Steppin' Out Of Babylon: Radio Interviews

Riki Ott is a marine pollution scientist, author and activisit. She speaks here about her recent book Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in 1989 in Prince William Sound, Alaska. In this interview, she goes beyond the damage caused by oil tanker spills and by the oil industry as a whole (through extraction and automobile exhaust) to look at the bigger picture: how corporations are able to amass money and power, which in turn are destroying democracy. Ott speaks about how the courts ordered the Exxon Corporation to pay economic compensation to the citizens affected by the spill – for example, the pink salmon and herring industries collapsed – but the emotional cost of the spill, the damage done to Native culture and the way of life in Cordova, were not considered a “real” loss.Ott began to realize that the issue was greater than an oil spill: the crux of the matter is that corporations are granted human rights which are allowed to tr