CHEVRON FINED BILLIONS

THE OIL FLOWS CONSTANTLY

By Violetta Schafer

[This article published in “Philibuster,” 2/21/2011 is translated from the German on the Internet, http://www.philibuster.de/themen/alte-welt/milliardenstrafe-gegen-chevron-bestaendig-fliesst-das-oel.html.]

[After decades of pollution of the Amazon basin, the oil corporation Chevron was fined $8.6 billion, the greatest environmental penalty of all time. How many catastrophes will be necessary until the population of industrial states become interested in environmental protection?]

Since the disastrous oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, all fishers robbed of their existence and the dying oil-smeared animals have been stricken. This is actually only the tip of a dirty iceberg of the environmental disasters of the last years caused by humans. While Barack Obama and his children splashed in the Gulf of Mexico to show everything is not as bad as it appears, Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa certainly did not venture that in the Amazon basin.

For years the oil conglomerate Chevron contaminated the Amazon area as vast amounts of oil from one of its old production sites seeped into the soil. After a nearly twenty-year legal battle, the company now faces a penalty in the billions. According to information in the “Wall Street Journal,” the $8.6 billion will be used for cleaning the contaminated rainforest and building a health system for the affected population. In addition the judge said the penalty would be doubled if the US oil multinational did not publically apologize within 15 days of the judgment. The record environmental fine is a little success for the environment. For decades, humans and animals lived in a contaminated area while an arrogant corporation insisted it had nothing to do with Texaco’s waste dump taken over in 2001. Texaco produced oil there until 1992.

SHIFTING THE BURDEN TO OTHERS

Natural disasters caused by humans are not a rarity. Last fall, an avalanche from the storage bins of an aluminum plant gushed onto several sites in western Hungary. Tanker accidents happen every year. Now the next oil pollution threatens off Norway’s coast. Humanity seems to be working on its own destruction or extinction. With animal- and plant species dying out annually, interest for nature seemed off the table. The last catastrophes increasingly affect all of us.

Nevertheless environmental care does not seem to be a theme that really interests the average citizen or interests enough to draw conclusions for his/her own life. We love our average life with our luxury problems too much to really renounce on our cars, airplanes and plastic packaging, Admittedly we always gave ourselves a pat on the back in the past for not having to live in Hungary, Ecuador or Florida. But security in this case is a delusion. Globalization affects all of us. Even if we cannot see the effects at our front door, we eat imported fish from all over the world.

A LITTLE MISFORTUNE THAT CAN HAPPEN AGAIN

What about the causal agent? Most cases are called accidents, terrible catastrophes for which humans are not ultimately responsible. It was certainly unintended, the operators of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor told us like BP and the aluminum plant in Hungary. Sometimes one asks whether any corporation accidentally pours chemicals into rivers, whether a tanker finds eternal rest in the world oceans or why an oil platform blows up. Security standards obviously still come in second or third place. No corporation really needs to fear as long as a suit against an environmental sinner is as tedious and expensive as in the example of Ecuador. What is Chevron doing? In the past, the corporation did not see any necessity to apologize or even represent everything as an accident. The open oil basins were left behind very consciously.

The culprits assume a great conspiracy between President Rafael Correa and the native population and describe the judgment as illegitimate and not enforceable. Poor oil corporation, we send our official sympathy that you must take away the filth you caused. Ecuador can at least be glad that it does not harbor any of the ten dirtiest places of the world. According to a study of the Blacksmith Institute of New York, Russia and China are unequivocally at the top of the list where cancer, lung infections and mental disabilities of children are on the agenda after the land, air and drinking water were contaminated. Isn’t it interesting that people still live in these regions where chemical weapons were manufactured or radioactive waste stored? But where should people go where they might have a foundation for existence? Environmental pollution in developing countries is responsible for up to 20 percent of the deaths there. Others profit from the produced oil, the manufactured weapons and chemicals and quench their hunger for money and power.

The penalty imposed on Chevron is a small step in the right direction that gives stamina to the population of the contaminated Amazon basin. It is up to oil-consuming countries to demand alternatives and use their power over the market. They won’t get away with this forever. Environmental protection will probably stop being something for eco-latte servers and radical vegetarians when children in their own country die as consequences of the negligence of greedy firms and the passivity of their brave parents.

RELATED LINKS:

http://www.usuncut.org

http://climateandcapitalism.com

http://www.onthecommons.org

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info

http://www.grittv.org

http://www.naomiklein.org/main

http://www.foodfirst.org