It’s been five days since the US Supreme Court decided to upstage Wal-Mart in the art of deep discounting and slash Exxon’s punitive damages in the Valdez disaster case from 2.5 billion down to 507 million.

Two billion dollars

Which is precisely why the original amount of the damages was set at 5 billion. This was, after all, a punitive damages case, meaning that the penalties imposed on Exxon were supposed to pack a big enough punch to teach the corporation a much needed lesson about environmental and social responsibility. Unless the penalty was significantly steep vis-