Blood for Oil?

             In "Shell Refuses to Pay For Oil Spill Pollution" Arthur Max points out that Royal Dutch Shell, a leading oil corporation across the world, has spent 40 years spilling oil through out the Niger Delta.

            When questioned on the cause Shell’s director in sub-Saharan Africa, Ian Craig points to criminal “sabotage for 70% of the oil spills over the past 5 years. (Max)” Since Craig and other Shell executives blame crime for the oil spills, they will not take responsibility for damages to the environment or citizens of Nigeria.

            Environmental activist groups, including Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth, have seen the lack of environmental justice in the Niger Delta and have taken on Shell to gain back the human rights of the Nigerian people. Both groups have taken the oil company to parliamentary hearings in The Hague (The Netherlands Political center).

            The issue environmentalists see with the way Shell has handled the situation in Nigeria is similar to environmental justice wrongs that have taken place in the United States since as early as the progressive era. In “Environmental Justice: The Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy” Robert Figueroa points out multiple instances of possible environmental racism:

            “two of CWM’s largest hazardous-waste facilities: one in Kettleman City, California, a community with a population that is 95-percent Latino, more than 40 percent of which speaks only Spanish; the other in Emelle, Alabama, known as the “Cadillac of landfills,” well documented in environmental justice literature because of its huge size and location in a predominantly African-American community.” (Figueroa,5)

            Unfortunately, the master narrative of the world not only puts people of color below white men still, but also requires the use of oil and the destruction of the environment to retrieve it. When the two come together, both the lose.

            While we are so quick to “clean up” an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, there is another across the world spilling constantly that no one will clean. NIMBY is right. As long as its “Not In My BackYard” and those people have to deal with it, neither the Global North or Royal Dutch Shell are going to help the Nigerian people any time soon. 

(http://jlnavarro.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html)