Thinking about the oil spill in the Gulf, BP, and its CEO Tony Hayward, I can't help but remember a law school paper I wrote in the Spring of 2006. The class was Admiralty and Maritime Law, and the title of the paper was, "Water as Habitat". Here are a couple of the quotes I used in it:
“Our so-called industrial accidents (Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez) should be looked upon as revenges of Nature. We forget that Nature is necessarily party to all our enterprises and that she imposes conditions of her own. Now she is clearly saying to us: ‘If you put the fates of whole communities or cities or regions or ecosystems at risk in single ships or factories or power plants, then I will furnish the drunk or the fool or the imbecile who will make the necessary small mistake.’”
-- Wendell Berry
“Perhaps, then, we are fortunate in that the human capacity to destroy life, to ravage the earth, and to otherwise wreak havoc on the world around us coexists with yet another capacity – namely, the capacity to question our right to do so.”
-- Marti Kheel
