Oil. Yeah. And our community has been talking about this all day. We asked our community about the exxon valdez. And let me share a couple of things. Go for it. I asked neil did they ever answer back . And he goes. And then we have this video comment from andrea. The oil spill little has changed. Technology to cleanup or prevent them has not evolved. However, Renewable Technologies are now available industrially and for consumers. 25 years after the well also talk about the gulf and getting actual comments from our Community Later in the show, so just keep tweeting us. Houston ship channels closed after an oil barge slided with another ship saturday. It hit too close to home for people in the gulf of mexico. The timing of the accident is remarking as it happened just days before the 25th anniversary of the exxon valdez. 25 years ago it ran aground in the Prince William sound. Ultimately soaking 1300 miles of coastline. At the time exxon promised to fix the disaster. You you have had some good luck, and you dont realize it. You have exxon, and we do business straight. We will consider whatever it takes to keep you whole. So what are the lasting impacts on the people of alaska . And how do americans everywhere feel the effects of the disaster . Joining us is tyson slocum, steve rodtschild, and patty, the executive director of the regional commission. We invited exxon to appear with us on the show. They did not respond. We use a variety of new technology to give those voices who dont have a chance to appear on main stream media. Sometimes there are technical hiccups so bear with us. Patty, enough oil spilled to fill 17 olympicsized swimming pools. Has the area and community fully recovered . No, it hasnt. The native people suffered the most dramatic impact from the oil spill as far as im concerned. Their subsistence, use of resources declined by 77 after the spill, and they have since had to change their diet to eat other foods that are available, rather than the ones that, you know, are devastated or populations have declined, and there pretty much is a generation of people who were not able to learn their traditional ways of hunting seal and sea lions and fish and sea ducks, because they couldnt go out to teach their nieces and nephews how to process their catch. Exxon promised an easy process for compensation. A local fisherman recorded the exchange. Is it going to take 20 years to settle these claims . I guarantee you we have never had a claim go 20 years. The claims will be settled promptly. People with reasonable claims dont have a thing to worry about. Tyson, exxon mobil spent four summers cleaning up the spill and spent 2. 1 billion. Could they have done more . I think they could have done a lot more. And they fought for 19 years of court cases about its punitive damage responsibilities that the Supreme Court did not rule on until 2008. When you look at the fact that there is still oil in the ecosystem that is suffering impacts, you have to conclude that exxon did not do enough for its responsibility. That was a 5 billion punitive award, and they litigated over 14 years. Do you know how much money went to the people . I think the Supreme Court knocked it down to 2. 5 billion. Im not sure how much money filters to the community. Go ahead, patty. 500 million is what i think actually so from 5 billion to 50 million. Yes. And julio we have Shannon Moore who wrote a blog and said here are my lessons. And then we also have richard, who talks about. Can you talk about how impact that the exxon valdez spill as created . A few things have happened, one is that the Fishing Community were very deeply hurt, and the herring population went from about 120 metric tons to 30 metric tons, albeit there has been no commercial herring fisheries since about 92. Theres only limited [ inaudible ] theres no crab fishery in the sound. All of these things have been have over time hurt people because, you know, they bought in the permit and cant use them. Patty you said that a lot of the scientists have played with what you call a phd play ground. Explain that critique to us. Well, because people come and they do their Research Projects and they get their masters degrees or phds or whatever it is, and then they go home, and the people that live there are still there, and the oil is still there in some areas, and populations are still not back to prespill levels, and so thats pretty much what people were saying that its just a play ground for people to do their research, and they are not really doing anything for the local people. Tyson, look, in 1989, 89 of the spills were caused by oil tankers and barges. In 2012 that number went from 21 to 14 . Are you impressed by those numbers . Im not. Were seeing a shift in risk. Were seeing more and more activity goes away from pipelines and towards barges and rail operations. And were seeing an enormous risk to the environment and safety. Is the primary motive still profit over protection . Absolutely. And the numbers clearly show that. And we have to have more regulatory approaches that work to prevent this kind of activity, so a company cannot be in a position of making choice of prioritizing towards making a bigger profit or prioritizing towards environmental safety. And we have to make sure our civil litigation system is more robust to ensure access to the courts to get punitive and actual damages. Julio what is our community saying . So basically thats what we have been getting. All right. Keep tweeting in to julio. What is your favorite seafood . Well talk to one fisherman who says an entire species of fish may no longer make it to your dinner table. Welcome back. Were talking about the 25th anniversary of the exxon valdez, and its lasting impacts. It has also been nearly four years since the bp oil spill. What did the spill in alaska teach responders in the gulf of mexico, and what are the lingering effects on the seafood we eat. Joining us is a coalition worker, and commercial fisherman, we also invited bp to appear. They did not respond. All right. Tyson, we just talked about how exxon valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil. Now theres another oil spill in texas that has closed the shipping channel connecting Galveston Bay to the gulf of mexico. What have we learned . Unfortunately not enough. What is here is that bp was not an outlier here. When the executives testified, they all admitted none of them had a Disaster Response plan to deal with the level of blowout that we had in 2010, because none of these Oil Companies make money off of preparing for disaster, so none were required to have these plans in place. So still today four years after deep water horizon, none of these companies have the technology or capability to prevent one of the deep sea blowouts. Thats pretty frightening. The damage was estimated to be 36. 9 billion, and there was a huge effect on the fishing industry as well. Buddy talk to us about the effects that the spill had on your community and destroy. Well, i represent fishermen from all over the gulf coast, and of course, louisiana, mississippi, and alabama, and the panhandle of florida were effects much more greatly than texas was, but it was just a major disaster, fishing grounds were cut off, and and people were left without incomes, and we we have now five years later, are figuring that with fish it takes that long to realize whether you have a problem or not, and were just now starting to see those class of fish come into the fishery, and were starting to see problems. Buddy you said there was something called the fishsniffing test to see if they were healthy . Yeah, that was very devastating for our business. When you expect the federal government to be protecting you, and trust about what is going on, and they take a fish and wave their hand over it and smell the air that comes off of it to detect whether it has problems. We in the industry started a seafood safety testing where we tested fish for the actual components, and thank god we we didnt find any abnormal amounts in the fish we were harvesting, snapper, and grouper in the gulf of mexico. The tweets are coming in, and people are debating this issue. We have a debate. And then we also got another live tweet that just came in. And finally, when we get to louisiana, this woman is from the gulf. So that question for you, since you are from from the region, not only what happened four years ago, but what is happening now, how are you and others getting past this disaster . What specific things are being done . Whether its alliances and do you think it will ever get better . Im [ inaudible ] hope that eventually things will get better. I have a coalition across the gulf coast, and i dont think its getting over this issue. I think we have a long ways to go. Seeing what is happening in alaska to this day illustrates how long this process is going to take to see the funds come from bp that will really restore the harms that have been done. We are doing a variety of things. This deep water horizon is 17 exxon valdezes, we know this is something well be dealing with for decades and decades, so we want to use art and culture, to partner with artists, and partner with social justice organizations, we think we need a brood line of folks across the region to continue to advocate for oversight and accountability of the oil and gas industry. Even looking beyond bp, because has this past weekend illustrates, well continue to see these devastating consequences until people come to together to do something a about it. Buddy you are from the gal vestston area. Do you think bp and the oil comes have lived up to their responsibility . Well, in my estimation, they have taken a swing at it. I think things are better since exxon valdez. They have the Oil Pollution act that makes them face up to their responsibilities. But they have tried to circumvent the process and delay it, and i feel like the corporations dont want to spend the money to fix what they have done, and the oil spill that happened in galveston is just another example of something that shouldnt have happened. Its a waterway where 2 shipping lanes cross, and there should be precautionary methods taken there. You know, tieson buddy mentioned the act. Is that enough, do you think in the last four years to cause a clamp down on this happening again . Absolutely not. One thing the Oil Pollution act did was clarified who was responsible, it opened up the number of potential parties that could claim for damages, but it still puts the companies in the drivers seat. It still shields their initial liability to 75 million. So the companies in the drivers seat are no longer the government. Thats right. Bp was ordering local First Responders and police around. They were taking orders. They were bp was blocking access to independent journalists, so you had a very uncomfortable situation where a forprofit company had lots of financial interests to keep journalists and First Responders away. My question is who checks bp . In this case, the administration wasnt doing enough. Thankfully we had some in congress that were doing a good job watchdogging the company. For example the senator who got the video of the oil seeping out of the bottom of the gulf. We have several live tweets coming in. So i have a question for you, buddy, is this criminal . I mean is it that basic . Are you living in the region, is that what most people are thinking about that . Well, i think when you take ships out in in the fog in horrible fog, and you have a malfunction and and have an accident like that, yeah, somebody is criminally responsible for that accident. They have destroyed peoples lives and livelihoods, and its just another big mess that people that live on the gulf coast will have to suffer through. And we shouldnt forget go ahead. People did lose their lives in deep water horizon. So we should keep that in mind too, which is definitely criminal. If you had an representative from bp sitting here today . What would you ask them . What would make your communities feel at home. I think first and foremost it is providing the funds necessary, and doing the proper accountability work to monitor themselves as well as be willing to have citizen oversight of the industry and advocating for that, because they clearly werent able to manage it on their own. Buddy what would make you and your communities feel whole . I think long term stock assessment type of work to really get a look at what this is going to do long term. We know there is still oil in the bottom of the gulf of mexico, and we no idea how long that will be there or what the effects will be in the future, so enhancing the research in stock assessments which we are very poor at right now, would be a great savior for our fishery. Coming up, you are a big part of what we do and how the show works. So were giving you the community a chance to ask the questions up next. Al Jazeera America presents a global finacial powerhouse the Roman Catholic church, they have an enormous amount of power accusations of corruption. There is a portion of the budget that takes care of all the clerical abuse issues. Now we follow the money and take you inside the vaticans financial empire. When it comes to money, this is one of the sloppiest organizations on earth. Al Jazeera America presents. Holy money only on al Jazeera America tv is no longer one way with the stream Second Screen app. Share your thoughts, disagree with one of our guests . Great, tell us. Receive graphs, quizzes, and guest information. Vote, tweet, and record video comments and well feature them on air. Drive our communitys discussion on live tv. This literally puts you in the control room. Download it now, and use it with every live stream show. Welcome back. Were talking about the impacts of oil spills on communities, and again, we reached out to bp and exxon to appear on the show, and they both declined. Julio is speaking with our community. They want to know more about what is happening, how to help. Take it away. Exactly. Talking about the Second Screen app that you just saw. We have a leader board of our top followers lead tweeters. Lead tweeters, and we talked to our top ten seeds. And we took a video comment from amy. California experienced what was then the nations worst oil spill. It ranks third between exxon valdez and deep water horizon. California enacted Ground Breaking environment legislation at that time, but it seems like we are still oil dependent, and i was wondering what we need to do to make our nation less dependant on oil. Tyson, how are we going to make our country less dependent on oil . Public citizen helped write a bill that was sponsored by california senator, barbara boxer, and vermont senator, bernie sanders, called the climate per tech shun act of 2013. It would establish a price on carbon so energy and things would be more expensive. To reflect that, 60 of the revenues raised would be refunded directly back to families to help offset the higher prices. But importantly what you would have is 40 of the revenues raised could be invested into billions of dollars of Sustainable Energy infrastructure. Developing mass transit. Lowering mass transit rates. Financing distributed small kale Renewable Generation like roof top solar, and spending billions of dollars of years in to retrofitting buildings to be more energy efficient. The only way we can address Climate Change and get off of oil is to give families access to alternatives. We cannot produce our way to lower prices. During this oil boom, gasoline prices have gone up. We cannot produce our way to lower prices. We have to look for us is containable, renewable alternatives. Great. We also have a question, vern also chimes in, and and thats not working, so im going to go back to john who has a company, and he says. So i actually have a question for patty to kind of bring you back into this conversation, what what how is exxon you know, the question of what is exxon doing now in alaska and has the situation improved at least in terms of the transportation of oil . Well, the there was legislation that required doublehulled ships, tankers, and that went into effect, i think, a couple of years ago. But exxon really does havent very much of a presence in alaska. I mean its not as well advertised as bp or conocophillips, they are all very involved in Community Activities and and they are some are hired to be more responsible in alaska because of the oil spill. Thats all of the time we have. Thank you all for being with us, until next time, well see you online. Hello and welcome to al Jazeera America. Im tony harris in new york. John siegenthaler has the night off. [ shouting [ anguished families are told there is news on the missing airline. Satellite evidence indicating the plane crashed with no survivors. And the rising death toll from the huge mud slide in washington state. And World Leaders take