AP reported yesterday:

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge in New Orleans granted final approval Monday to an estimated $20 billion settlement over the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, resolving years of litigation over the worst offshore spill in the nation's history.

The settlement, first announced in July, includes $5.5 billion in civil Clean Water Act penalties and billions more to cover environmental damage and other claims by the five Gulf states and local governments. The money is to be paid out over roughly 16 years. The U.S. Justice Department has estimated that the settlement will cost the oil giant as much as $20.8 billion, the largest environmental settlement in U.S. history as well as the largest-ever civil settlement with a single entity.

The settlement with the government (private claims remain) reminds me of a post I made almost six years ago, where I argued that it was not the federal government's job to avoid the harm of such an oil spill, and it was neither advisable nor reasonable to expect that the government could handle such an event.  I explained my thinking: 

Just imagine what would have happened six months [before the oil spill] if the President had suggested a new agency that would be trained and funded to clean up disasters like this, granted the authority to take over an oil well at the first sign of trouble, and this agency would be funded by a large tax on oil companies. You can be sure that the response would have been that the government shouldn’t be in this business because the oil companies are better trained, better prepared, and better able to respond to such problems. I guarantee it.

Yes, perhaps the federal government could have been swifter than it has been, especially with regard to protecting the coast. However, in this situation, President Obama’s primary mistake was likely listening to BP when they said they could, and would, handle the problem. I find it curious that many of the same people who often argue that government should stay out of the way of big businesses now want to lay blame at the feet of a president who did just that.

In this political era where candidates suggest that the government should be in business of building big walls (funded, and perhaps also built, by other governments) and free college tuition, I think it's worth taking another close look at what we really should expect of government.  (For the record, of the two ideas proposed above, I hate the first idea, and I am skeptical of the second. I appreciate the sentiment behind the free college tuition idea, but highly question the wisdom or feasibility in practice, even if I would prefer that someone else pay my law school loans.) 

The reality is that, where we allow highly specialized industrial activity, we cannot ensure there will be no harm.  We can try create protections, and we can enact penalties for failures to follow the rules and remediate harm. This is not to say everything was done correctly leading up to the Deepwater Horizon spill.  There were significant regulatory failures to accompany BP's failures. But when we look for solutions, we still need to be realistic about what role the government can and should take. About one thing I am confident: it is still not a good use of government funding to put a fleet of government-funded, oil-well plugging submarines at the ready.