As Earth Week approaches (April 16 to 22), it might be wise to keep the following in mind.
Fossil fuel companies and chemical industries often shift blame to consumers by saying they're just supplying a commodity that people want or demand. So, we're all equally blameworthy. It's a clever propaganda strategy, but it just happens to be dead wrong.
It is not fossil fuel or toxic chemical demand that causes its supply; it is fossil fuel and chemical supply that creates the demand.
Why that is an important truth becomes very clear the moment any economy begins to move away from toxic chemicals and fossil fuels toward cleaner alternatives and renewable forms of energy. When e-cars and e-bikes came into the market, the demand for these skyrocketed. The same would be the case for other commodities based on clean alternatives and renewable energy.
The fact is that chemical industries and fossil fuel companies are not going to voluntarily stop doing what they are doing for the sake of the future health and well-being of the planet. Profit-oriented fossil-fuel companies see climate warming as an externality; in other words, something that affects others, not their bottom line. The harmful effects of greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change, are not reflected in the market price of goods and services that produce those emissions.
The same holds for chemical industries when they release harmful chemicals into the environment. The negative impacts of these chemicals on humans and ecosystems are considered externalities—a cost that is not factored into the company's production costs, but is still borne by those who are negatively affected.
If governments integrated climate warming and toxic effects of chemicals into their long-run macroeconomic policies, the cost of both would be so incredibly high no one would be able to afford them. We would suddenly be scrambling to power our world with renewables, dramatically reducing toxic chemicals and rethinking our entire Western consumerist culture.
Simply put, we need extensive government regulation that makes it unprofitable for polluters, fossil fuel companies, banks and investors to finance themselves by burning down or toxifying the planet. And, of course, it might also help if we launched massive class-action suits against chemical industries, fossil fuel companies and the banks that aid and abet them, for the damage they have already caused.
There's a widely recognized principle in environmental law called the polluter pays, which holds for climate warmers as well. It simply means that those who have contributed most to climate change and pollution of the environment should bear the primary responsibility for addressing it and be forced to cover the costs associated with toxic chemical cleanup or climate warming mitigation and adaptation efforts.
So, every time a spokesperson for the chemical industry or fossil fuel company off-loads blame onto consumers, every time you hear that we are all equally morally responsible for toxifying or warming our planet, understand that this is nothing more or less than propaganda. Don't ever let them off the hook for what they have done and continue to do.
Fred Guerin is a member of the qathet Climate Alliance Writers Group.
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