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How time flies. For example, think back to 1989.
Hillary Clinton was the obscure first lady of Arkansas. Roger Clemens was
pitching for the Boston Red Sox and had never even heard of steroids. And
the Exxon Valdez ran
aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, causing the worst oil spill
in U.S. history. Nineteen years later, Exxon has merged into
ExxonMobil, and it has prospered enormously, banking $40 billion in profits
last year alone — the richest year for any corporation in history.
Back at Prince William Sound, however, the picture is not so rosy, for
Exxon’s malfeasance devastated the ecology, the economy, and
thousands of lives. In an area that depends on fishing, the waters are
still polluted with some 85 tons of Exxon crude. Herring — which was
the main catch for local fishing families, accounting for half of the
yearly income for many of them — has essentially been wiped out by
the spill. The economic stress has led to bankruptcies, divorces, and
suicides. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil has deployed a battalion of
$600-an-hour lawyers to stiff the locals, keeping the people’s
lawsuit stalled in America’s pro-corporate court system. Nearly two
decades ago a jury awarded $5 billion in punitive damages to some 33,000
victims of Exxon’s spill, yet the oil giant has not paid a penny of
it. In various appeals courts the corporation got the sum cut in half
— and its lawyers are now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reduce the
penalty to absolute zero. ExxonMobil is pulling every legal trick to avoid a
punishment that would amount to only three weeks’ worth of its 2007
profits — and Exxon’s top executives, living in luxury 3,000
miles away, wonder why people despise Big Oil.
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator,
columnist, and author.
This article appears in Mar 13-19, 2008.
