An oil coated mangrove in the Niger Delta
My previous Water Works posts have been about the dangers that industrial pollution and agriculture are having on our supply of freshwater or “the water supply”. Industrial pollution reduces the amounts of freshwater that is available for consumption. Industrial agriculture can deplete freshwater faster than it can be replenished. I thought I’d put a pause on the water supply topic for a while and move onto other issues, but not until I’ve addressed some solutions to the problems human activity has created. This is a fairly extensive topic so I’m breaking it two parts. This part will cover methods for achieving a reduction in industrial pollution, including examples of past successes and failures. Let’s jump right in.
A strong and united government provides communities with the best defense against industrial pollution. Companies follow money. If it is cheaper for a company to pollute than to not pollute, they will pollute. When governments impose limits and fines that make producing waste and emissions more expensive than not producing any, the companies will compete for ways to pollute less… or move operations to a country where they can pollute freely in the name of profit.
Industries that pollute heavily and their indentured servants in the US government often shout rhetoric to the effect that taxes are “job-killers” or that “government is getting in the way of business”. Government officials who are not beholden to these industries will point out that these taxes are both an incentive for corporations to do the right thing and an insurance policy that funds the clean-up effort when the companies violate regulatory policies.
The Cap-and-trade system was adopted as national law in 1990 to combat the emerging problem of acid rain. The system limited the amount of sulfur dioxide that coal-fired power plants and other sulfur emitting facilities could expel. A company that emitted less than its allotted amount of sulfur dioxide could sell its unused credits to a facility that went over its limit. The number of credits issued in total was set at a number that was low enough to significantly reduce the amount of emissions over time. Did it work?
Annual acid rain deposits before and after cap-and-trade.
As Richard Conniff of
Smithsonian Magazine put it in his article,
The Political History of Cap and Trade, “With the help of federal bureaucrats willing to violate the cardinal rule of bureaucracy—by surrendering regulatory power to the marketplace—emissions trading would become one of the most spectacular success stories in the history of the green movement.” In 1995 acid rain emissions had fallen by three million tons in the US. Cap-and-trade quickly became the way to deal with pollution problems rather than a pariah of free-market policy. As of 2009, the cap-and-trade system continued to let polluting industries figure out the least expensive way to reduce their own acid rain emissions. The “job-killing” incentive only cost utilities around $3 billion annually, cut acid rain in half, created an estimated $122 billion a year in benefits from reduced death and illness, created healthier lakes and forests, and cleared up much of the smog along that had settled over the US northeast (Conniff).
Just like corporations need government to guide them in a moral direction, governments need people to guide them in moral directions. In modernized or democratic nations, public pressure on government officials is essential in achieving legislation that slows or halts pollution. The public may also be divided on this issue due to political or economic allegiances but it should be noted that an accurately informed public will increasingly side with environmental protection and beneficial public policy over corporate gains (Irvin & Stansbury).
In many developing nations or areas with little to no public influence on national government, the burden of managing pollutants falls almost entirely on government and industry. International pressure may help achieve some pollution reduction and it is possible that the public may have some say in matters. Realistically, the assumption that either of the latter will be sufficiently influential is nothing short of wildly optimistic.
While the US has been enjoying the successes of cap-and-trade, Mobil, Chevron, Shell, and other oil corporations have been making billions by punching holes in the crust of oil-rich Nigeria. The US government enjoys the ability to limit industrial processes that produce pollutants, whereas the Nigerian government is nothing more than a bulge deep in the pockets of multinational oil corporations.
The World Bank notes that over the past past two and half decades Nigerian government officials and multinational oil corporations generated a GDP of $521 billion in 2013, up from just $30 billion in 1990. Yet the average Nigerian lives on less than $2 a day and local environments are still under relentless assault.
The Niger Delta region has the greatest biodiversity in a country that is already internationally recognized for its abundance of biodiversity, but even today regular oil spills that go uncleaned, the dumping of industrial waste, and failed promises of waste development projects are eroding the region’s biodiversity and causing a rise in health problems and civil unrest.
(The fight continues for Nigeria oil spill victims)
Tribes and communities erupted in protests in the early 1990s and as recently as 2012. People began to stand up for themselves, their environment and their basic human rights. The Nigerian government and oil companies responded by cracking down on protestors and activists like poet Ken Saro-Wiwa. Saro-Wiwa was a founding member of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, which advocated for equal rights and demanded a greater share of oil revenues and reparations to an environment damaged by oil companies’ operations.
The Guardian reported that court documents revealed in the 1990s show Shell colluded with Nigeria's military and police to suppress resistance to its oil activities, and even helped to plan raids on villages suspected of opposing the company. Memos, faxes, witness statements and other documents show the company exploited regional poverty and divided communities by paying citizens to disrupt non-violent protests. According to Ogoni activists, several thousand people were killed and many more fled that wave of terror that took place in the 1990s. Shell was eventually forced to pay out $15.5 million for their role in the collaboration of the 1995 execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa. In May of 1998 helicopters emblazoned with Chevron’s logo carried Nigerian military troops that opened fire upon protestors killing 2 and wounding more. For a full list of these atrocities go here. A 1999 report from the Human Rights Watch even went so far as to explicitly state that multinational oil companies are complicit in abuses committed by the Nigerian military and police.
While a variety of religious and socio-economic factors ultimately led to the establishment and success of Boko-Haram in the country today, there can be no doubt that the co-opting of the Nigerian government by oil corporations created a setting where dangerous ideologies like that of Boko-Haram could take root (Ahmed).
In consumption based economies, consumers can pressure industry with their dollar. Conscious consumers should actively avoid purchasing any gasoline for products from the above mentioned corporations. Agencies and institutions such as Stanford University have joined the divestment movement and are selling off their stakes in some oil companies. As I mentioned in a previous article the dying of cotton and other textiles accounts for 20 percent of global freshwater pollution. Boycotting textiles produced with water based dyes would dramatically reduce the amount of freshwater pollution locally and globally. Companies such as Nike and Adidas have already switched to water free dying methods that produce zero waste.
The responsibility for preventing industrial pollution does not fall equally on government, corporate, and the public, but we all shoulder some of the burdens and responsibilities. Corporations are ultimately responsible for their production methods. Governments can either be heavily implicated in their actions or can shield the public from harmful industrial practices through legislation and enforcement of policy. In societies where the public can apply pressure to corporate and government activities the public has room to negotiate for progress by boycotting, protesting, and voting. When the public is excluded from these negotiations, rather willingly or forcibly, the social and environmental repercussions will likely be disastrous.