Chevron, responsible for a multi-billion-dollar environmental disaster in Ecuador, is instead spending millions to shore up political support and to evade the clean up. Brad Johnson has the story.
Senate disclosure forms reveal that oil giant Chevron spent $2.9 million lobbying the federal government last quarter, eclipsing even Exxon ($2.6 million) and BP ($2.2 million). Chevron’s 2010 lobbying totaled $12.89 million, following a tremendous outlay in 2009 of $20.8 million.
Chevron also recently launched a major greenwashing campaign, “We Agree,” which claims that it shares the public concern that “oil companies should put their profits to good use” and “oil companies should support the communities they’re a part of.” However, Chevron is also spending millions to defend itself in a 17-year-old lawsuit over the billions of tons of toxic waste its now-subsidiary company Texaco dumped into the Ecuadorian watershed.
The case is finally nearing its conclusion in the Ecuadorian court system:
The attorneys representing Amazonian communities in a lawsuit against Chevron have submitted their final argument to a judge in Ecuador, the latest development in a legal saga involving the oil giant that that began nearly two decades ago. The plaintiffs are seeking up to $113 billion in compensation for environmental damages in the Amazon.
Ecuador, smaller than the state of Nevada, is a remarkable hotbed of diversity. The rich life above lies above significant oil reserves “” another legacy of millions of years of biological richness. Those reserves have both fueled and threatened the future of the nation and its peoples. The costs of the extraction “” including 16 billion gallons of toxic waste water “” have been been borne by the indigenous communities of the Amazon watershed, even as the profits were enjoyed elsewhere. The closing argument made by the plaintiffs sums up the toxic record of Chevron in this case:
The evidence makes it clear and unmistakable that Chevron is guilty. Guilty of polluting the rainforests with toxic sludge from lucrative oil drilling operations, guilty of a shoddy and haphazard cleanup operation, guilty of letting toxic waste continue to devastate the rainforest and its inhabitants’ lives, and perhaps worst of all, guilty of trying to cover it all up by destroying documents and making false accusations of fraud before courts in the U.S. and Ecuador. Chevron’s complete disdain for Ecuador, its courts, and its citizens was captured perfectly by a Chevron lobbyist who told Newsweek: “We can’t let little countries screw around with big companies like this – companies that have made big investments around the world.”
So far, Chevron disagrees.
– Brad Johnson, in a WonkRoom cross-post.
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Sorry for beeing OT – Delingpole on BBC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36Xu3SQcIE0
Have a laugh ;-)
The behaviour of big oil-companies (and others) always reminds me of the movie “There will be Blood”.
But then, in a capitalist system, a company will always behave like a sociopath, unless it is controlled ethically by it’s shareholders and management or by the government.
If breaking the law is cheaper than abiding by it, chances are that the responsible managers will break the law. Or that managers that do break the law “perform” better and will advance faster and higher.
Pbo – love that last bit. Delingpole: “I am an interpreter of interpretations”
Chinese whispers anyone?
Chevron must be called to account in order to send the market a signal that these kinds of atrocities must be paid for by the perpetrators.
I’m not sure how a ruling from a court in Ecuador will translate into collection, however. The oil companies wiggle out of court ordered payments even in this country. How would the fine from Ecuador be enforced and collected?
“Crude, The Real Price of Oil” is a 2009 film about the environmental disaster in Equador. It’s probably available through your library.
“Pollution for Profits” is profitable. Who would have thought it. What a novel business concept to base a civilization on.
Hope it works…
Many of the MSM fill their pages and pockets with these ads from Chevron.
Is it any surprise these same MSM have trouble communicating the reality of fossil fuelled climate destabilization?
If you are going to feed ravenously on dirty oil profits then you are unlikely to even want to discuss the global damage that makes them possible.
If people want to boycott Big Oil profits I suggest they also boycott the MSM that feed on them and glorify them in full page color promotions of their spin.
No, no, haven’t you seen the ad from API. Every time we bring oil or natural gas to the surface WE ALL BENEFIT.
Maybe the plaintiffs haven’t see that ad yet. If they only knew the benefits…
The Ecuadorian plaintiffs could take a tour of Nigeria or along the Louisiana coast to see that they are not alone and they just need to focus on the benefits because the reality is really messy.
Chevron is just doing what capitalists always do. Destroying the lives and welfare of the hated ‘Others’, to enrich themselves. In the make-believe world of ‘corporate responsibility’ or the even more rib-tickling ‘business ethics’, the ‘right thing’ to do is spend more on lying propaganda with the insidious and amoral advertising industry. If some corporates actually abjured destruction of the other, some other corporate pathocrat would step into the breach. Darwinian selection where the selective pressure is to immoral and relentless pursuit of money no matter what the cost to others has ensured that capitalism always grows more brutal, more ruthless and more destructive.