Re: Sole US-Philippine responsibility for contamination

[Peter Strauss <pstrauss@igc.org>]

Perhaps my response to Don was a little glib, but I felt that the tone of
his message was xenophobic to say the least. I certainly did not want to
offend anyone who participated in the Pacific War.

Its interesting that you should brring up joint and several liability in
this context. There is no international law governing the clean-up of past
warr zones. But if there were, it would be extremely difficult to delineate
the contribution of the various parties. EPA and the courts attempt to do
this in the US, and only when PRPs are not solvent or can't be found, does
full responsibility shift to the other PRPs. In other words, there is an
attempt to be equitable.

In lieu of an international regime that could apportion responsibility
equitably, as a US citizen I think that we must bear the responsibility to
pay environmenmtal costs of our military presence and not leave it to
others. And we do have to admit that our share of responsibilty is very
large in the Phillipines.

Peter Strauss