Corporations and the Environment

by Sue Ann Martinson

Control by large corporations over our lives has grown significantly in the 1980s and 1990s. Behind the facade of image, corporations are wreaking havoc in all aspects of our lives. Collectively they employ thousands of lobbyists who directly influence Congress.

A major area of concern is the environment. Corporations flow forward with an agenda that will result in environmental destruction. Meanwhile, in all corners of the globe, concerned citizens are acting to save the environment.

At the World Trade Organization (WTO) of November 1999, labor and environmental activists formed a coalition that caught the WTO and local authorities off guard. Longshoremen closed down the coast and union members traded hard-hats for endangered-species turtle costumes on the streets of Seattle.

I recall hearing a radio interview of an environmentalist in Seattle who said that all legal recourse had been sought to save the turtles before environmentalists took to the streets. Seattle was the culmination of years of work that had been blocked by institutions supporting corporate interests.

You have probably heard by now of the "terminator" seeds (that do not produce new seeds) created by Monsanto to force farmers to re-buy seed. Cross-pollination could spread the terminators to other plants, destroying vegetation and food supplies.

In Bolivia, the World Bank, in conjunction with a major multinational corporation, Bechtel, tried to privatize the water supply. The people revolted. Bechtel, a German corporation with U.S. headquarters in San Francisco, has apparant connections with the CIA and revolving doors to the halls of Congress. (Locally, they were an early bidder on building light-rail transit in the Hiawatha corridor.)

Meanwhile many young people, whose world and future are at stake, are in revolt. They use bikes for transportation and mount critical mass bike rides to protest the spread of highways and use of oil and gasoline. In Minneapolis, groups have protested genetic engineering and the irradiation of meat.

Still, corporations and institutions are jumping on the genetic research bandwagon. Corporations want to create "new and better products" (that is, make more money). Institutions receive government funds to research products we do not want or need so that these same corporations can produce and sell them to us, the consumers.

Take, for example, the University of Minnesota, which sponsored the recent conference on genetic engineering in Minneapolis, or the oceanographic institute in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, which, as I discovered during a recent trip there, conducts workshops in genetic research.

At the oceanographic institute, people believe they are doing research that will "help humanity," according to one workshop attendee I spoke with. They do not see the underlying evil any more than did the creators of the atomic bomb or the Nazi doctors who experimented on human beings in the death camps. No regulations exist to control them. They are experimenting on us, the consumers.

In Minnesota, Northern States Power seeks to use more hydroelectric power from Canada's Manitoba Hydro, a company that has caused devastating ecological damage, including methyl mercury poisoning and greenhouse gas emissions. The Pimickamak Cree Nation is in the center of this 25-year-old mega-hydroproject that has destroyed their subsistence economy, contributing to an 85 percent unemployment level, increased suicides, and rising family violence and substance abuse.

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Airport Commission is building an airport tunnel to serve the air-cargo buildings (created so Fed-X and UPS trucks have a speedy route). Many believe the dewatering of ground water for the tunnel will destroy the 10,000-year-old Coldwater Spring and affect other bodies of water in southeast Minneapolis as well.

Under George Bush Sr., a large hue and cry was put forth about corporate ethics. The discussion revolved around "Thou shalt not rip off or in any way betray thy corporate employer." It had absolutely nothing to do with requiring corporations to behave ethically toward their employees or toward the environment.

Multinationals with investments around the world have huge lobbying arms that can directly affect legislation and human-rights policies and foreign policy in Congress. A bumper sticker from the organization INFACT provides a prescription for getting our democracy back on track. It reads: "Big Business Out of Congress."

A government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" does not mean a government "of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations." The consumer society of the 20th century, driven by corporations with the support of government, has been carried to an extreme that is destroying the world in which we live.