Let me state firmly at the beginning of this essay, I don’t know if anyone can make any sense of AI.
If you journey across the Internet, there are a vast number of explanatory articles and a truly amazing variety of claims made about AI. You can find articles and quote for almost any point of view.
(The coming edifice of AI according to its propagandists.)
Let me tell you what we do know.
Number One, it destroys jobs. I have seen estimates of 85,000 jobs destroyed over the last year. A very fascinating question that comes from this: “Does AI adequately replace a human being in a job?” And let me tell you, I have real doubts. I see a lot of an attitude you might call, “Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead,” when it comes to AI. For many it seems that whether is works well is beside the point if we can just get rid of so many jobs.
Number Two, everything that AI has done so far can be described as mediocre or barely adequate. AI is building an Internet of useless garbage and while it does simple things well, claims of Ph.D. level intelligence have never been successfully demonstrated.
Number Three, “our” government is rushing this technology into nation wide use without any real understanding of what it is and what it does. It may well be that this government’s profound stupidity and lack of intelligent thought is leading to a technological revolution they simply don’t get.
Number Four, corporations see a golden opportunity to get rid of millions upon millions of workers and are so pleased with this concept, every sign of danger, economic damage and just whether or not the thing works are just being ignored. The lack of concern in the business community for the likely problems with this new untried technology is astonishing. It is just like the fabled lemmings running off a cliff.
Number Five, we are being force fed AI. It doesn’t matter whether you want it or not, you’re getting it. A massive conspiracy between government and business has resulted in a situation where you are completely unprotected from AI in anything you buy, rent or come near. I experienced this when Office 365 added AI to my subscription for thirty dollars added to my charges with no other option available, just take it or leave it.
Number Six, these three entities of government, business and the tech bros are expecting a massive and unprecedented increase in their power because of AI. (My emphasis, jp) It is truly frightening.
Number Seven, the profits from this AI revolution will be counted not in billions of dollars but in trillions upon trillions of dollars. The main reason this is all being so rushed is the naked greed for all this money. It is expected to be the most profitable technological change in history. This will have profound effects on all of our lives.
We’ve been hearing a lot about our foolish leadership and his desire to limit the Smithsonian’s coverage of the history of slavery because he believes they talk too much about it.
They don’t talk to much about it. What has happened is that historians are really coming to grips with the history of slavery and its long term effects. At various points in my life I have attended college winding up with thirteen and a half years of full time attendance as well as another twelve years or so teaching. In that time, I have seen the teaching of Reconstruction and slavery changing dramatically.
After the Civil War, the defeated confederates did everything possible to make states rights the center of the war’s cause rather than slavery. However, a very casual examination of the issue and a quick look at the newspapers of the revolutionary South demonstrate conclusively that slavery was the principle factor in the rebellion.
After the war, superhuman efforts were made to write a new and highly fictionalized history of the war, the “lost cause” narrative was created and emblazoned across novel after novel and many motion pictures as well. The shock of my white students upon seeing “Judge Priest” with Will Rogers and its utter and complete embrace of the lost cause I found fascinating. My minority students were well aware of that narrative.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy labored for years to sanitize history books, build statues and monuments and to attack any attempt at an accurate depiction of the Civil War. Their statues of traitors and subversives who killed their fellow Americans in the pursuit of the right to enslave others are all over the United States but principally in the South.
Historians are no longer buying into the Confederate sympathizers historical revision. The horrors of slavery began to be discussed honestly in the classroom. I had some of those classes. Slaves were very often maimed to mark them as property. They were murdered for defiance. They were bred like cattle for muscles and size so they could work the land. They were denied education as well as virtually any human right recognized by American law. The idea that they were vital and cherished members of the family is pitiful nonsense.
But above all, the greatest and most significant failure of American history was the fact that the confederate traitors were not punished after the war. Their evil acts and continued defiance had dire results which continue to this day.
And among those dire effects are the desire to censor American history of everything that might detract from a heroic narrative. Nations should not be a subject of worship. A nation is something that a people develop and if they do right be proud of and if they do wrong own up to it.
The glory of America is that we learned from our mistakes. Not only did we abolish slavery, we became leaders in the struggle to end colonialism and many other worldwide evils. Until this year we were the most important nation on earth in the struggle to end hunger and fight disease all thought this has been ended by the pitiful and immoral current regime. In many ways we have learned from our history and become a better and greater people.
That we do right is our glory and our legacy not some nonsensical made up history where everything was good and great in spite of facts and knowledge.
The United States is a great nation because it learns from its mistakes not by denying them.
In Brazil, organized crime and a wave of loggers and prospectors have murdered and raped their way across the Amazon Basin. In Asia, forest destruction and the immense fires that resulted have devestated many lives. These are terrible, terrible crimes but a twenty year study finds that there is collateral damage in the form of heat related illness.
(This is from a book of detective stories from more than 120 years ago. It is dramatic and indicates important issues are about to be resolved. I am using it for my writing on this occasion.)
In the United States, we have the largely unpunished and uninvestigated murders of indigenous women although there is a local, state and federal preference of a kind of quasi-legal seizure and destruction of natural resources. Of course, no intelligent human being can fail to mention the massive corruption of our current regime, its wholesale destructions of regulations and enforcement agencies, not to mention the “open for business” attitude that if a corporation has a problem, arrangements can be made.
I want you to understand that I am well aware that greed and evil are international problems and that while deforestation is a more dramatic crisis in east Asian and South America, the United States and its corruption are in no way exempt for causing and profiting from forest destruction.
What kind of collateral damage are we talking about? Over the last twenty years, over half a million have died from heat related illness and many, many millions more have suffered such illness.
I don’t see much need for a business ethics analysis. Destroying huge swaths of the planet to make money is wrong.
There should fines, imprisonment and shaming. The people who do these horrible things should have their pictures published and their names removed from colleges, dorms and cultural institutions. They should at all times be exposed for the destructive cockroaches that they are. But be well aware, a good and moral society would not just rely on shame but would punish them for their crimes.
James Alan Pilant
Jonathan Watts writing for The Guardian has an article: Deforestation has killed half a million people in past 20 years, study finds.
Deforestation has killed more than half a million people in the tropics over the past two decades as a result of heat-related illness, a study has found.
Land clearance is raising the temperature in the rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia because it reduces shade, diminishes rainfall and increases the risk of fire, the authors of the paper found.
Deforestation is responsible for more than a third of the warming experienced by people living in the affected regions, which is on top of the effect of global climate disruption.
About 345 million people across the tropics suffered from this localised, deforestation-caused warming between 2001 and 2020. For 2.6 million of them, the additional heating added 3C to their heat exposure.
Taiwan is claimed by China under a sort of “lost province” narrative, which I don’t buy into.
So, bearing that in mind, should Hammer Lee (a kind of Marvel Superhero name – got to give credit, that is one great name!) have acquired a Chinese built robot dog to patrol the streets of the city of Taipei. It might seem to the casual observer that the government has imported a artificial threat able to gather useful information for later use in an invasion.
Perhaps if this situation had happened in an episode of the Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, the mechanical infiltrator would fall in love with a beautiful police officer in Taipei and renounce its allegiance to the Chinese Superpower. In movies and television, robots are always suckers for romance and a pretty face.
In his defense, Hammer says the surveillance camera system is of Taiwanese design. I don’t find that very convincing. The Chinese are famous for putting their own spin (and devices) in what seems like relatively benign items. And this thing looks in no way benign. Big metal dogs look daunting to me and we are seeing a lot canine inspired war machines in a number of nations.
What I find really odd about this whole thing is that Taiwan is well known as a manufacturer and international innovator in building robots. I freely admit their designs (as far as I could see) are humanoid and they may not have any dogs. But I don’t see why you couldn’t use an upright human style robot to do the same job.
The really scary thing about this is the idea of robots patrolling our streets here in the United States. Our federal government is currently bizarrely incompetent and I don’t want them to have any new toys they can misuse.
James Alan Pilant
(It is highly likely this engraving of 19th Century London will be found inappropriate by many readers. In response, I would respectfully ask, “What chances do you think there are of me finding a non copyright protected image of a Chinese military robot dog or any robot dog for that matter?” Just enjoy the picture.)
Helen Davidson and Jason Tzu Kuan Lu reporting for The Guardian in an article: Taipei City council in the dog house over Chinese-made patrol robot.
Taipei City council has come under fire after admitting that a robot dog it bought to help patrol city streets using surveillance cameras was made by a Chinese companylinked to the Chinese military.
Hammer Lee, the deputy mayor of Taiwan’s capital, introduced a “new patrol partner” for the management and repair of pedestrian areas in a post on Facebook on Tuesday.
“This robot, equipped with an optical panoramic survey system, can create 360-degree images, accurately locate facilities, and even automatically report missing items,” Lee said, noting its ability to “accumulate comprehensive data”.
The Climate web site whose staff was fired and operations halted is getting a second shot at life. This time as a private venture, climate.us.
Anyone with any concern for our future on this planet should add this to their browser as a useful and important web site.
Rebecca Lindsey is quoted in the article linked to below as saying:
“What’s happening can feel so overwhelming that it’s easy to feel like you’re powerless to do anything about it,” said Lindsey’s team member. “But sometimes you have to just look out and see what’s within your reach. And this problem is within our reach, so we just see it as sort of doing our part.”
And she is right. Every day some new horror, some new obscenity, some new assault on justice, on knowledge, on actual Christianity is thrown out there like a stain on white silk by the current administration and it is easy to get exhausted by the flood.
Eric Holthaus writing for the Guardian wrote the following article: Scientists breathe new life into climate website after shutdown under Trump.
Earlier this summer, access to climate.gov – one of the most widely used portals of climate information on the internet – was thwarted by the Trump administration, and its production team was fired in the process.
…
Now, a team of climate communication experts – including many members of the former climate.gov team – is working to resurrect its content into a new organization with an expanded mission.
Their effort’s new website, climate.us, would not only offer public-facing interpretations of climate science, but could also begin to directly offer climate-related services, such as assisting local governments with mapping increased flooding risk due to climate change.
This is an important lesson, an act of defiance against the fools and charlatans running the current regime.
We must never give into hopelessness.
Our democracy is at stake.
We must fight. They are fighting for scientific knowledge and a respect for factual data. Look at their courage and hard work and realize that what we do matters.
In one of the greatest, if not the greatest, scientific disaster in this nation’s history, the head of the CDC was fired followed by the resignations of some of the finest scientific minds in the nation.
On one side of this firing and these resignations we have an unhinged conspiracy theorist. On the other we have seasoned scientists with decades of experience in dealing with vaccines and disease.
In any other administration, science would prevail.
But we have this administration.
(A picture from the book, An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800. It was published in the 19th Century. It seems to carry an appropriate ambience for the current situation. jp)
In many business ethics disasters people die, nations are severely harmed, land become barren and toxic. What do you say about this one? This is a situation where a nation’s defense against disease is being compromised. It is possible that millions will die, certainly thousands.
Why this massive shake up? Why are these people being gotten rid of?
What possible rationale could there be to remove these medical and scientific experts from the defense of our nation?
Apparently, the worst and the least of the internet conspiracy theories.
On that basis a great nation goes naked in an environment where new diseases are evolving moment to moment?
Well, yes.
Have we as a nation gone completely mad? Are our leaders a band of unhinged lunatics?
Certainly, there are times when that seems to be the case. The District of Columbia is infested with the National Guard of several states. The President is trying to fire people he is directly prohibited by law from firing and the Supreme Court using a thing called a “Shadow Docket” finds that the President can do pretty much what he wants in spite of the clear English language meaning of the law.
So, the government is in a real way crazy right now.
But people dying because of this craziness? Not just dying but dying when we have the vaccines to prevent it? Are you sure that these people should be allowed to go this far?
You know and I know that this is madness.
Once, we’ve come to agreement on the fact that these people are crazy, we arrive at a new problem.
What are we going to do about it?
Right now we can vaccinate a large proportion of the population against the latest version of COVID. Kennedy has limited those vaccinations to people over 65, a small proportion of the population that can be protected. COVID is infecting people right now in large numbers.
People are going to die who don’t need to die.
That offends me. Doesn’t that offend you?
What are we going to do?
How long can this government go on doing these kinds of things?
Below are a couple of news stories and some quote that relate to this story.
James Pilant
MIKE STOBBE writing for the Associated Press has an article that I have linked to below and quotes a few lines from.
When the White House fired Susan Monarez as director of the premier U.S. public health agency, it was clear to two of the scientific leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the political meddling would not end and it was time to quit.
“We knew … if she leaves, we don’t have scientific leadership anymore, ” one of the officials, Dr. Debra Houry, told The Associated Press on Thursday.
“We were going to see if she was able to weather the storm. And when she was not, we were done,” said Houry, one of at least four CDC leaders who resigned this week. She was the agency’s deputy director and chief medical officer.
And then I have this.
Sarah Fortinsky writing for The Hill in an article: Biden White House official on RFK: ‘This is wacky, flat-earth, voodoo stuff’
The health secretary (Kennedy) reflected on the children he’s encountered since arriving in Texas, saying at the event, “I know what a healthy child is supposed to look like.”
“I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation,” Kennedy said.
“You can tell from their faces, from their body movements, and from their lack of social connection,” he continued. “And I know that that’s not how our children are supposed to look.”
This is the man in charge of the nation’s health. He believes that he can tell if a child is “overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation” by looking at them. (My words, my emphasis.)
We don’t see a lot of courage these days. In the last few months in the United States, law firms, whole industries and universities have bent the knee to the new regime. The American elites that have dominated our society for decades when put to the test of loyalty to nation or self-interest proved themselves to be cowards and curs.
It has been very disappointing. I was under the illusion that I lived in a robust democracy when what I actually live in is a society where many of the most influential and well placed people simply want their money and power without any responsibility to the people and heritage of the United States. They are self-interested, greedy cowards.
(In an Alice in Wonderland world, all ideas are equal. But we live in the real world where ideas have consequences.)
And so we have the current situation where democracy itself may disappear in this nation.
But not everyone has surrendered. Not yet.
RFK, Jr. demanded that “Annals of Internal Medicine” retract a study whose results call into question his ridiculous fringe and conspiracy laden beliefs.
I will not dignify or give any credence to the anti-science ravings of this man. To pretend, that he “might have something,” is another way to assist people in their leap down the rabbit hole of internet nonsense.
I stand on the side of reason, logic and science.
I firmly believe that the study questioned by Kennedy is well founded and provides substantial evidence that anyone who is rational should take into consideration when making decisions about vaccine safety.
But the wonderful part of this sad nonsense is what the Danish researchers did when Kennedy issued his demand.
When confronted by Kennedy’s demands, they said no.
When confronted by the demands of the American federal government that they give way to conspiracy minded nonsense, they said no.
When asked to give up their integrity and surrender to opinions of the foolish and ill informed, they said no.
They stand in defiance to our current nonsensical government. They have backbone and courage.
I wish we had more of these kinds of people here in the United States.
RFK, Jr., Demanded Study on Vaccines and Aluminum Be Retracted—The Journal Said No
The study in question, published in Annals of Internal Medicine in July, is one of the largest of its kind, looking at 1.2 million children born over more than two decades in Denmark. The authors reported that no significant risk of developing autoimmune, allergic or neurodevelopmental disorders was associated with exposure to aluminium compounds in vaccines.
…
Annals of Internal Medicine says it stands by the study and has no plans to retract it. Christine Laine, editor in chief for the journal, wrote in a comment on the study’s web page on 11 August that “retraction is warranted only when serious errors invalidate findings or there is documented scientific misconduct, neither of which occurred here”.
A published response was made and I recommend you read all of it.
Anders Hviid, the senior author and an epidemiologist at the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, Denmark’s public-health agency responds in the following post:
Data vs. Doubt: Danish Scientist Responds to U.S. HHS Secretary Critique of Aluminum Vaccine Study
In conclusion, I maintain that our study does not provide support for the hypothesis that aluminum used as adjuvants in vaccines are associated with increased risks of early childhood health conditions. None of the critiques put forward by the Secretary is substantive. Currently, the best way to evaluate this hypothesis is to use observational data and methods. This is what we have done using transparent and rigorous statistical analysis. I categorically deny that any deceit is involved as implied by the Secretary.
Our current regime is an enemy of science, logic and reason. They don’t like to be disagreed with and the idea of independent judgement and actual research fills these liars and mountebanks with fear and trembling.
Their deadliest enemy is the truth.
If we come out of this crisis and return to democratic principles, truth must be the light that guides us.
Elon Musk just canceled a spacecraft launch, settled a lawsuit over paying ex-twitter employees for what must have been at minimum hundreds of millions of dollars and federal judges in California and Maryland certified separate class action lawsuits against the carmaker and its CEO personally.
(An illustration from Dante descent into the nine planes of hell. It seems appropriate. JP)
But there is more, much more.
One of the reasons people buy particular models of car is the resale value. The idea that you might get back a high proportion of your purchase prize is a compelling one.
The resale price of a Tesla is collapsing, at least, according to Mike Taylor, writing for the Cool Down. He suggests the collapse might be do to the many controversies, some of them political, surrounding the controversial figure.
Mike Taylor writing for The Cool Down in article entitled: New report reveals stunning trend in used Tesla vehicle prices: ‘Quite exceptional’ reports that the value of used Teslas is collapsing.
The cost of a used Cybertruck has dropped the most over the last year: 30.4% to $83,963. The Model S is down 22.6% to $26,534, the Model X is down 16.8% to $37,747, and the Model Y is down 12% to $29,216. The most affordable offering is the Model 3, which is down 8% to $23,318.
“The fact that its average used car sale price would dip below the industry average, which includes inexpensive mass-market vehicles, is quite exceptional,” Electrek reported, noting used Tesla prices are down 4.6% year over year, while the market is up 1.2%.
Why is this important?
“It’s proof that the Tesla brand has taken a massive reputational hit and there’s no clear recovery in sight,” Electrek stated. (My emphasis. jp)
The other day I was reading an article in which Elon Musk claimed that if you want to be amazingly rich, all you have to do is work 120 hour weeks. I immediately discarded the nonsense classifying it as one of those ridiculous screeds where wealthy people attempt to appear virtuous against all actual evidence. (I will not link to it – if that kind of braggadocio is your cup of tea, you can look it up.)
However, we do have an insight into how he makes money from an investigation by CNN and discussed in an article from The Cool Down.
Cody Januszko writing for The Cool Down has an article entitled: Small businesses forced into bankruptcy after multimillion-dollar deal with Tesla: ‘It’s been horrible’
CNN’s recent investigation sheds new light on Tesla’s business practices. Many of the small businesses that Tesla contracted were not paid for their labor or products, forcing at least two of them into bankruptcy.
“It’s been horrible. If I didn’t have my family, I don’t think I would have made it,” Jennifer Meissner, one of the business owners who went bankrupt, said.
Unpaid contractors have filed liens against Musk’s companies. Liens are legal claims against property that allow a creditor to take the property if the debt isn’t paid.
CNN’s financial analysis shows that more than $110 million in liens have been filed against Tesla over the past five years, with a potential $24 million still owed.
It would appear to me that if you don’t pay your bills, you can accumulate a lot of money. These small businesses, at least the ones still surviving, are making legal claims against Tesla, so something about payments that is very bad is happening. Let us see what develops.
In international news surrounding the fellow, Elon Musk, we have this burst of disaster journalism. Musk’s AI, Grok, has been superseded in China by the local’s AI system. What do you think? Several hundred million in losses? That is just a guess. I would think providing an AI system for cars produced in China would be in the tens of billions of dollars but I might be mistaken.
Joe Wilkins writing for Futurism has an article entitled: Elon Musk Just Suffered a Humiliating Defeat in China
And now, more than a month after Musk promised to roll Grok out to Teslas “next week,” it turns out a Chinese AI model will be taking the chatbot’s place.
According to Bloomberg, Tesla’s Chinese division is planning to introduce in-car voice assistance via DeepSeek and Bytedance’s AI models at some point in the near future.
It would seem that the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are falling with intensity upon Musk and his empire. Of course, there are many critics who might find the barrage just and fair. Well, there are a lot of points of view out there.
What are the business ethics issues here? Corporate citizenship would be a good call. Tesla does not seem interested in paying taxes or benefiting the nation to whom it owes so much.
Of course, we could do Stakeholder analysis. The government, it could be argued always seems to come up on the short end of the stick on these deals with Elon Musk, — cars, spacecraft and DOGE all seem a bit problematic. What about the American People? Elon Musk seems to me more of a well paid parasite than any kind of benefit. But we could do the full shareholder analysis. How would we classify Elon Musk with his enormous wealth and powerful connections purchased for many millions of dollars? Would we call him a Super Stakeholder? His needs seem at times to outweigh citizens, nations and economic systems. All these appear as little more than pawns to our class of oligarchs.
Sometimes, it seems like we are reading a new and cruel version of the Iliad and the Odyssey where the gods of Greek mythology walk the earth and interfere with the destinies of men. These billionaires seem every bit as capricious as Hera and Zeus, and their depredations are equally cruel.
We cannot escape reading about these people, however godlike they think they are. The news will continue to roll in.
Let us see what happens to him and his empire next week. I’m sure it will be interesting.
After I went through three News Networks I came up with twenty eight business ethics topics that merited my comment and analysis.
There are all current, happening now. There are not subjects on long term business ethics tragedies like global warming or the collapse of the moral order in the current administration or the cowardice of our major institutions and our ruling class.
For the love of a Merciful God, what has happened to this nation and the larger world?
When I started writing this blog almost twenty years ago, I could depend on two or three topics a day. This wasn’t a gradual collapse of national morality. It is tied directly to the 2016 election of Donald Trump and his unfortunate re-appearance in 2024. There was a massive acceleration in business ethics problems and it continues to accelerate.
Twenty-eight sounds like a lot of topic but you must understand I haven’t completed my usual gazette of news sources. I still have the financial news and the foreign press as well as some specialty publications on tech and science.
I can easily be looking at sixty to seventy-five topics after my usual examination of the news.
One of the parables in the New Testament is about the absence of the necessary workers to harvest the crops, a thinly veiled reference to spreading the word of God. It concludes with the exhortation to pray that the Lord sends more help.
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Well, we need a hundred business ethics writers to cover this amount of material.
If the United States and its democracy end as so much evidence indicate is happening, it will not matter if there are any writers or any concern over business ethics.
We will just have a gangster government. Money and influence will eclipse any moral values. Those at the Heritage Foundation and the writers of Project 2025 will have attained their goals in creating a nation when a tiny minority of depraved self-interested ideologues make decisions for the rest of us.
If democracy survives, those of us who believe in the promise of the United States, the importance of actual Christ based Christianity and morality, will be more important than ever.
There will be much to repair, much to recover and many, many to be brought to the bar of justice and punished for their crimes.
Environmental destruction is a world wide problem. Some nations are taking the problem seriously. I don’t live in one of those. I live in the United States where environmental rules and regulations are on the chopping block, victims of dark money, ruthless corporate officials and the right wing media machine.
But other nations have not given up the struggle and one of them is Sri Lanka.
I want you to know that fines as in this case are a good way of punishing miscreants who do severe harm. Money is useful in repairing environment damage and making victims whole.
But a message that resonates requires imprisonment and other directly personal penalties. It is one thing to require a corporation to pay a billion dollars but another to make the CEO pay money out of his own pocket, suffer travel restrictions and and an inability to do financial transactions or serve on corporate boards. Those kinds of penalties will get corporate officials’ attention. Corporations have a lot of money. What they don’t have are officials willing to suffer.
We can also destroy corporations who sin against the nation’s collective interest. The corporate death penalty where the corporation’s legal existence is ended and its assets sold as a penalty would also serve to get the attention of the wrong doers.
Corporations are creations of the state. Their charters can be revoked and they can be ended. It is a choice we should have. Corporate incompetence and villainy have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, billions upon billions of dollars in damages and massive destruction eco-systems. If we “killl” a few, they might do less harm. We might at least get the idea across that we take their destruction of the planet seriously.
We have a responsibility as patriots to protect our nation. That includes the land, the water and the air. It is a profoundly moral duty. For those of us who believe in Christianity, we also have a responsibility to act as stewards of God’s creation. That also calls us to action.
Let us go forth armed with righteousness and a willingness to confront and defeat evil.
James Pilant
(Probably the proper attitude for hauling a dangerous cargo and chemicals and microplastics.)
In an article written for The Cool Down, Alexis McDonell, writes in an article entitled:
Shipping giant hit with $1 billion fine after causing one of worst marine disasters in history: ‘Unprecedented devastation’
The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka found a shipping company liable for a billion.
In June 2021, the MV X-Press Pearl caught fire and sank off the coast of Colombo while carrying a cargo of chemicals.
The Supreme Court described the result as “unprecedented devastation to the marine environment of Sri Lanka,” citing the deaths of 417 turtles, 48 dolphins, eight whales, and countless fish that washed ashore. Debris from the ship, including several tons of plastic pellets used to manufacture bags, spread across beaches and into the ocean.
“This marine environmental disaster … resulted in the widespread release of toxic and hazardous substances into the marine environment, poisoning ocean waters, killing marine species, and destructing phytoplankton,” the judgment stated.
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