A Recipe for a Toxic Culture Ehor Boyanowsky Matthew 16:26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? In 1985 a wall of water from a breached tailings dam tore down the Stava Valley in Italy destroying farmland, villages, animals and killing 268 people. Local people had expressed concern about the dam , the government’s response: to have the company that owned it inspect it. A consultant was hired, nothing was done. The tragedy soon followed. Eventually 10 people, including mine management, officials in charge of regulation and members of the government were convicted of manslaughter. It was only Italy’s second most severe disaster. When in 1960 journalists passed on local citizens’ concerns regarding the building of the dam in Vaiont, Italy, the government’s response was to sue the journalists for “undermining social order” hoping to muzzle them. (Sound familiar, eh?) Then, on the heels of a massive landslide, a wall of water 820 feet high swept over the dam and came down the valley wiping out everything in its path and killing over 2000 people. The dam, built by the Adriatic Energy Corporation and intended to bring great economic benefits to the region, remains unused. Government blamed God, despite all the early signs God sent them. Today, as I discovered while researching international trends in the disposal of hazardous waste, its charming countryside and people notwithstanding, Italy is notorious for having its toxic waste mixed with fertilizer and spread in its orchards, vineyards and fields. Some very brave Italians have died trying to overcome that toxic culture, a brew of corrupt politicians and opportunistic criminals. Given the trends in government and business lately, Canada has more to fear from afar then the spread of the deadly Ebola virus. The trend being favoured by government in Canada and British Columbia is to promote business not quite at any cost; but rather to use a cost benefit analysis comparing the uses of a resource, eg. mining, electricity, and fish- farming versus recreation, protecting farmland, wild rivers and wild fish. To promote that bias they muzzle scientists (not allowing public comment or even publication of results) and gut the power of the Fisheries Act, at one time the most potent deterrent to crimes against the environment at our disposal. And to make sure meddling with this grand plan is minimal, government reduces the number of regulatory, conservation and environmental protection officers, not to mention impoverishing their operations budgets. As I have written previously, the relative value of a proposed economic activity is not the choice between risky industrialization versus preserving an unsullied natural resource like a river, but like the method of modern insurance underwriting, to compare the potential economic return to the cost of recreating that river as nature originally did with its water and insects and fish and animals and trees. Few countries much less companies can afford such undertakings. In any case a mine may last a few years like the Mt. Washington mine, but the acid mine drainage remained for decades until you and I paid for it. The Puntledge River and tributaries produced wild salmon for thousands of years unassisted. And now after many millions in reclamation costs, may again. China reports fifty percent of its rivers have literally disappeared, gone from the face of the earth and the rest are mostly badly contaminated. Now what to do with all that new-earned wealth? Buy pristine property in BC? Employees at the Polley Lake mine understandably decry the potential loss of their jobs. To protect those jobs, unions should be conducting independent tests to make certain environmental standards are not being violated thereby protecting those jobs and their homes. In a recent mathematical model published in the journal of theoretical and philosophical criminology I proposed a multidimensional formula that allows judges and juries to measure the gravity of a crime against the environment based, among other parameters, on the severity of damage done and the degree of dissemination of that damage to the earth and among the populace. The next step is to bring into court not only the managers, who after all are mandated to maximize profit, but like the Italians did, to try the bureaucrats in charge of protecting the environment and the heads of government with whom we have entrusted our lives and our country. As criminologists have discovered, community standards, as we set them, determine how resolutely the laws of the land and survival are upheld.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 22:21:47 +0000
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