Disposable Work Sites

I need to rant. And cry. And rail against The Oil Man! I was having a conversation with a friend recently in which it took an interesting turn and I want to (need to, argh!) share the story. We were talking about his job, he works in "acquisitions" for one of the biggest oil companies in the world. He travels extensively in his profession and is getting ready to go on another business trip soon, but his trip was delayed due to unsafe conditions in the destination country. As we were talking about the canceled trip and the temporary relief therein, the conversation turned from the personal fear and questionable morality of the job to the environmental destruction and immorality of the big oil companies.

I was introduced to the term "disposable work sites" for the first time. I'll get back to that in a moment. Before he started talking in depth as to facts, he said he had seen things in his career that had made him want to cry, and things that made him feel completely demoralized. I do not believe he said this lightly, I wanted to cry listening to him. And take a shower. I am going to keep him out of the rest of this and just repeat what I was told. He signed a lifetime confidentiality agreement and has not the slightest doubt as to whether they enforce policy. His words were "I'd be a dead man". I am not trying to sensationalize this, honestly it is already sensational enough, I need no embellishments. Some of you will not believe any of this at any rate. Hopefully I do his story justice and do not mangle the intentions.

Back to the disposable work sites. As I understand it, a company would bring its equipment to the arctic work sites and set up after the hard freeze. They need to be out before spring break-up in order to safely, even feasibly, tear down the work site and transport it all back out. It is costly to bring the equipment in and set up, and costly to reverse the process. So sometimes they just leave it. If it is more expensive to tear the job down than the equipment is, the job might run long and make it impossible to get out due to thaw. What are they to do? The government has protocol in place for this "just in case". They must drain all toxins out of the various machinery and a few other measures are in place (I do not know them all), and then they can leave it. The earth will swallow it all down as full spring break-up commences. For this reason, much of the equipment remains unregistered. The government does not want to set a strict leave date because no one can predict the thaw to the day and every day lost is a dollar lost for them. This is tundra, where things take years to grow and everything existing is vital. The impact of ecologically reckless actions is incomprehensible.

There was more to the talk; the big oil reasoning that if the government fines $20,000 to dump here, and it costs $30,000 to properly dispose of toxins... we can guess (and at times see) which they choose. The destruction to the Inuit tribes by oil companies laying waste to their lands. The known probability that the indigenous people, too, can be bought off. I believed that buyout to be rooted in fear that they and their desolate lands will be completely forgotten by the rest of the world.

I can not cite sources, give names or exact dates, nor can I give exact geographical instances. That does not make any of this less true, or less significant. We hear about mass consumption of natural resources so frequently now that there is a tendency to tune out the under current of urgency racing through environmental societies. We need to re-sensitize ourselves, we need to feel the pure outrage the aforementioned harmful actions should incite. Environmental havoc is happening daily, how much longer will people of power and our lawmakers disregard it?

They sacrifice our land, our very future is for sale by men in the present. I read something recently, "nature has no rights today, it exists merely as property"- it resonated in me, something has to change. People rightfully cry out for child rights, for the meek voice to be heard and abuse to be prosecuted. Who will speak for nature, give it a collective voice and prosecute tormentors, simply give rights back to the very thing that gives us life? Us. We are our future. Our Earth can not give voice any louder than it already is, we must listen and articulate in words and action what is already being expressed in the declining health of our every - think of how big a word every truly is- ecosystem. We do have a voice, and in that we have power.