Portside

On July 2, the states attorneys general in Louisiana and four other Gulf Coast states celebrated an $18.7 billion settlement with BP over claims from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. But, according to the Public Interest Research Group, at least $13.2 billion in the settlement is not defined as a penalty, meaning BP could potentially get billions in tax breaks, even on payments it made to restore natural resources damaged by the spill.

Thirty years since the Union Carbide gas leak tragedy, Bhopal is a city defined—and divided—by the disaster. Authorities labeled 36 wards gas-affected and 20 wards gas unaffected. Today, the contrasts between these areas are clear. The gas-affected areas are home to shanty towns where the deaths took place. They surround the now-dilapidated factory. It is in these towns that the legacy of the 30-year-old gas disaster lives on.

Melville, who had been a sailor on clipper ships and whalers, was keenly aware that the wealth of industrialized societies came from the exploited of the earth. “Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans,” Ishmael says of New England’s prosperity. “One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea.”