RAVE: A David Called Maria

A diminutive Quechua lady in a remote part of Ecuador has become the David in a mammoth struggle between her community and the Goliath that is Chevron, in what has become one of the biggest environmental stories in recent years.

Maria Aguinda has no legal background and doesn't even speak the official language of her country, Spanish. But what she has been is at the forefront of a momentous class action suit by her community in Orellana province against Chevron for the years of environmental pollution and devastation to the surrounding rain forest by big oil polluter, Texaco, which was bought out by Chevron in 2001.

The case is known as Aguinda vs Chevron. A poor indigenous woman in a remote part of a poor South American country takes on one of the biggest, richest multinationals in the world, Big Oil itself. This is about as David-versus-Goliath as it gets.

Texaco operated in the area between 1964 and 1990 and created an environmental holocaust with its lax and sub-standard oil drilling techniques. Billions of gallons of crude oil were dumped into the rainforest and surrounding areas. Marshes are clogged with oil, rivers are dead, local fisheries have all but died out, and local communities have suffered huge rates of cancer and other health ailments.

Says Maria Aguinda, "When Texaco came we never thought they would leave behind such damage, never. Then it began to drill a well and set up burn pits." "It changed our life: hunting, fishing, and other food, it's all finished."

Last week an Ecuadorian court slapped Chevron with a fine of $9.5-billion, one of the largest ever awarded in an environmental lawsuit anywhere in the world.

Even so, Maria's community claims that at least $27-billion or more will be needed to allow for proper restitution from the resulting and devastating environmental and health impacts from the crude oil pollution.

Disappointed in the outcome she may be, and the environmental devastation in her area may continue, but Maria Aguinda has nevertheless accomplished that which so few of us would even dare to dream of doing. She is the epitome of believing in one's cause, for fighting for what is right, however long that may take, for not allowing the powers that be to get away with what is nothing less than murder.

The words of Mark Twain seem very apt here:

                                 

                             It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. 

 Thank goodness then for Maria Aguinda.

RANT: Queensland Under Water

One of my biggest wishes for 2011 was that there be less environmental disasters. After the BP Gulf of Mexico spill, red toxic tide in Hungary and a host of other ecological disasters in 2011, it was foremost in my mind for this new year. Not very likely, I knew, given the relentless progression of climate change, deforestation and biodiversity and species loss, but I had to hope.

So much for that hope in 2011...

The year has barely commenced and already a huge swathe of northeastern Australia had been inundated with rains and subsequent floods that were described to be of 'biblical proportions'.

And today reports were that now the largest city in the state of Queensland and Australia's third-largest city, Brisbane, is also being flooded. And that's a very sizable city.

People have died, the rains don't seem to stop and there are already predictions that the repercussions on the world economy due to shut mines will be enormous.

If it's not floods, it's huge forest fires or mudslides or devastating droughts - Australia can't seem to catch a break with its weather in the past few years.

It has nothing to do with luck or the lack thereof, of course.

There can be very little doubt - Australia is Ground Zero for climate change these days.

Queensland has suffered terrible floods before, it is true, but the multitude of environmental disasters that have hit Australia in the last few years, as well as similar trends in other parts of the world, are providing ample evidence that climate change is already here.

And, worse still, some analysts are now stating that climate change is occurring at an even quicker rate than previously projected.

And yet the climate change naysayers continue their flat Earth bias against all the evidence...

As if the kangaroo in the picture deserved this...?

Do you get my point?

RANT: Suffer the Pink Dolphin

I read a news item today that upset me very much. Brazilian authorities have reported that the fabled Amazon river dolphin or 'pink dolphin' (owing to its distinctive pinkish hue) is being hunted and slaughtered in such huge numbers, that it runs the risk of being wiped out. As it is, for now it's the last of the remaining river dolphin species in the world.

I remember seeing a beautifully made film back in 1987 called "Where the River Runs Deep" in which the pink river dolphin of the Amazon plays a pivotal and mystical role in the film's narrative. I remember so well being awed and really moved by the unique beauty of this dolphin in that film. It somehow fed into my vivid imagination all the primordial allure and vast, vast lushness of the Amazon, a place, almost another world, of magical and wonderful creatures like pink dolphins.

And now this.

The reports state that these beautiful dolphins are being washed up on the shores of the Amazon River and its tributaries in record numbers and that, if this continues, the dolphin species will be wiped out. The dolphins have been clearly cut up, gutted and otherwize eviscerated. A great and natural way to die, of course.

And the culprits? Fishermen along the river are almost certainly the culprits, according to authorities. Since they're mostly likely to be Roman Catholics, it is my fervent wish that there is indeed a hell for them where they rot and get eaten away every single day for eternity by a swarm of the most voracious piranhas. The ignorant bastards.

Why kill these beautiful, unique animals? It's at times like these that my despair and disgust at the human (mis)condition and its treatment of animals knows no bounds.

The pink dolphins are known to be very gentle and extremely curious animals, coming up close to boats and the river shore, inquisitive at humans and their activities. The stupid things. No wonder they get slaughtered with such impunity. 'Gentle' and 'curious' just doesn't cut it on a planet savaged and ravaged by homo sapiens. Don't they know this by now, the silly pink things, swimming so blithely in the murky waters of the Amazon? Clearly not.

I also blame Brazil for this. Some undoubtedly great work continues to done by tireless Brazilian environmentalists and conservation specialists in their vast country. But I am getting very weary of the argument by successive Brazilian governments that its territory is so 'vast' that it cannot protect all its natural environment and the habitats therein. For example, this is a nation that sees fit to have a total of just five agents who are tasked with protecting wildlife in an area of the Amazon jungle twice the size of Texas. That's hardly a convincing commitment to the protection of species like the pink dolphin from a nation that has now (I believe) the world's eighth-largest economy.

But, of course, the pink dolphins must play fifty-third fiddle (never mind 'second fiddle') to the needs of the millions of desperately poor Brazilians in one of the countries with the hugest gulfs between the rich and the poor in the world.

Yes, of course that makes sense. Always the needs of humans come first. As it should be, correct?

Yet, as humans keep coming first (and second and third and fourth and fifth and...), and other species keep coming a literal last to our whims and neverending 'crises of the day', one must wonder: why is it then that the state of this planet just keeps getting worse and worse? Perhaps the equation needs to be re-looked at, no?

The slaughter of the pink dolphin is not just a blight on the biodiversity of the Amazon or a blight on Brazil for that matter. It is a blight on all of us. A reminder - yet again and for the umpteenth time - that by consistently placing ourselves so imperiously over other species with whom we share this planet, we are losing the battle not only for the very survival of this planet. but the battle for our very selves.

Do you get the point?

RANT: Old News...And The Gulf Keeps Dying

The Gulf oil spill is dying in the news. What made headline news every single day just a month ago is now less and less in all the media.

BP should be breathing a little easier these days. Goody for them.

It may have 'died' somewhat as a news item, but the animal species keep on dying in the Gulf. For a sobering and depressing daily tally on the amount of species that have died or could die due to being drenched in oil, visit the excellent website: http://dailydeadbirds.com/. It's a one-page website that just gives the tallies. As of yesterday, the death toll for seabirds was 1 682, dead sea turtles numbered 452 and dead mammals (dolphins, porpoises, etc) was at 57.

One can only shudder at just what the numbers must be for dead fish.

82 days since the spill and the creatures keep dying.

Creatures at our mercy. Can you imagine being that much at our mercy?

The oil keeps spilling and spilling and the excuses by BP become more and more insufferable, more corporate greenwash. Even if now it's considered less newsworthy.

And that's the paradox of our modern media-saturated information age. Yes, we know more and we know it quicker and in so much greater detail. But it too can slip from our collective memory as quickly as it assaulted us when it first 'broke' as a news item.

Is it precisely because we get so bombarded by the 24/7/365 media,  like some endless News Item Loop From Hell, that we seem to get so switched off so suddenly? Moving on like herds of restless antelope to greener fields of breaking news heaped on the lives, fortunes and misfortunes of others? It certainly seems that way.

Perhaps we just don't want to keep hearing the same old, bad news. Perhaps we need our bad news to be as fresh and as unique as possible, before that too becomes stale and, well, boring? Because heaven knows good news just doesn't sell as well as the bad, the ugly and the horrific. Maybe it's always been that way.

But there's something very unsettling about the way we are in this regard.

Not to mention fickle. This fickle species called humanity that (thinks it) rules the world as it spews pollution and toxicity wherever it goes. And decides what makes news on a whim based on its own sense of self-importance. And this is replicated again and again after every single 'environmental disaster'. Which, by the way, is inevitably because of our own short-sighted greed or stupidity.

All I can say is thank goodness that the sea turtles and dolphins and seabirds of the Gulf of Mexico don't get to watch just how unimportant a news item they've become on TV.

Do you get my point?

RANT: The Almighty BP Shareholder

We have BP to thank for this in the Gulf of Mexico:

And BP feels justified in paying out $10-billion in dividends to its shareholders!!!

This is corporate arrogance at its very, VERY WORST...

Heaven forbid that shareholders don't get their payouts. I say to hell with bloody shareholders if this is the type of company they choose to invest in...

Shame on you BP!

Shame on BP shareholders!

Do you get my point?