Great Lakes Green Pages

Big corporations are supposed to make a profit.  Got it.  That is their mandate and their responsibility to their shareholders.  No problem.  But any profit that is squeezed out at the expense of a less educated and resourceful populace is shameful and wrong.  That is why I am boycotting Chevron in perpetuity.  If you want to really know what is going on and what has been going on in Ecuador, then you must get your hands on a copy of CRUDE: THE REAL PRICE OF OIL.

Let me lay it out for you in a nutshell-at least my interpretation of it.  In the 1970′s we had an oil crisis.  I have to remind people about this, because when I say it to many folks, they are too young to remember that it happened.  Carter was in office and we could not get enough oil.  There simply wasn’t any.  We had rationing.  Most states had a program where you could only buy gasoline on certain days based on your licence plate numbers (i.e. if your plate number ended in an odd number, you might only be able to fill up on M, W, F).  Some places limited the amount of gasoline you could buy at a time.  Prices started to skyrocket. Gas supplies ran out at stations and so on your day, you might spend half the day waiting in line to get a fill up for your big American made car.  Oh, and we were in a recession.   This was a crisis that the American people had no control over and nothing could be done.  We were at the mercy of the oil companies.  Truth is, there was no crisis.  It is clear now, in retrospect, that there was never any risk of running out of oil.  We had plenty of gas, and rationing was a construct to create panic and make us pay more for our gasoline.  Similar to the tactics used every time there is a natural disaster and the price of gas seems to spike.  Those of you who are under 40 are not likely to remember this era and many may not even know that it happened.  I tell this as the backdrop to make you understand the lengths that big corporations will go to to make a buck.

While we in America are rationing our gas consumption, corporate giant Texaco is drilling and pumping away in the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador.  Technology is not what it is today, but even by standards of that time, they are doing a shoddy job of protecting the environment.  Who cares, when a poor underdeveloped country like Ecuador is taking the money we are giving them happily, like the Native Americans who sold Manhattan for a stash of glass beads.  The government of Ecuador at the time knew little of oil and technology and had no idea that Texaco was polluting the streams, rivers, water tables, even the ground surrounding the wells they drilled.  The locals were indigenous peoples who knew little of technology or oil and had no idea what was happening.  Some 15 or so years later, and a consortium owned by the government of Ecuador takes over the oil fields as Texaco’s contracts expire.  More spills, more problems.

But that was years ago, and things have been cleaned up by now, right?  Sorry.  Texaco was sold to Chevron years ago, and they have been doing everything in their power to distance themselves from the problems created by Texaco in Ecuador.  A giant class action lawsuit was filed to make Chevron pony up for the problems they inherited from Texaco.  And now things get downright sleazy…

First, let me tell you that this case has been going on for YEARS.  In an effort to make things easier, Chevron first petitioned and was granted the right to move the trial from the US to Ecuador.  While I agree that the problem exists in Ecuador and there is some standing that an Ecuadorian court to rule on this subject, it is a US company that is being sued and thus there is standing for the case to move forward in America.  Let’s face it, this petition was made, because Chevron felt it would be easier to win in Ecuador, by means legal or not.  Then take hot shot corporate lawyers working for big oil and pit them against the legal system of a country like Ecuador and you obviously have an upper hand.  Then they took every track they could to delay the process.  Chevron has deep pockets, they know the longer the suit drags out the better their chances of bankrupting the opposition.  When the team, on behalf of the Ecuadorian people, start getting help from Amazon Watch and eventually legal bankroll from NY based law firms, they cry foul.  Sure the NY legal backers want a profit on their investment, but Chevron is the one that took it down this road, so how they can claim that this is all for the benefit of hotshot NY lawyers?

Then there are the experts.  Chevron hires consulting scientists to claim there is no real issue with the region.  It always disturbs me when anyone can come forward like scientist, Sara McMillen and say that the data does not support that there is any problem with contamination.  In the movie, you can see these pits of tar and petroleum sludge that were built as toxic dams to hold pollution.  When there are rains, overflows of tainted water run into the local watershed of streams and rivers.  This watershed is the water supply for all the villages and towns of the region.  McMillen has the nerve to blame the disproportionate amount of illness, disease and death on poor sanitation, when the only thing that has really changed in the last 40 years is the pollution of the oil drilling operations.  When there is a risk that this tactic may not work, they shift to not being able to pinpoint the actual cause of the pollution.  Rather than take responsibility, they try to shift blame to the consortium that took over after Texaco, even though they simply continued the operations that were set up by Texaco itself.

So this is just a tiny glimpse into the issue.  Let’s face it, I cannot tell a story that it took a 2 hour movie (CRUDE), a spread in Vanity Fair, grassroots organizations, and countless lawyers and trial hours to tell in just a single blog post.  Please check out some of the above links and if you can, watch the movie CRUDE.  We already know that we need to fix the damages of the past 50 years, but this is a crises that is 30 times the damage of the Exxon Valdez spill.  You can sign a petition to the Chevron CEO asking him to clean up this mess.  If you have ever bought a gallon of gas from a Chevron  or Texaco station in you rlife, then you owe it to the people of Ecuador to sign this petition.

My problem is that this company has spent millions of dollars, if not a billion over the course of many years fighting this lawsuit.  While they do so, people are dying and suffering.  If this time, energy, and money were spent trying to fix the problem instead, it would be well on its way to being cleaned up by now.  THAT is why I will never buy gas from Chevron.  After watching this movie, I understand why the president of Venezuela hates America.