(no subject)
I was listening to Marketplace this morning, and I was struck by something I heard:
"You know, companies should be doing it in order to gain their social license to operate, but their bottom line is really to earn money on their project for their shareholders."
Social what?! Apparently, in Canada, the populace isn't beholden to corporations. Corporations are still seen as a constructed, imaginary entity who has to serve society's interests first, and that doesn't just mean bringing money to shareholders. Or this is a construction of the mining and extraction industry that I'm totally ignorant of. I mean, I can read, I see the shareholder clause in there, but society is also considered a stakeholder in this operation. In the land of flaming tapwater, it feels like the citizenry of the country I live in is a bit disempowered.
To wit:
Four days after my visit with Devon, one of its pipes sprung a leak, and sent a misty spew of water and bitumen 30 or 40 feet into the air for 36 hours. Most of it landed on site. But a little, just a little, ended up in a local creek known to the teeny nearby town of Conklin as Monday Creek.
Nadine Barber: And Monday Creek goes into Sunday Creek.
Nadine Barber is a spokesperson for Devon.
Barber: And then Sunday Creek goes into Christina Lake.
Cole: Ah.
Barber: Christina Lake is where Conklin gets their drinking water.
-Marketplace 4 August 2010
And this was the kicker for me. In the US, we'd just accept this. I mean right now we're all of the sudden congratulating ourselves that the largest oil spill in our history (I'm still trying to figure out why it isn't world history... I need to look that up. OK, that was confusing...) is over and 'cleaned up'. It's like we collectively have a memory of a gnat. Two weeks ago, this was awful. And for those on the Gulf Coast, this still is awful. This isn't cleaned up. Not in the slightest. There's a big mess, both socially and environmentally. And that creates an economic mess.
Please, wake up. Please, wake up.
These oil spills and stories are a wake up call. Why are we sacrificing our environment and economy to a globalised, politically unstable, polluting form of energy? Shouldn't we be investing in renewables that don't make us choose between [deep breath]cancer, drinking water pollution, war, profiteering, fishing and related industries, farming, global warming, massive extinction, icecap melting, rising tides, crazy storms, floods, drought, on-the-job deaths [/end of breath] and energy? I mean, are we really that stupid as a species?
Of course we aren't. But we're not good at connecting the dots and using different metrics. We see money=good in a capitalistic, bastardised Judeo-Christian culture (Islam, for example, still follows some rules about interest payments being unholy, which means that the overarching holy war between fundamentalist Muslims is about more than religion, it is about an economic system as well as lifestyle.). Any reader of the bible can clearly see that even Christianity is, shall we say, sceptical of money and capital, especially at the cost of society (check this out):
"You cannot serve both God and Money." Matthew 6:24
So why does Canada get it? Because they don't have as much money sloshing around? It is annoying to be so close to sanity (320 miles... I mean, 515km...) and not be able to live sanely.
Not that, if I were given the opportunity even there, I'd live sanely. But that's different. That's my issue, not society's. :-)