more toxic
when combined with Corexit.) BP even rebuffed a direct request from the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa
Jackson, who wrote BP a letter on May 19, asking the company to deploy a less toxic dispersant in the cleanup. Jackson could only ask BP to do this; she
could not legally require it. Why? Because use
of Corexit had been authorized years before under the federal
Oil Pollution Act. In a recent interview, Jackson explains that she and other officials "had to determine, with less-than-perfect scientific
testing and data, whether use of dispersants would, despite potential side effects, improve the overall situation in the gulf and coastal ecosystems. The
tradeoff, as I have said many times, was potential damage in the deep water versus the potential for larger amounts of undispersed oil in the
ecologically rich coastal shallows and estuaries." She adds that the presidential commission that later studied the BP oil disaster did not fault the
decision to use dispersants. Knowing that EPA lacked the authority to stop it, BP wrote back to Jackson on May 20, declaring that
Corexit was safe. What's more, BP wrote, there was a ready supply of Corexit, which was not the case with alternative dispersants. (A NALCO plant was
located just 30 miles west of New Orleans.) But Corexit
was decidedly not safe without taking proper precautions, as the manual BP
got from NALCO spelled out in black and white. The "Vessel Captains Hazard Communication" resource manual, which GAP shared with me, looks
innocuous enough. A three-ring binder with a black plastic cover, the manual contained 61 sheets, each wrapped in plastic, that detailed the scientific
properties of the two types of Corexit that BP was buying, as well as their health hazards and recommended measures against those hazards. BP
applied two types of Corexit in the gulf. The first, Corexit 9527, was considerably more toxic. According to the NALCO manual, Corexit 9527 is an "eye
and skin irritant. Repeated or excessive exposure ... may cause injury to red blood cells (hemolysis), kidney or the liver." The manual adds: "Excessive
exposure may cause central nervous system effects, nausea, vomiting, anesthetic or narcotic effects." It advises, "Do not get in eyes, on skin, on
clothing," and "Wear suitable protective clothing." When available supplies of Corexit 9527 were exhausted early in the cleanup, BP switched to the
second type of dispersant, Corexit 9500. In its recommendations for dealing with Corexit 9500, the NALCO manual advised, "Do not get in eyes, on skin,
on clothing," "Avoid breathing vapor," and "Wear suitable protective clothing." It's standard procedure--and required by U.S. law--for companies to
distribute this kind of information to any work site where hazardous materials are present so workers can know about the dangers they face and how
to protect themselves. But interviews with numerous cleanup workers suggest that this legally required precaution was rarely if ever followed during
the BP cleanup. Instead, it appears that BP told NALCO to stop including the manuals with the Corexit that NALCO was delivering to cleanup work sites.
"It's my understanding that some manuals were sent out with the shipments of Corexit in the beginning [of the cleanup]," the anonymous source tells
me. "Then, BP told NALCO to stop sending them. So NALCO was left with a roomful of unused binders." Roman Blahoski, NALCO's director of global
communications, says: "NALCO responded to requests for its pre-approved dispersants from those charged with protecting the gulf and mitigating the
environmental, health, and economic impact of this event. NALCO was never involved in decisions relating to the use, volume, and application of its
dispersant." Misrepresenting the safety of Corexit went hand in hand with BP's previously noted lie about how much oil was leaking from the Macondo
well. As reported by John Rudolf in The Huffington Post, internal BP emails show that BP privately estimated that "the runaway well could be leaking
from 62,000 barrels a day to 146,000 barrels a day." Meanwhile, BP officials were telling the government and the media that only 5,000 barrels a day
were leaking. In short, applying Corexit enabled BP to mask the fact that a much larger amount of oil was actually leaking into the gulf. "Like any good
magician, the oil industry has learned that if you can't see something that was there, it must have 'disappeared,'" Scott Porter, a scientist and deep-sea
diver who consults for oil companies and oystermen, says in the GAP report. " Oil
companies have also learned that, in the
public mind, 'out of sight equals out of mind.' Therefore, they have chosen crude oil
dispersants as the primary tool for handling large marine oil spills."
Reliance on dispersants mean U.S. cleanup can’t solve spills
Herndon, et al. ’13. Marynette Herndon, President and Chief Executive Officer, has 27 years
of experience in the fields of Environmental Engineering and Emergency Management. Paul W.
Sammarco, PhD, professor and senior scientist at Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.
Alex Nicholson, former NASA aerospace engineer and environmental specialist, et al. “A Call for
a Twenty-First Century Solution in Oil Spill Response.” Lawrence Anthony Earth Organization.
http://www.calameo.com/read/00014587834a4b42bde93 – clawan
Dispersants are building a negative reputation in many countries outside the United States,
with an aggregate of studies indicating their use can cause enormous natural resource destruction. This
stance is reinforced by the 33-year tracking of the Ixtoc, Valdez, and other spills of significance, followed by the now unprecedented
BP Deepwater Horizon spill wherein the President’s Gulf Oil Spill Commissioned called for a critical review of the response, strongly
advising a reappraisal and update of the US National Contingency Plan, with a better assessment of the efficacy of various
dispersants and their associated “trade-offs.” This review included a request for updated guidance on Bioremediation Agents.
Legislation is also being proposed in light of concerning discoveries made over dispersant use. In August 2012, a coalition of US
public health, wildlife, and conservation organization filed a Clean Water Act lawsuit naming the US Environmnetal Protection
Agnecy (EPA) for failure to make available science-based information on the toxicity levels of dispersants listed on the NCP Product
Schedule. This failure allegedly resulted in faulty decision making during the 2010 Gulf spill. The
Clean Water Act
specifically calls for oil spill response to remove oil from the environment. Dispersants have
no means to do this. Regulatory guidance unfortunately describes the use of dispersants in
terms of “being effective” without defining what effective means. This phrase might imply a method that
is successful in cleaning up a spill. However, cleaning up a spill (making the environment uncontaminating and removing
the oil) is not the US EPA’s definition in this situation. For a chemical dispersant to be included
on the official NCP list (National Contingency Plan for oil spill disaster cleanup), the US EPA merely requires
that the dispersant have an ability to sink 45 percent of the oil below the surface within 30
minutes after application. This definition is not an acceptable standard for oil spill cleanup. It is,
however, what is meant when the EPA describes dispersants as being “effective.” The qualifications for being listed as
a dispersant on the NCP Product Schedule do not include the capability of removing
hydrocarbons from the environment; and as has been demonstrated, chemical dispersants do not have that capacity.
Regulations fail
U.S. oil regulations are dominated by industry interests – causes ineffective
response
OSC, ’11. National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.
The Commission examined the relevant facts and circumstances concerning the root causes of
the Deepwater Horizon explosion and developed options to guard against, and mitigate the
impact of, any oil spills associated with offshore drilling in the future. This included
recommending improvements to federal laws, regulations, and industry practices. “Deep Water:
The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling.” January 2011.
http://www.oilspillcommission.gov/sites/default/files/documents/DEEPWATER_ReporttothePre
sident_FINAL.pdf – clawan
Absence of Adequate Safety Culture in the Offshore U.S. Oil and Gas Industry As noted, the offshore oil and gas industry is
inherently risky, beginning with the initial exploratory activities and continuing through the transportation of oil and gas produced National
Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Chapter Eight 225 225 from the wells. The drilling rigs are themselves
dangerous places to work, dense with heavy equipment, hazardous chemicals, and flammable oil and gas—all surrounded by the open-sea
environment far from shore, where weather and water conditions can change rapidly and dramatically. The
seriousness of these risks
to worker safety and the environment are underscored by the sheer number of accidents,
large and small, that have occurred in oil and gas drilling activities in the Gulf, even in the
absence of a major spill since the 1979 Ixtoc spill, until the Macondo blowout (see graphic).45 No operator or lessee is immune from
these safety challenges. But the pervasive riskiness of exploring for and producing offshore oil and gas does not explain the extent to which
approaches to safety differ among companies, nor why they differ within companies depending on where they are working.
From 2004 to 2009, fatalities in the offshore oil and gas industry were more than four times higher
per personhours worked in U.S. waters than in European waters, even though many of the same companies
work in both venues.46 This striking statistical discrepancy reinforces the view that the problem is not an inherent trait of the business itself, but rather
depends on the differing cultures and regulatory systems under which members of the industry operate. The American Petroleum Institute: expert or
advocate? In the United States, the American
Petroleum Institute (API) has played a dominant role in
developing safety standards for the oil and gas industry.47 And it clearly possesses significant, longstanding technical
expertise. API produces standards, recommended practices, specifications, codes, technical publications, reports, and studies that cover the industry
and are utilized around the world.48 In conjunction with API’s Quality Programs, many of these standards form the basis of API certification
programs.49 And the U.S. Department of the Interior has historically adopted those recommended practices and standards, developed by technical
experts within API, as formal agency regulations.50 Based on this Commission’s multiple meetings and discussions with leading members of the oil and
gas industry, however, it is clear that API’s
ability to serve as a reliable standard-setter for drilling safety is
compromised by its role as the industry’s principal lobbyist and public policy advocate.
Because they would make oil and gas industry operations potentially more costly, API
regularly resists agency rulemakings that government regulators believe would make those
operations safer, and API favors rulemaking that promotes industry autonomy from government oversight.51 According to statements made
by industry officials to the Commission, API’s proffered safety and technical standards were a major casualty of this conflicted role. As described by one
representative, API-proposed
safety standards have increasingly failed to reflect “best industry
practices” and have instead expressed the “lowest common denominator”—in other words, a standard
that almost all operators could readily achieve. Because, moreover, the Interior Department has in turn relied on API in
developing its own regulatory safety standards, API’s shortfalls have undermined the entire
federal regulatory system.52 As described in Chapter 4, the inadequacies of the resulting federal standards are evident in the decisions
that led to the Macondo well blowout. Federal authorities lacked regulations 21 covering some of the most critical decisions made on the Deepwater
Horizon that affected the safety of the Macondo well. For instance, notwithstanding the enormously important role cementing plays in well
construction—especially in the high-pressure conditions often present in deepwater drilling—there
were no meaningful
regulations governing the requirements for cementing a well and testing the cement used.
Nor were there regulations governing negative-pressure testing of the well’s integrity—a
fundamental check against dangerous hydrocarbon incursions into an underbalanced well. On many of these critical matters, the federal
regulations either failed to account for the particular challenges of deepwater drilling or were
silent altogether.
U.S. tech fails – no funding and incompetency
OSC, ’11. National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.
The Commission examined the relevant facts and circumstances concerning the root causes of
the Deepwater Horizon explosion and developed options to guard against, and mitigate the
impact of, any oil spills associated with offshore drilling in the future. This included
recommending improvements to federal laws, regulations, and industry practices. “Deep Water:
The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling.” January 2011.
http://www.oilspillcommission.gov/sites/default/files/documents/DEEPWATER_ReporttothePre
sident_FINAL.pdf – clawan
Decreasing safety-related research and development. Safely managing industrial hazards for oil and gas drilling requires
experience and knowledge: knowing not only which actions to perform at various points on a checklist during a procedure, but also basic knowledge of
the interactions of oil, gas, cement, drilling mud, sand, rock, and salt water that enables correct decisions when unexpected events occur. Yet such
knowledge and experience within the industry may be decreasing. The chair of the University of Texas’s Department of Petroleum and Geosystems
Engineering, Tad Patzek, testified before Congress in 2010 that “the
oil and gas industry has eliminated most of its
research capabilities, which three decades ago allowed it to rapidly expand deepwater production.”59 “Academic research
has been important but small in scale and permanently starved of funding,” Patzek continued. “The
depletion of industry research capabilities and the starvation of academia that educates the new industry leaders have resulted in a
scarcity of experienced personnel that can grasp the complexity of offshore operations and
make quick and correct decisions.”60 Nor, Patzek stressed, could industry depend upon contractors to fill the safety gap: “The
individual contractors have different cultures and management structures, leading easily to
conflicts of interest, confusion, lack of coordination, and severely slowed decision-making.”61
Squo solves
Status quo solves oil cleanup cooperation – international cooperation means
lifting embargo isn’t key
CS, ’12. Cuba Standard, an independent digital news service that provides reliable, factual
information and insightful analysis on the Cuban economy, citing Department of Interior press
release, January 10, 2012. “U.S. to work indirectly with Cuba on oil safety.”
http://www.cubastandard.com/2012/01/10/u-s-to-work-indirectly-with-cuba-on-oil-safety/ -clawan
Avoiding direct bilateral contact, the United States will continue to work with Cuba through an
international forum, the Department of the Interior said in a press statement. “The United States is participating in
multilateral discussions with the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica and Mexico on a broad range of issues, including drilling
safety, ocean modeling, and oil spill preparedness and response,” said the press release, issued to report the
completion of a U.S. inspection of a Cuba-bound drilling rig. On Dec. 7-9, U.S. and Cuban officials participated in a meeting of the Regional Marine
Pollution Emergency Information and Training Center (REMPEITC) in Nassau, Bahamas. The
participants talked about regional
cooperation in preventive regulatory frameworks, safety standards for drilling platforms, and
best practices in oil spill containment. The announcement came as personnel from Interior’s Bureau of Safety and
Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the U.S. Coast Guard completed an inspection of the Scarabeo 9 oil rig on Jan. 9, as it was anchored off Trinidad
and Tobago. The review followed an invitation from the rig’s operator, Repsol, before it will move to Cuban waters to begin exploratory drilling. The
platform is now ready for its last leg of the trip to Cuba, where it is expected to begin drilling by the end of next week, according to sources close to the
project. The U.S. inspectors reviewed vessel construction, drilling equipment, and safety systems, including lifesaving and firefighting equipment,
emergency generators, dynamic positioning systems, machinery spaces, and the blowout preventer. “U.S.
personnel found the
vessel to generally comply with existing international and U.S. standards by which Repsol has
pledged to abide,” the BSEE statement said. The Florida Coast Guard sectors Jacksonville, Miami, Key West and St.
Petersburg are also updating area contingency plans, “to ensure readiness to respond to any
potential oil spills in international waters that could potentially affect U.S. waters and
coastline,” the BSEE statement said. In addition, the Coast Guard’s Seventh District, headquartered in Miami, is overseeing work on
an Offshore Drill Response Plan and Regional Contingency Plan that focuses on response strategies and tactics to combat a
spill at sea. More than 80 federal, State of Florida, Florida coastal county and maritime industry representatives held a table-top exercise on Nov.
18, according to BSEE. “The exercise allowed participants to discuss sensitive environmental areas,
planning strategies, likely issues and response coordination principles that responders would
face, as well as gather additional information to use in future planning,” the statement said.
Coast Guard already prepared spill response and spills won’t spread
Clark, ’12. April 23, 2012. “Offshore oil drilling near Cuba renews spill concerns in Florida
Keys.” Cammy Clark, Florida Keys reporter at The Miami Herald.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/23/146339/offshore-oil-drilling-nearcuba.html#.UfiDJ2TwJgI – clawan
The Coast Guard has incorporated all the lessons learned into a comprehensive offshore
response plan to deal with the new threat of a major spill in waters controlled by Cuba. “We’re
certainly more ready than a year ago,” Slaughter said. “We’re not as ready as we’ll be in six months and in a year. Planning for this will never end.”
Coast Guard Sector Key West also has spent the past two years updating its more than 1,000page area contingency plan, which now includes responding to the potential near shore and landfall issues of a
massive spill coming from Cuba. Before Deepwater Horizon and the exploration of oil offshore of Cuba, the worst-case scenario for
the Keys’ emergency drill was an oil tanker grounding on a reef. KEEPING CALM Capt. Pat DeQuattro, commander of Sector Key West, agreed with
Slaughter that communication is a huge part of the plan. “Equally as challenging as anything we’ll do on the water or on the shorelines is trying to keep
folks calm and let them know there
is a plan — a very detailed organization we will be following with a
very large group of responders,” DeQuattro said. “If we don’t communicate that well, we’ll run into a similar situation [to Deepwater
Horizon], where folks are confused and angry.” Despite the proximity of the Keys to the Cuban rig site, the
statistical probability of significant oil reaching Keys shorelines is low, even in the event of a
massive spill in Cuban waters, according to three scientists for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They say
geography is in all of Florida’s favor because of the powerful Gulf Stream, which flows between northern Cuba and the Keys, several miles from any
land, before heading north. “The currents are like a conveyor belt at the grocery store,” said Doug Helton, NOAA’s operations coordinator for the office
of response and restoration. “Oil moves at 2 to 3 percent of the wind speed. It moves at 100 percent of the current speed. It would take a strong wind
and a persistent wind to move oil out of the current.” NOAA scientists recently completed new computer tracking models to evaluate the threat. They
chose 20 potential drilling sites off Cuba and used 200 different spill scenarios based on six years of current information of water and weather
conditions, including hurricanes, said Brad Benggio, a NOAA scientific support coordinator. ONLY A DRILL To
create the scenario of oil
reaching the shorelines of the lower or middle Keys for the recent Coast Guard-led tabletop
drill, conditions included winds of 30 knots out of the southeast that continuously blew for
“days and days and days.” That would mean the oil would take a week or more to reach land.
No future drilling – costs make it unprofitable
Gibson, ’13. William E. Gibson, Washington Bureau, internally citing oil analysts. “Companies
abandon search for oil in Cuba's deep waters” April 14 2013. http://articles.sunsentinel.com/2013-04-14/news/fl-cuban-oil-drilling-retreat-20130414_1_jorge-pi-north-coastcuban-officials – clawan
WASHINGTON — After spending nearly $700 million during a decade, energy companies from around
the world have all but abandoned their search for oil in deep waters off the north coast of
Cuba near Florida, a blow to the Castro regime but a relief to environmentalists worried about a major oil spill. Decisions by Spain-based Repsol and
other companies to drill elsewhere greatly reduce the chances that a giant slick along the Cuban coast would ride ocean currents to South Florida,
threatening its beaches, inlets, mangroves, reefs and multibillion-dollar tourism industry. Ads By Google Oil Jobs - Hiring Complete Your Online
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Coast Guard remains prepared to contain, skim, burn or disperse a
potential slick. And Cuban officials still yearn for a lucrative strike that would prop up its economy. A Russian company, Zarubezhneft, is drilling
an exploratory well in shallower waters hugging the Cuban shoreline south of the Bahamas. But though some oil has been found
offshore, exploratory drilling in deep waters near currents that rush toward Florida has failed
to reveal big deposits that would be commercially viable to extract, discouraging companies
from pouring more money into the search. "Those companies are saying, 'We cannot spend any
more capital on this high-risk exploration. We'd rather go to Brazil; we'd rather go to Angola; we'd rather go to
other places in the world where the technological and geological challenges are less,'" said Jorge
Piñon, an oil-industry analyst at the University of Texas who consults with U.S. and Cuban officials as well as energy companies. "I don't
foresee any time in the future exploration in Cuba's deep-water north coast. It is, for all
practical purposes, over."
A2: other
A2 econ IL to spills
Oil spills won’t collapse the economy – any damages would be regional
Di Natale, ’10. Marisa Di Natale is a director at Moody's Analytics. She was an economist at
the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “The Economic Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill.” July 21, 2010.
Moody’s Analytics. http://www.economy.com/dismal/article_free.asp?cid=191641&src –
clawan
Even under a pessimistic scenario, economic damage from the Gulf of Mexico oil leak will be
confined to adjacent regions. As with most natural disasters, the oil leak's effect on the broader U.S.
economy will be negligible. The Gulf region’s oil and gas production industry is threatened by the moratorium on new
drilling. Thousands of cleanup jobs will help offset losses in tourism, fishing, and oil and gas
production. Though the full environmental and economic consequences of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak will not be known
for some time, a study by Moody’s Analytics estimates that nearly $1.2 billion in output and 17,000 jobs will be lost in the Gulf Coast
states by the end of this year. Even so, the
spill's national economic impact is likely to be negligible. The
accident's environmental costs will certainly be large, but the effect on national GDP, income
and employment will be minimal. The output loss across the five Gulf Coast states amounts to
less than 0.1% of national GDP. Fishing and tourism The greatest direct impact thus far is being felt by
the Gulf Coast’s sizable fishing and aquaculture industry, especially in Louisiana. The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration has closed about 80,000 square miles of the Gulf to fishing, mostly along the Louisiana coastline, though
the closure extends as far east as Panama City FL. At least one Louisiana beach has been closed to swimmers and fishermen, and
several Alabama and Florida Panhandle beaches are advising swimmers of the presence of tar balls and oil sheens, though the
beaches remain open. In response to the disaster, President Obama signed an executive order that places a six-month moratorium
on new deepwater oil drilling. This order affects about 33 rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, most of them off the coast of Houma LA. The
Gulf economy The economic impact of the oil spill will be concentrated in Gulf Coast communities.
Of the five states affected—Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida—the two hardest hit are Louisiana, with its heavy
dependence on fishing, aquaculture and oil extraction, and Florida, with its tourist industry. The metro areas and counties that line
the shores of the Gulf are already bearing the brunt. Yet these
areas account for only 3% of national GDP and
employment, so broad macroeconomic effects are unlikely, at least in the near term.
Cuban Oil Neg Work
Alt Cause to Biodiversity collapse- Hurricanes
Boom 12, Brian M. Boom is the director of the Caribbean Biodiversity Program and Bassett Maguire Curator of
Botany at the New York Botanical Garden. http://www.sciencediplomacy.org/files/biodiversity-withoutborders_science__diplomacy.pdf
Most major hurricanes occurring in the Caribbean during the past century have resulted in
documented extensive perturbations of shallow-water marine ecosystems, particularly to coral
reefs, seagrass beds, and coastal mangroves. 2 Aside from physical damage to such ecosystems
from more turbulent water, hurricanes can also negatively impact water quality. On land,
hurricane damage to ecosystems can be even more severe than in the ocean. For example,
damaged native vegetation will possibly be more prone to colonization by exotic, noxious
species such as Australian pine and Brazilian pepper. 3 While Cuban and U.S. scientists have shared motivation
to assess, monitor, and remediate the marine and terrestrial ecosystems that are damaged by hurricanes, they currently cannot do
so.
Alt Cause to Biodiversity collapse- tourism, over-fishing, agriculture
Boom 12, Brian M. Boom is the director of the Caribbean Biodiversity Program and Bassett Maguire Curator of
Botany at the New York Botanical Garden. http://www.sciencediplomacy.org/files/biodiversity-withoutborders_science__diplomacy.pdf
These ecosystems are threatened increasingly by habitat modification, the impact of tourism,
overexploitation of marine fishes and other commercial seafood resources, the ramifications of
climate change and rising sea levels, and pollution from land-based sources (e.g., unsustainable
agricultural and forestry practices) and ocean-based sources (e.g., cruise ship waste). Increasing
tourism especially threatens coral reefs. Despite some positive measures taken by the cruise industry in recent years,
more cruise ships in the region still mean greater potential stresses to the marine and coastal environments. In addition to these and
other shared ecosystems, many marine and terrestrial species are shared by Cuba and the United States. Examples include
migratory, invasive, endangered, and disease vector species.
Alt Cause to Biodiversity collapse- invasive species
Boom 12, Brian M. Boom is the director of the Caribbean Biodiversity Program and Bassett Maguire Curator of
Botany at the New York Botanical Garden. http://www.sciencediplomacy.org/files/biodiversity-withoutborders_science__diplomacy.pdf
Invasive Species: Cuba and the United States share many of these problem organisms, which are
among the most significant threats to native species and to ecological and economic wellbeing.
For example, Hydrilla verticillata , an aggressive waterweed native to the Old World, displaces
native aquatic plants and seriously disrupts recreational uses of lakes and rivers in Cuba and the
United States. 8 Another example is the red lionfish, which is native to the Indian and Western
Pacific Oceans but was released into the Atlantic Ocean from a home aquarium in Florida when
Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992. Today, this venomous fish has spread along the U.S. Atlantic
Coast as far north as New York and into the Caribbean, including Cuban waters, voraciously
eating native fish and creating major disruptions to coral reef ecosystems.
Status Quo Solves- companies allowed in
HSNW 11, Homeland Security News Wire, http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/emergency-cleanup-plans-potentialcuban-oil-spill
Members of the delegation are particularly concerned about how drilling companies working in
Cuban waters will obtain safety equipment like capping stacks or blowout preventers from the
United States to prevent spills or mitigate their effect. The U.S. Treasury Department has said
that it will allow American companies to operate in Cuba despite the economic embargo, but
it will only issue licenses to do so on a case-by-case basis. Industry experts say the licenses need
to be broad in their scope.
No mass drilling- massive delays and difficult rig construction
Bolstad 11, Erika Bolstad, covers the environment, food safety and agriculture for McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.nationofchange.org/cuba-shows-us-its-response-plans-case-oil-spill-1323792751
Although U.S. officials say they're not actively working to keep Cubans from drilling in their own
waters, the Cuba embargo that's been in place since the 1960s may have slowed things down.
Repsol had to find an oil rig made from fewer than 10 percent U.S. components — not an
easy task. Although few rigs are made in the United States, many components of them are,
including software and blowout preventers. The rig, which is owned by a subsidiary of the Italian oil company Eni,
will be used next by a rotation of state-owned oil companies: Petronas, a Malaysian company, and the Oil and Natural Gas Corp., an
Indian company that will be partnering with Russia's Gazprom. "That
rig was custom-built to be sure that it met
the embargo limitations," said Jorge Pinon, a former Amoco executive and a visiting research fellow with Florida
International University's Latin American and Caribbean Center's Cuban Research Institute. "That's why it's taken so long,
over the last three years, for international oil companies to be able to drill in Cuba."