CPR Member Scholar Dan Farber was on the PBS NewsHour on June 14 discussing the Obama Administration's plan to force BP to establish an escrow fund to compensate victims of its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. You can see the entire interview with Ray Suarez, on the NewsHour site. Here's a snip of the transcript:
RAY SUAREZ: Daniel Farber, you're familiar with what's in that federal oil protection act. Is there a mechanis
m in there for the government to say, you must create an escrow fund?
DANIEL FARBER: They're -- certainly, it's true that, at the end of the day, victims can go to court and sue. And BP also has to have a mechanism for processing claims before that. But I don't see anything at least that to my mind requires them to set up this escrow or trust fund. I think it might be a good idea, but I'm not at all sure that it's in the law.
RAY SUAREZ: Well, Daniel Farber, the advantages of having money set aside well before the years of litigation begin, is there something in it for BP, as well as for the claimants, if that can be agreed to?
DANIEL FARBER: No, I -- yes, I think -- I think there is. I think BP is facing a situation where there is enormous distrust about its capability for dealing with this, about its good faith, on the part of a lot of people inside the U.S. government and among the public. I think setting up a fund like this would be very helpful for them, in terms of showing good faith, of assuring people that they are going to take responsibility for what happened. So, I see a lot of reasons for them to do it. Whether they have to do it, though, is something that's less clear.
Showing 2,834 results
Matthew Freeman | June 16, 2010
CPR Member Scholar Dan Farber was on the PBS NewsHour on June 14 discussing the Obama Administration’s plan to force BP to establish an escrow fund to compensate victims of its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. You can see the entire interview with Ray Suarez, on the NewsHour site. Here’s a snip of the […]
Matthew Freeman | June 15, 2010
It’s fascinating to listen to the media, with lots of encouragement from the right wing, inch its way toward blaming the BP Oil Spill on President Obama. Apparently the President’s job description includes a previously unknown provision about deep-sea plumbing expertise. Let’s follow the media’s path for a moment here. First we heard media whining that the […]
Holly Doremus | June 14, 2010
(Cross-posted from Legal Planet.) In January 2009, the Sixth Circuit in National Cotton Council v. EPA struck down a Bush-era rule declaring that pesticide application to or over waters was exempt from the Clean Water Act’s NPDES permit program, under which a permit is required for any discharge of pollutants to waters of the U.S. […]
Daniel Farber | June 11, 2010
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. On Thursday, the Senate voted down a resolution from Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) to halt EPA regulation of greenhouse gases. The vote was 53 to 47. What are we to make of the vote? The resolution was offered under the Congressional Review Act, which provides a fast-track mechanism for Congress […]
Daniel Farber | June 11, 2010
Rob Verchick’s new book, “Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World,” might help avoid future disasters like the Deepsea Horizon blowout. Verchick views wetlands, lakes, forests, and rivers as a kind of infrastructure, providing ecosystem services that are just as important as the services provided by other infrastructure, such as roads and dams. For instance, […]
Shana Campbell Jones | June 10, 2010
If I remember my Sunday School lessons correctly, “clean living” should result in a lot of good things in addition to a heavenly reward: a strong character, an orderly home, and a healthy body and environment. Ironically for the Amish, a clean living group if there ever was one, clean living also produces dirty waters. As […]
Shana Campbell Jones | June 9, 2010
We’ve all seen the dramatic headlines recently concerning large-scale environmental disruptions, including a catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf and mining disasters killing workers from West Virginia to China. Meanwhile, in Congress, climate change bills are proposed, altered, weakened, and eventually shelved, and the United States still fails to take action on climate change. CPR’s Member Scholars […]
Yee Huang | June 8, 2010
Hundreds of offshore extraction platforms dot the world’s oceans, funneling millions of gallons each day of oil, natural gas, and other extracted resources to the surface. While these operations are regulated by the country where they’re located, they have the potential to cause international environmental disasters when located near boundary waters or near large currents. The New […]
Rebecca Bratspies | June 7, 2010
Cross-posted from IntLawGrrls Ever since the Deepwater Horizon began gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has been dazzling the American people with a series of colorfully named “solutions:” the dome; top hat, junk shot, top kill. However, as the days turned into week, and the weeks turned into months, one thing has become […]