When Environmental Regulations Fail Us

The vast majority of the world’s scientists have formed a consensus that human activity, including use of fossil fuels, is warming the planet at an alarming rate. There have been many calls to take action, big and small, to address this distress signal from mother earth. Environmental regulations vary from country to country, even state to state, but nevertheless are the most important aspect in even beginning to address the problems that we face in protecting our natural world. One of the biggest meetings to try to have the world’s leaders on the same page is coming up next month in Copenhagen. This is the big one; all the little things that individual countries are doing culminate in this gathering on the world stage to put the best minds together and find solutions. However, economic concerns threaten to trump any chance at real progress in curbing global warming.

Lack of environmental regulations, or protection of our way of life in the face of natural disasters of catastrophic proportions, is at the heart of the matter. The American way of life, indeed the way of life of the entire developed world, is dependent upon cheap fossil fuels. And the way of life that we’ve built since the middle of the 20^th century, is that of a suburban way of life. It is all interconnected; our dependence on oil is in large part due to our inability to even think about organizing our lives and our economy in a more sustainable way. A lifestyle centered on the automobile; from the rise of Levittown to the development of the interstate highway system, is our blessing and our curse.

There is no better example of either ignoring environmental regulations or lack of them, and our pursuit of maintaining this lifestyle, than the Alberta Tar Sands. This excerpt from a National Geographic article on the Tar or Oil Sands shows the lengths that our society will go to keep the lifeblood of the economy going, while exacting a terrible environmental toll: “Nowhere on Earth is more earth being moved these days than in the Athabasca Valley. To extract each barrel of oil from a surface mine, the industry must first cut down the forest, then remove an average of two tons of peat and dirt that lie above the oil sands layer, then two tons of the sand itself. It must heat several barrels of water to strip the bitumen from the sand and upgrade it, and afterward it discharges contaminated water into tailings ponds like the one near Mildred Lake” (Kunzig, 2009). As the world moves toward stricter international environmental regulations, the Oil Sands have been identified as “the largest contributor to the rise of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada” (Environment Canada, 2009). If any significant legislation or regulations come out of the Copenhagen meetings, there is no way that Canada, or the world, could meet emission reduction goals with the specter of the Oil Sands threatening the environment every day.

Of course there are abundant examples all over the world of companies and governments ignoring or weakening environmental regulations. It is mostly done to protect economic interests, which in turn protects our way of life. Perhaps what needs to come out of the meetings in Copenhagen is not just regulations that give us a fighting chance at slowing global warming, but also plans to re-order the economies of the developed world in a sustainable way. These are extremely difficult decisions, but if we do not change our ways, some day Mother Nature will force it upon us.

Natural Resources and Lifestyles: Assessing the Impact

The debate on how natural resources should be apportioned is old and contentious. There are arguments from all sides in all forms; from businesses to tourists; workers to politicians; no one seems to agree on anything, including whether our precious resources are finite or not. As with so much that involves science, there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty as to how to assess the need for regulation, decentralization, use and exploitation of natural resources. Coming to any semblance of agreement on such issues is arguably one of the greatest challenges of our times.

Different regions of the world seem to have very different ideas on the issue of privatization of resources. In Bolivia, President Evo Morales has started an “Agrarian Revolution” where land is distributed to poor, indigenous farmers to help rebuild the rural economy from the bottom up, part of a larger social democratic movement that has swept much of Latin America. Meanwhile, in California, private banks have gained control of precious water resources, and, with no public oversight, can distribute the water as they please, even selling it to the city of Los Angeles. However, the question of whether private interests should even own the rights to water is hotly contested. Wenonah Hauter, director of “Water for All Campaign” makes the case for the public good when she states, “Under corporate control, the bottom line will always be about price and profit, not the public interest. Access to clean and affordable water is a right that every American should be granted. The bank’s giveaway scheme corrupts our democratic process."(Public citizen, 2003).

Lifestyles are often affected by the control and distribution of natural resources; and it is not always nature that is affected, but human resources as well. North American tourists flock to Mexican and South American resorts for beautiful beaches and cheap travel deals; however, these resorts, owned by multinational corporations, are often not subject to laws pertaining to the health and safety of the citizens of nearby towns. In fact, these corporations often choose these communities specifically because they do not have significant regulations that would prevent them from making as much money as they can. Add to that the scandalously low wages that are paid to the local resort workers and you have a double-edged sword; tourists accustomed to paying for cheap hotels and meals would not come if prices were raised, which would be one way to pay the workers fairly (assuming that the corporations would use the monies in this way, which is unlikely). All the while the corporations pillage the local community of its resources, both natural and human.

Arguably the most controversial of instances in exploitation of natural resources can be found in the petroleum industry. We have seen the first of modern day resource wars with the battle over control of the oil fields of the globe, whether it is the Middle East, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or the Tar Sands of Alberta, Canada. Just the act of extraction in the Tar Sands alone is one of the most egregious environmental disasters we are likely to witness in our lifetime. Access to cheap, plentiful oil is the engine that drives the economies of the western world. Former Vice President Cheney famously stated that “the American way of life is non-negotiable”; in other words, we will take what we need to keep our way of life. Well, Mr. Vice President, this means that the American way of life is also non-sustainable. We know that natural resources like fossil fuel are finite, so it is only a matter of time before they run out. Will we as a society adjust to this difficult reality?