Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star
Re; Alberta oil, gas cleanup could reach $70B: report, April 9, 2019.
The fossils in the fossil fuel industry are strangely silent when it comes to ponying up for the cleanup costs of their mess. Governments have been trained to use taxpayers money to do this. They want all the gravy but none of the leftovers. Every industry in the world takes the same approach. When it comes to making money they’re first in line, when it comes to paying out their money to take responsibility for their products or their waste they are nowhere to be seen. Each industry leaves behind a horrendous number of carcinogenic products as a result of their production processes along with a massive amount of physical cleanup. Industries have for centuries pumped their contaminated untreated waste water into the nearest watershed and dumped their waste in toxic landfills poisoning the rivers, lakes and oceans and making our drinking water undrinkable.
Again and again when industry is asked about this, they disavow responsibility and evade prosecution employing high priced lawyers and a legal system that is largely based on ‘voluntary’ compliance, which has simply been an escape clause for past two hundred years . Timid governments shield huge companies in the rich oil and gas sectpr to preserve a few hundred cyclical jobs. The only interest of these companies is in making money and avoiding responsibility – anything that gts in the way of that is a problem and a nuisance.
What we need in Ottawa, provincial politics and around the world are parties that will end the free ride for corporate businesses that have destroyed the world. Big industry has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are the enemy. Governments must establish ironclad ‘cradle-to-grave’ laws that govern all aspects of a products life-cycle. The industry should be fully legally and financially responsible for their products and more importantly for their waste. If high wages, pensions, healthcare, full-time work, environmental responsibility and every other aspect of business in relation to society were mandated by governments in legislation the benefits to us all would be infinitesimal. The public needs to take over as the fair-haired person of government. As it is we have the cart before the horse.
Taxpyers should never pay for the destruction of companies to our environment, our climate and our well-being or receive corporate welfare to get along. Business want the best of both worlds. It is high time they stared taking the good with the bad. Let the fossils in the fossil fuel industry pay for the cleanup as they should.