In the battle between business and environmental interest it is easy to side with the defenseless entity. This idea fuels the argument that much of legislation passed to crusade against negative externalities, often is exaggerated to play on the emotions of the audience seeing images of pollution in the media. Environmental issues have become popular and state level data implies that congressional voting on such issues relies heavily on whether or not there was a catalytic environmental event. Many times people assume that large corporations are tied to pollution (oil spills, dumping, and smog) because of incidences due to gross negligence and incompetence, but fail to consider simple human error. Consider the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill in which it took almost twenty years to settle on reparations and clean up. If Exxon had any idea of the bad press they'd receive, they may have previously taken measures to avoid such an accident.