Environmental destruction: No solution under capitalism

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired.

Two items caught my eye in this morning’s paper. One of them was a short clip about Halliburton, the famed energy company associated with the war criminal Dick Cheney.

Halliburton has pleaded guilty to ordering its employees to destroy evidence in the aftermath of the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 that killed 11 workers.

Halliburton has agreed to pay the maximum fine possible and cooperate fully with the government’s ongoing criminal investigation.  We can thank at least, the company employee who admitted to being told to destroy important evidence.  Maybe he is a whistleblower like Bradley Manning who has spent three years in jail for informing the public about serious matters that concern us. Maybe this individual was backed in to a corner, maybe he or she felt the need to fess up, after all, the criminal nature of firms like Halliburton is so vast, a sacrificial lamb and a one time penitential pay off is a good move.  Like confession, the thugs that run Halliburton can move on to fresh waters now.

Alongside this I see that the Mojave Desert town of Hinckley is back in the news again. Hinckley is famous for the Erin Brockovitch lawsuit against Pacific Gas and Electric, the huge San Francisco based energy utility.  PG&E ended up paying $333 million to the victims after poisoning the town’s well water.

How did PG&E poison a town’s well water?   It’s quite simple really.  PG&E has a pipeline that runs through Hinckley carrying natural gas from Texas to the San Francisco Bay Area and it used a very toxic form of chromium in one of its facility’s cooling system.  The chromium was added to water and then PG&E dumped this chromium-laced water in to local ponds.  The chromium ended up in the groundwater and in a desert town where most people get their drinking water from wells, it made people sick.

The problem is that the chromium is still there and is actually spreading which has caused other property owners to seek legal redress. Property values have plummeted and the town’s population declined, “We can’t stay here.” one resident tells the San Francisco Chronicle, “It’s a ghost town.”

Here's a PBS report on drinking water in the US, although I haven't yet seen it yet.

I haven’t been to Hinckley but I have this picture in my mind of scenes from Ecuador where Chevron is in a battle with the Ecuadorian government around the massive environmental destruction US energy giants have left there.  Chevron is spending millions of dollars and using its political clout to avoid responsibility for the damage (read more)

Some individual or group of individuals decided that it was OK to dump toxic chromium in Hinckley’s water sources, any worker with an 8^thgrade education would know that putting poison in a water supply, any water supply, would have serious consequences; in short, they knew what they were doing but didn’t care.  An individual or group of individuals also decided it was OK to poison Ecuador’s streams destroying the natural habitat and the lives of the local population.  They may be the same individuals, as the boards of these giant global corporations have many of the same people on them, they are all connected and linked also with the judges, lawyers and politicians whose interests are harmed by putting the safety of individuals, communities or the natural world before profits.

Who told this Halliburton official to destroy evidence?  These people have names, titles, and addresses. These corporations (legally people) will not put the environment or people’s health and safety before profit. It is not because the people that make the decisions are “evil” which means nothing.  It is because the system of production demands it. Production of society’s energy is determined by the profit such a venture can return to the private individuals who own the capital that can set that production in motion.

A section of the capitalist class argues for no regulation whatsoever, especially in the energy field.  As I’ve mentioned before, the energy industry wrote its own rules for deep water drilling and we see the result of that. 

They make arguments about regulation hindering progress and economic activity which is true if we understand that what they mean by progress is capital accumulation at all costs, poison water be damned.  These argue against “big government” but only when government expenditure doesn’t lead to plump gains for the likes of Halliburton and other corporations that feed at the public trough.  Public services, national parks, food subsidies, the postal service, health care education or mass transit, this is public spending they oppose; these must be for profit ventures which means those that can’t pay for them won’t receive them.  Trillion of dollars in producing and using military hardware is not the “big government” thats a problem.  Another section argues for more regulation recognizing that the effects of completely unrestrained capitalism can increase social stability and lead to social unrest.

I would not argue against any attempts to regulate capital in order to protect the public and the natural world in which we live, and there are no doubt public servants at the lower levels who genuinely want to protect both the public and the environment.

But our most important lesson and the conclusion to draw is that lawsuits and the courts will not halt the destruction of people’s lives or the natural world brought about by the rapacious quest for profit.  They’ll pay the measly fine; they’ll admit that the “corporation” as a person was guilty in any particular instance.  But like Hinckley, the chromium is still there.  They will spend a lot more than $300 million avoiding responsibility when it comes to environmental degradation.  When they calculate the cost of doing business, the land they poison in the course of their activities will be left to the taxpayer to clean up. But the poison is never really cleaned up.  We have very little knowledge of the real damage the Gulf spill has done to the land and water the oil penetrates and in most cases we won’t know for decades, until we see Bluefin Tuna with cancerous tumors or other genetic mutations.
The mass media is very free with information that the 1% wants us to know, the true extent of the market driven environmental crisis and the 1%'s role in it isn't  part of their agenda.

Capitalism cannot solve the environmental crisis and beyond that, cannot even halt it.  No matter all the talk of Green this and Green that; profits come first.  Global hunger will never be halted either for the same reason.  Food is a commodity, if you can’t afford to buy it, you can’t get it.  If it’s not profitable to produce it, capitalism won’t produce it.

As long as private interest determines production, environmental destruction will proceed apace.  Only socialism can stop what will at some point reach a tipping point, a point where whole swathes of our planet will be uninhabitable perhaps for centuries and eventually if not stopped, an end to life as we know it.   How we produce food, how we produce all the important necessities of life, energy, housing, etc.  must be a planned, rational collective process involving those who are directly involved in the production as workers both mental and physical, scientists and production workers, and those as consumers.  There is no stopping environmental degradation under capitalism----only a democratic socialist society can halt it.

For more in depth reading about why the capitalist mode of production is incapable of resolving the environmental crisis and the democratic socialist alternative, visit Climate and Capitalism or click on the link to the right.

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Don't forget the Exxon Valdez

From Coastal First Nations. It could have done without the music but it's the sort of history that we are supposed to forget.

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24 years later and this still gives us a sinking feeling. This is the actual radio call from the Exxon Valdez to Coast Guard, reporting the oil spill.

Released on the 24th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, this two-minute video reminds us of the dangers and costs that oil tankers and pipelines pose to our coastal waters. Produced by the Coastal First Nations (http://www.coastalfirstnations.ca), the video opens with Exxon Valdez Captain Joe Hazelwood's radio call to Coast Guard, accompanied by The Sound of Silence, by Simon and Garfunkel. It concludes with a simple message: "Don't be silent. Vote for an oil-free coast."

Paul Simon's music label granted the rights to use the song for a small honorarium after the Coastal First Nations wrote to him personally, telling him about the Great Bear Rainforest and the danger that oil tankers pose to the coastal communities that live here. Please share far and wide!

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Ecuador's balancing act on the oil pipeline

The oil industry's gift to Ecuador

My knowledge of the situation in Ecuador is limited but as I read this interesting piece from Professor James Petras, a couple of things stood out.  One is that it's quite clear that income can be wrung out of the global oil giants, something we in the US need to recognize. Correa has increased oil tax on multinationals from 20% to 85%, no small change,  and much of the added revenue has been used to improve social conditions for a large and diverse section of Ecuadorian society.  But this progress is entirely dependent on high oil prices and hardly stable as 50% of Ecuador's export earnings come from the sale of this one commodity.

But for now, Correa and others in the region have been able to "buy" a certain amount of stability.  However, this situation is a very precarious one, subject to global economic conditions and this deal with the global energy giants. I think the other issues are the inability of US imperialism to simply dictate policy in this region and especially to force policy through military or partial military intervention relying more on covert CIA type activities. The US is bogged down in the Middle East, expanding its role in Africa against Islamic forces and in Asia to contain China. The Chinese presence in Latin America has also changed the situation there. Then there is Venezuela and Bolivia.

I cringe when people like Prof Petras refers to groups like the FARC as "Marxist" as from what I know of FARC, their approach is more guerrilla based, but it is interesting as he points out that this deal with the energy giants has marginalized more radical social movements but will continue to create continued environmental disasters and clashes with the Indigenous Movement over land acquisition and pollution.
These scenarios have been played out many times before as individual nations under the yoke of imperialism and the global market try to find a national solution to a global problem and I would think that the revolutionary tradition of the Latin American masses will exert itself again in the period ahead. (RM)

Ecuador: Left-Center Political Regimes versus Radical Social Movements

 
James Petras :: 11.02.13

Introduction: On February 17, 2013, national elections will take place in Ecuador in which incumbent left-center President, Rafael Correa, is likely to win with an absolute majority against opposition candidates covering the political spectrum from Right to Left.

Since he was first elected in 2006, Correa has won a string of elections, including presidential elections (2009), a constitutional referendum, a constituent assembly and a ballot on constitutional amendments. Correa’s electoral successes occur despite the opposition from the main Indian organizations, CONAIE (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) and CONFENIAE, the principle public sector teachers unions, environmental NGOs and numerous radical intellectual, academics and trade union activists. He also has routed the traditional pro-US right-wing and liberal parties, successfully defeated and prosecuted the subversive intent of the mass media moguls and survived an aborted police-military coup in 2010. Unquestionably Correa has demonstrated his capacity to win repeated elections and even increase his margin of victory.

The electoral successes of Correa raise fundamental issues which transcend the immediate context of Ecuadorean politics and reflect a general pattern throughout Latin America. These issues include: (1) the relation between mass social movements and left of center electoral parties and politicians. (2) The relation between pro-active extractive capitalist development strategies (mining, oil, agro-business), inclusionary social policies and anti-imperialist regional foreign policies. (3) The inverse relation between the growth and consolidation of a left-center regime and the decline and weakening of radical social movements. (4) The problem of the initial convergence and divergence between radical social movements and left-center political leaders; as they move from ‘opposition’ to political power. (5) The shifts in power between movements and electoral politicians, with the former exercising greater capacity to mobilize during the period of opposition to the Right and the latter dominating and dictating the political agenda subsequent to securing electoral office.

The Politics of Post Neo-Liberalism
Correa’s “citizen based” electoral movement, operates from positions in government and eschews any ‘class framework’. In fact in its broadest terms, it appeals to and directs government programs to both the urban poor and the big foreign petroleum multi-nationals; the small and medium size business people and the Guayaquil business elite; workers in the informal sector and the public sector professionals and employees, the returning immigrants from Europe (especially Spain) and the construction, real estate and communication elite.

In foreign policy Correa has supported and has the backing of the Cuban and Venezuelan governments and is a member of ALBA; it has received large scale low interest loans from China (in exchange for oil investment and trade agreements) and retains commercial ties with the US and EU. Correa has backed greater Latin American integration and signed off on major public-private petrol contracts with US and European oil companies. He claims to be a socialist but condemns the Marxist FARC and praises the Colombian regimes’ ‘neo-liberalism’; questioned the illegal foreign debt (lowering it by 60%) and at the same time retains the dollar as Ecuador’s currency and opens indigenous territories to foreign capital exploitation.
In a word Correa’s “post neo-liberal policies” combine ‘nationalist populist’ and neo-liberal policies more than a program for the 21st century socialism that he proclaims.

Perspectives on President Correa’s Government
The national-populist extractive policies and development strategy of the Correa regime has polarized opinion across the hemisphere and within Ecuador. On the extreme right Washington and its mass media acolytes view Ecuador as a radical ‘socialist regime’. They take at face value Correa’s embrace of “21st century socialism”, in large part because of his ties to Venezuela, membership in ALBA, renegotiation of the foreign debt and Ecuador’s giving political asylum (in its British embassy) to Julian Assange, the Wilkileak’s leader.

Echoing Washington’s ‘radical leftist’ label are the traditional and newly minted rightist parties (Sociedad Patriotica) who have been marginalized by Correa’s electoral successes. Their critique of Correa’s early nationalist policies, renegotiating the debt and prevailing oil contracts, is now tempered by his recent large scale, long term investment agreement with several foreign multinational petroleum companies. The Ecuadorean oligarchy while publically condemning Correa are privately busy negotiating public-private procurement agreements especially in communications, infrastructure and banking.

The Indian movement, CONAIE, peasants, the teachers union, the ecology-NGOs and some smaller leftist parties oppose Correa for his “sellout” to the big oil companies, his authoritarian centralized power, the expansion of exploitation in the Amazon region and territorial encroachment and threats to Indian lands, water and health.

In contrast to internal opposition from the social movements, the vast majority of leftist parties and center-leftist regimes in Latin America, led by Cuba and Venezuela, are staunch supporters and allies of the Correa regime based primarily on his anti-imperialist policies, support for regional integration and opposition to US interventionist and destabilization policies in the region.
Internationally Correa has widespread support among progressives in the US and Europe especially for his early policies questioning the legality of the foreign debt, his rhetorical proposal to conserve the Amazon in exchange for cash transfers from the EU/US, his renegotiations of the oil contracts and his anti-imperialist pronouncements. Most important, Correa has secured long term large scale financial aid from China in exchange for exploitation of its oil resources.

Buttressed by allies in Latin America and Asia, Correa has effectively resisted pressures from the outside from the US. Internally, Correa has built a formidable bloc of social and political forces which has effectively countered opposition from the oligarchical right as well as from the once powerful radical social movements. The sustained popular majorities backing Correa from 2006 to the present 2013 are based essentially on several factors - substantial increases in social expenditures benefiting popular constituencies and nationalist policies increasing state revenues. The entire Correa paradigm, however, is based on one singular factor – the high price for oil and the boom in commodity prices which finances his strategy of extractive capital led growth and expenditures for social inclusion.

The Social Bases of Correa’s Popularity
Correa’s electoral victories are directly related to his populist social policies financed by the substantial oil revenues resulting from the high prices and huge increase from the renegotiation of the oil contracts with the multi-nationals – an increase from a 20% to an 85% tax. Correa increased the health budget from $561 million in 2006 to $774 million in 2012, about 6.8% of the national budget. Clinics have multiplied, the price of medications has been reduced as a result of a joint venture with the Cuban firm Enfarm, and access to medical care has vastly improved. Educational spending has increased from 2.5% of GDP in 2006 to 6% in 2013, including a free lunch program for children. The regime has increased state subsidies for social housing, especially for low income classes as well as returning immigrants. To lower unemployment, Correa has allocated $140 million in micro credits to finance self-employment, a measure especially popular among workers in the “informal sector”. By effectively reducing the debt to foreign creditors by two-thirds (debt service runs to 2.24% of GDP), Correa has increased the minimum wage and pensions for low income retirees thus expanding the social security system.

Anti-poverty subsidies, payments of $35 monthly (increased to $50 two weeks before the Elections) to poor families and the disabled and low interest loans have allowed Correa to gain influence and divide the opposition movements in the countryside. Business elites especially in Guayaquil and the middle and upper echelon of the public sector especially in the petrol sector, have become important contributors and backers of Correa’s electoral machine.

As a result of State subsidies, contracts and the backing of business and banking sectors and the weakening of the opposition media elites, Correa has built a broad electoral base that transverses the class spectrum. The entire ‘popular alliance’ is, however, highly dependent on Correa’s pact with extractive multi-nationals. His electoral success is a result of a strategy based on the revenue from a narrowly based export sector. And the export sector is highly dependent on the expansion of oil exploitation in the Amazon region which adversely affects the livelihood and health of the indigenous communities, who in turn are highly organized and in a permanent ‘resistance mode”.

The Contradictions of Extractive Capitalism and Populist Politics: The Threats and Challenges to Social Movements
The oil sector accounts for over 50 percent of Ecuador’s export earnings and over one-third of all tax revenues. Production has oscillated around 500,000 barrels a day, with increasing shares sold to China and a decreasing percentage to the US. In February 2013 Ecuador signed contracts for $1.7 billion in investments to boost output in the Amazon fields with Canadian, US, Spanish and Argentine multi-nationals in association with the Ecuadorean state company Petroecuador.

The biggest oil investments in the history of Ecuador promise to increase the levels of oil spills, contamination of Indian communities and intensification of the conflicts between CONAIE and its ecological and movement allies and the Correa regime. In other words as Correa sustains and consolidates his majoritarian electoral support outside of the Amazon and adjoining regions with increased social expenditures based on rising oil revenues, he will further dispossess and alienate the movements of the interior.

Social inclusion of the urban masses and promotion of an independent foreign policy are based on an alliance with foreign extractive multi-nationals which undermine the habitation and economy of small producers and Indian communities.

The history of petroleum exploitation contamination up to the present day provides little evidence to support President Correa’s claims of environmental safeguards. Texaco/Chevron oil exploitation in the Amazon contaminated millions of acres, dispossessed scores of Indian communities and sickened thousands of inhabitants resulting in a judiciary award of $8 billion dollars in favor of the 30,000 indigenous people adversely affected.

Recently Correa’s proposed oil contracts with multi-nationals to exploit 13 blocks in the pristine Amazon region covering millions of acres and inhabited by seven Indian nationalities, without consulting the indigenous communities thus contravening his own newly written constitution. Powerful mobilizations, led by CONAIE and CONFEIAE (the Ecuadorean Confederation of Amazonian Indian Nationalities) on the 28th of November 2012 in Quito and in the regions targeted for exploitation, has caused several oil majors to delay drilling. In the face of determined Indian resistance, Correa has shown the authoritarian side of his regime: threatening to dispatch the military to occupy and forcibly impose a kind of ‘martial law’, raising the prospects of prolonged political warfare.

While Correa can and does win national elections and routs his electoral opposition in the big cities, he faces a resolute organized majority in the Amazon and adjoining regions. Correa’s dilemma is that unless he diversifies the economy and reaches a compromise via consultation with CONAIE, his dependence on new oil ventures drives him toward de facto alliance with the traditional export elites and greater dependence on the military and police.

The Latin American Context
Correa’s bet on an export strategy based on primary goods has created a potentially dynamic mega cycle of growth but it is increasingly dependent on high world prices for oil. Any significant decline in price would immediately lead to a precipitous fall in social expenditures, erode his social coalition and strengthen the opposition from the right and the radical social movements. Correa’s repeated electoral successes and his widespread support across the progressive and anti-imperialist political spectrum, has seriously weakened the radical social movements a pattern that has been repeated throughout Latin America.

In the previous decade, roughly the period of the 1990’s to the early years of the 21st century, the radical social movements took center stage in toppling rightwing, US backed neo-liberal regimes. Ecuador was no exception: CONAIE and its urban allies ousted the incumbent neo-liberal President Mahuad in January 21, 2000, and joined with Correa in driving the Lucio Gutierrez regime from power in April 2005. Similar mass struggles and social mobilizations ousted neo-liberals in Argentina and Bolivia, while movement backed center left politicians took power in Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay and Peru.

Once ensconced in power the center-left regimes adopted a commodity led export strategy, embraced partnerships with the MNC and built broad electoral conditions which marginalized the radical social movements; with the aid of increased revenues they substituted populist transfer payments for structural transformations.

Nationalist foreign policies were combined with alliances with big commodity based MNC. To the extent that class struggles emerged, the populist leaders condemned them and even accused their leaders of “conspiring with the Right” – thus questioning the legitimacy of their demands and struggles.

The post neo-liberal center-left regimes in Latin America, with their populist politics of ‘inclusion’ have been far more effective in reducing the appeal and influence of the radical mass social movements than the previous US backed repressive neo-liberal regimes.

Those social movements which opted to support and join the center-left regimes (or were co-opted) became transmission belts for extractive policies. Confined to administrating the regime’s anti-poverty programs and defending the extractive capitalist model, the co-opted leaders argued for higher tax revenues and social expenditures, and, occasionally, called for greater environmental controls. But ultimately the “insider strategy”, adopted by some social leaders, has led to bureaucratic subordination and the loss of any specific class loyalties.

Conclusion
National-populism is and will be challenged from within by its ‘allies’ among the MNC who will increasingly influence their ‘public sector partners’ and, from the ‘outside’, by the pressures from the world market. In the meantime as long as commodity prices hold and the nationalist-populist leaders continue their ‘inclusive’ social programs, Latin American politics will remain relative stable and the economy will continue to grow, but it will continue to face resistance from the alliance of eco-social and indigenous movements.

What lessons can be drawn from the past two decades of social movement – populist electoral party alliances? The message is both clear and ambiguous. Clearly movements which do not have an independent political perspective will lose out to their electoral allies. However, there is no question that because of movement action, the populist electoral class has legislated significant social expenditures benefiting the popular classes and pursued a relative independent foreign policy – an ambiguous legacy or unfinished history?

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Mining companies rape the land and rape the taxpayer

Newmont gold quarry, Nevada

by Richard Mellor

In the various movements that have arisen in response to the capitalist offensive here in California, the student protests against cuts in education and fee hikes, opposition to foreclosures, job losses, housing etc. one issue that wouldn’t go away was that California is the only state in the Union that doesn’t charge the energy companies for the extraction of oil from the ground.

This became an issue in the upsurge and no doubt among political people it was well known, but so many Americans and Californians would not have known it.  Capitalism in the US is not Stalinist totalitarianism; it is possible to find information if you look particularly now with the Internet, but it is still a very secretive social system, especially when it comes to business activity and the role of the state, foreign policy etc.

The propaganda that myself and others write about on this blog fairly frequently, that there is no money in society, that we have to accept cuts, support “shared sacrifice”, that capitalism cannot afford to provide jobs for all, a secure and decent life etc., has a huge influence in our decision making and what we understand about the world. That’s what it is supposed to do which leads to sections of the working and middle classes squabbling among ourselves over who should take the worst hit, which section of the working class shall suffer most.

We don’t hear much about another little gem that the corporations get from the state, you know, the organ that supposedly governs for the people by the people. One of them is similar to the freebie’s the oil giants get extracting oil from California land.  It is the federal 1872 mining law, The General Mining Act that was introduced during the Ulysees S Grant administration.  This law allowed prospectors to extract gold and other minerals from the land without paying royalties.  The intention of the law was to encourage settlements and development of the frontier, a crucial necessity for capitalist expansion.

That laws now allows what even Bloomberg Businessweek calls “highly profitable mining companies to extract minerals for free.”  Given that they’ve been doing this for over a century that would amount to a considerable sum.  Not only that, the taxpayer has to foot the bill for the clean up after the corporations have extracted the wealth. This is the case with much of industry. The tab for this clean up could cost the taxpayer as much as $54 billion according to the EPA.

The US does charge royalties for oil, gas and coal extraction but the politicians in Congress, “Powerful mining industry allies” as BW describes them, folks like Majority Lead Harry Reid, are fighting hard for the corporations that they represent and that pay them handsomely.  They have resisted attempts to change the 1872 law. 

Others are trying to get some sort of “royalty and reclamation” fees passed to no avail, but there is a possibility an attempt will be made to do so again with a caveat that all the monies do not go to the federal government but partially to the states where mining is a major industry.

The importance of political action is the lesson here.  It is not some accident of history that this law has remained on the books is it?  It is not because they all forgot about it because it was buried in the archives under wherever the archives are kept.  This law exists because the section of the capitalist class that benefits financially from it has ensured it remained on the books and up to now, their competitors didn’t care. 

Both parties of capitalism, the Democrats and Republicans, ensure that the interests of their constituents are preserved.  Sure, they squabble over details as one section of the capitalist class competes against another for the right to plunder society, energy versus the tech industry, Hollywood versus agribusiness, or the financial sector.  We have seen a major war between the old established bourgeois and the private equity guys over carried interest, transparency and taxation.  But when it comes to the working class, the public or the vast majority of Americans who rely on wage labor as a means of survival these two parties ensure the interests of big business is paramount.  The Democrats could have changed this law long ago.

Socialist should support taxing oil that comes from the land and the mineral wealth too, but more importantly is worker's control and management of this industry and all industries crucial to the well being of society and our environment as another devastating aspect of mining is the environmental damage. There is also the theft of indigenous people's land both in the US and throughout the globe.  Those politicians advocating royalties will not concern themselves with these issues to any serious extent. They will still ensure profits are protected.  The first step towards solving this and other problems is nationalizing these industries. 

More about this issue here

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The war against Fracking: The Sky is Pink

Fracking, injecting chemicals in to rock causing it to fracture and release the oil contained in it is coming up against increased opposition. The important lesson here is that we cannot simply oppose it and leave it there. It raises the need for alternative energy sources and this will not happen in any serious way without taking energy production out of private hands. More about fracking in a previous blog.
 

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Speculators, thieves and frackers descend on North Dakota Reservation

Fort Berthold is an Indian Reservation in North Dakota, home to 12,000 people, members of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikari Nation collectively referred to as the Three Affiliated Tribes.  There has been a revolution of sorts on this reservation which was created in 1870, it has oil, and lots of it.The Bakken oilfield includes the Reservation and western North Dakota as well as  Eastern Montana and southern Sasketchewan. It is the largest contiguous oil field discovery in US history according to the  US Geological Survey.

Less than five years ago there were no producing oil wells on Fort Berthold according to Bloomberg Businessweek, today there are 297.  The Bakken has over 7000 producing wells in total.  With such a discovery, the vulture capitalists, speculators, coupon clippers and other social wasters have descended on the region.  But this discovery has also created tremendous problems for these small communities and the Indian people on the Reservation.  Terri Hansen of Indian Country writes:

"It has also brought a huge increase in traffic accidents, while services at the tiny hospital are limited. The industrialization and population boom has strained water supplies, sewage systems, and federal, state and tribal governmental services in the area, as NPR has reported. Exponentially increased amounts of dust drift across deteriorating roadways. Jobs are plentiful and high paying, but there’s housing shortage, and most of what’s there is makeshift. The once quiet one-bar town of Williston has had an influx of prostitutes, while a thinly stretched police force must now regularly quell once nonexistent bar fights, according to the documentary Faces of the Oil Patch."

Fracking which is a method of separating oil from rock by injecting chemicals in to the rock in order to release it has produced numerous complaints of water pollution in the area.  Fracking has been blamed for poisoning water supplies throughout the nation. But the discovery has also set Reservation occupants against each other, those who own land and those that don't.  It is the same old story, one lawsuit tribal members have against the federal government states, "....the misappropriation of land resources belonging to Native Americans.".

Oil drilling has brought in more than $500 million in the last 4 years according to Bloomberg yet the Reservation has no major hospital and the nearest emergency facility is 100 miles away.  In the other small towns outside the reservation the boom has also disrupted everyday life increasing congestion. There is a major housing shortage as the population has grown considerably, and crime and prostitution has risen considerably. The infrastructure of these communities, sewage, water, medical needs, cannot keep pace with the influx of humanity and the changes this brings.

Leaving aside whether oil drilling or fracking should be allowed, what we are witnessing here is a market boom.  The scramble for profits shows no mercy for human communities or the earth that provides us with food and water.  In capitalist society, the natural world, like human beings, is simply something to be exploited, a source of surplus value. The market has its own pace, there is no planning in such ventures. It's not just greed in the abstract, it's the way the capitalist mode of production works. Rational planning of production takes time and the involvement of all concerned, capital detests such barriers.  Like the cattle it takes to market, the quicker they get fat the better no matter what you have to pump in to them.

Here we are talking about the production of energy.  Whether it is the best and most efficient form of energy, or the most efficient form of producing it in harmony with the natural world and human society,  matters not.  What the forces behind the boom seek is surplus value, profits. 

The production of society's energy needs, just like the production of our food, our housing, our necessities of life, cannot be left to their precious market.  What the US government will encourage in Fort Berthold is those among the tribal leadership who support this view and want to profit from it. Tex Hall, the Chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes is also owner of numerous oil industry related businesses and supports drilling; he's an entrepreneur, the epitome of capitalist success.

If you want to know more about what some residents of the Reservation are doing to get their story out and/or would like to contribute to the documentary the woman in the video above is talking about, you can visit this site http://www.indiegogo.com/7-Oil-1

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BP pays $4.5 billion. It won't save us from ecological disasters.

We can stop this

AP reports today that BP will pay the US government $4.5 billion as a settlement for the explosion on its Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico that released 280 million gallons of oil, spilling an estimated (a very broad estimate) 172 million gallons directly in to the Gulf. Oh, yes, the accident that was not an accident as it was preventable, killed eleven workers as well.

 

 The Associated Press report also other details on the effect of the spill:

"WILDLIFE
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials documented 6,104 dead birds, 609 dead sea turtles and 100 dead mammals, including dolphins, from the impacted area. Experts also collected 456 living sea turtles and 2,079 birds that were visibly oiled."

"ECOSYSTEM
The oil soiled sensitive tidal estuaries and beaches, severely affecting the edges of saltwater and brackish marshes. Sand beaches, barrier islands, tidal mud flats and mangrove stands in five coastal states were damaged."

ECONOMY
Sullied waters and health concerns shut down commercial fishing in the region for months, putting thousands of shrimpers and fishermen out of work. Charter captains, property owners, environmental groups, restaurants, hotels and other tourism businesses all claimed they suffered economic losses after the spill.
RESPONSE AND CLEANUP
At the peak of the crisis, the response effort involved 48,200 people, 9,700 vessels and 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersants. The Coast Guard helped burn 265,450 barrels of oil using controlled fires."

For the deaths of the workers, two BP well-site leaders have been charged with manslaughter and a BP executive has been indicted on charges he lied to authorities. Naughty boys, all three of you.
 

What is not know is what we can't see.  One doesn't have to be an environmental scientist, a marine biologist of sorts, to know that the effects of this major catastrophe are horrific and many will not be know until they are manifested over time.  The effects on Bluefin Tuna and other oceanic life that spawns there cannot be immediately determined.  Perhaps, Proctor and Gamble or Johnson and Jonson will come up with a dissoluble pill that they will convince us will make the area pristine again. 

The fact is, that the oil that was picked up is just the tip of the iceberg.  The ocean floor is full of it you can bet your bottom dollar on that.  The cancers and diseases that are a by product of these activities will emerge more prominently over time.   Perhaps the oil residue will mix with the nuclear waste from Fukushima and the ill effects will cancel each other out.  And the dispersants?  What affect do these have on the environment.

Society's Energy needs, like all social production under capitalism, is in private hands and set in to motion on the basis of profit, for the welfare of those private individuals that own the machinery, technology and human labor power that make it happen. This is the cause of these crises and the only solution is collective ownership of energy production and a plan of production developed by workers, consumers, scientists and all those whose knowledge can benefit society as a whole
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For hundreds of years the damage from this market catastrophe will continue to haunt future generations assuming the planet is still habitable for humans by then.  Fines won't stop these environmental catastrophes like the BP spill and Fukishima. They are market driven disasters, a by-product of the capitalist system.

A democratic socialist society, a world federation of democratic socialist states and a planned and rational system of production based on human need and not private gain is the only solution to ecological Armageddon.

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