Shake Baby Shake

Jane Hahn for The New York Times 

"The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates...As many as 546 million gallons of oil spilled into the Niger Delta over the last five decades, or nearly 11 million gallons a year" - NY Times 

I read the above in the NY Times yesterday and my stomache turned.  I've known for years about the struggles of the people of the Niger Delta in pursuit of social, economic & environmental justice from Shell, but I had no idea just how much oil had and was continuing to despoil their environment.  This is what Nigerian environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa fought & died for.

It's amazing to think that the worst environmental disaster in American history is dwarfed by the scope of 50 years of ongoing destruction in Nigeria.  And American politicians like Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) want to claim that BP is the victim of a "government shakedown" because they are being required to commit $20 billion to cleaning up the mess they've made.

I wonder who's getting the shakedown in Nigeria...

I've said it time & again, those who rail incessantly against the scourge of Big Govt suffer from a conceit of privilege. Anyone who has ever lived in a nation where the government cannot (or will not) act in defense of it's citizenry in the face of oppression, will tell you that it is a necessity to have checks & balances between public and private interests, between elites and the working class, between the rights of the individual and the interests of society.  Government plays a critical role in establishing and defending these checks and balances - for proof we need only look so far as the difference between the position that BP finds itself in today, with a $20 billion bill sitting on the chairman's desk, and the position of Shell which continues to plunder the Niger Delta unabated after 50 years of indifference.

According to MSNBC Congressman Barton is the House's biggest recipient of $$'s from the Oil & Gas Industries, which may explain better than anything where his allegiances lie.  It may be that the sympathies of the Nigerian government have also been long since bought out by Big Oil.  The American people should decide at what price we're willing to sell ourselves short.  A shakedown is a terrible thing to take...if you're on the wrong end of the shake.

Comments

[Friendly Dragon]

In the '50's worked in the Niger Delta logging the aromatic tropical hardwood 'Abura' from the wetlands in the Bight of Biafra. Colonial era long before oil drilling explorations. Harvesting Abura did not involve road building; rafts of logs were floated to the inland port of Sapele. Very Edenic pastoral. Even then the presence of oil was an obvious element in the environment, as a sheen on the surface, or when sunlight hit the dark water, metalic prismatic rainbow colors flashed. My point is healthy organisms grew in those swamps - playful otters, aquatic plants, snails, crabs = organic and inorganic matter, in the mixed element water and oil =
co-existing. The local culture recognize the interdependence of phenomena - so felling logs involved 'asking permission' blessings pacifying the area with libation rituals before commencing operations.. Eating freshwater snails the locals claim are an antidote to sicle cell. The resin of the Abura is aromatic, the wood a rich mahogany amber.
Wonder if its possible to focus more on indigenous knowledge systems, of the strategies existing in nature: the role of fungi, bacteria and other biota in decomposing toxic waste matter, rather than our dependence on mechanical technical engineering solutions for remedying oil spills.
Stop rhyming and whining and get some straight facts from Technicians of the Sacred.

[admin]

I think there are definitely things we can learn from the ways in which both nature & indigenous communities deal with changes in local environments. The trouble is, certain man-made environmental changes are in fact irreparable, or at least irreparable in the span of human experience (eg. if it takes 1000 yrs for a swamp to "fix" itself, the people and creatures who depended upon it are screwed for generations and may not survive the transition). Jared Diamond has done some interesting work on this.

The bottom line in my mind, is we shouldn't be spilling 11million gallons a year into the environment & expecting nature to clean it up. Shell should be held responsible. D.N.A