Treating environmental disasters as &#x27;random&#x27; events is too kind. I think in just about every major recent environmental disaster you can without too much difficulty, trace back the disaster to cost cutting measures where decisions were made to put off long term risks in favor of short term profits.<p>The BP oil spill, shortcuts were made in the safety of the drilling equipment emergency cutoffs, in the Los Angeles methane leak, the company had put off maintenance to try to make rate payers pay for improvements instead of out of profits to the company. The Northern California San Bruno pipe explosion - safety funds had been diverted to executive bonuses.<p>Smart investors (and insurers of these companies) should be digging into long term risks. It is not that we cannot predict it - we are too cheap and profit oriented to pay to mitigate it.