I have to agree with you in your last post Q.

Add to that, the lack of funding for non-industry science and technology to deal with oil spills and their environmental impacts. Far too much trust is placed in industry to find solutions to problems they could and do cause.

IMO, we are seeing the results of a nonsense philosophy that industry is best at writing all the rules and doing all the research to protect society, and enforce them through voluntary compliance....(that did not work too well for other sectors to enforce themselves, like the food industry)

Since goverments are mostly broke....it would seem prudent for governbments to either tax industry or the end user to fund more research and technology.