Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: “We learn from history, that we don’t learn from history.” It’s not that we can’t. Some just don’t. History records terrible corporate abuses, but some people choose to forget.
Corporations gave us sweatshops, child labor, gender inequality, downsizing, financial collapse, superfund sites, microplastic pollution, misuse of antibiotics, consequent superbugs, monocrops, monopolies, opioid addiction, junk food, consequent obesity and illness, offensive wars, and on and on. The list is long, and disgusting.
A major contributor to corporate abuse is a tax-subsidized fossil fuel industry, which has spent decades and millions pretending that climate change is not real or that humans have not contributed to it, suppressing their own scientists who discovered otherwise. Much time and opportunity has been lost, and communities are already suffering.
No further fossil fuel facilities should be tolerated, anywhere, whether for solid, liquid, or gas, and certainly not in our Pacific Northwest. Benefits claimed by corporateers are minimal and constitute cheap bribery. We must remain vigilant and active. Washington State has strong laws, and we should enforce them. Oregon has weaker laws, but they should be strengthened.
Certain corporations are running wild. We should tame them. We can. We will.
