Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Just_wanna_talk t1_ittouik wrote

Reply to comment by wdwerker in Methane ‘Super-Emitters’ Mapped by NASA’s New Earth Space Mission by CurtisLeow

I've always felt we need some sort of company insurance system to pay for oil gas and mining operations.

Have a company pay a yearly fee in order to extract minerals or oil and gas which goes into a fund and when they close operations and can prove everything has been done correctly they get half of whatever they paid into the fund back. The other half remains in the fund.

If they do not close down operations correctly or they go bankrupt and cannot, the funds can be used to do it for them. It could also be used to clean up environmental disasters like oil spills in the ocean or tailings pond breaches from mines, etc.

53

but-imnotadoctor t1_ittz6x9 wrote

But that make profit small. Small profit bad. Big profit good.

Honestly, this is a brilliant idea. That's how I know it will never happen.

31

Phoenix4264 t1_itusbur wrote

That is essentially what CERCLA (The Comprehensive Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980), better known as Superfund, is supposed to be. It was originally funded by a tax on the chemical and petroleum industries. The tax was never high enough, and in 1995 it expired and was funded from the general funds after that. The tax was reinstated in 2021.

8

TheReal-JoJo103 t1_ituuul7 wrote

This is how they fund decommissioning wind/solar so they can't just go bankrupt. Either through an account held by a third party or through performance bonds. Granted decommissioning a wind/solar farm is far easier since they aren't releasing hard to trace gasses or hiding issues underground that can well up decades later.

2