Healing Our World
Weekly Commentary
By Jackie Giuliano Ph.D.

Fossil Fuel = Barrels of Blood

The day we die the wind comes down to take away our footprints

The wind makes dust to cover up the marks we left while walking.

For otherwise the think would seem as if we were still living

Therefore the wind is he who comes to blow away our footprints.

-- Southern Bushmen

We have all seen movies depicting a future when fossil fuels are scarce and desperate people resort to killing one another for a gallon of gas. The "Mad Max" films are known throughout the world as depicting this post-apocalyptic nightmare.

What would you think of the following scene: dozens of community activists occupy a Chevron oil platform in the Niger Delta, on the western coast of Africa. They are protesting the destruction of their country and of some of the most fragile ecosystems in the world. They are protesting the polluting of the fishing and farming resources, their only means of support. They are protesting that the money from the oil production provides 80 percent of the Nigerian dictatorship's revenue.

Chevron leased helicopters to fly in the country's dreaded Mobile Police and the feared Nigerian Navy, who shot to death two protesters and wounded others. Eleven activists were detained for three weeks, one reporting he was handcuffed and hung from a ceiling fan hook for hours when he refused to sign a statement written by Nigerian federal authorities.

How about this scenario: Hundreds of people gather outside a Shell Oil facility in Nigeria, protesting similar toxic activities. The military police are invited in and they conduct a massacre that results in the death of 80 people. A few years later, the leader of the activist movement is arrested and, along with eight others, executed.

Do these incidents sound like a Hollywood drama? Did I see this in a new film about a nightmarish future? No. They are real. The first atrocity happened on May 28, 1999. Pacifica Radio's Democracy NOW! program has documented, for the first time, Chevron's role in the killing of two Nigerian activists. Chevron representative Sola Omole admitted it, in an interview, last week.

The murder of the 80 activists occurred in October 1990. Ken Saro-Wiwa, the leader of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, an organization fighting the oppression of the people by Shell Oil and the Nigerian government, was executed on November 10, 1995.

I hope you are as shocked as I was when I learned this. Few know that the extraction of fossil fuels is paid for with the murders of many people and the destruction of many of the world's ecosystems. Entire villages may have been murdered to cover up toxic oil extraction activities.

All this is done so that we can have cheap gas. But how cheap is it? In reality, it may be the most expensive product on the planet.

Oil was discovered in Nigeria in 1960, about the time the country gained independence from the British. It is a country slightly more than twice the size of California that has over 107 million people. Its brutal dictatorships have been supported by the multinational oil companies since the discovery of oil. The money received by the Nigerian government from oil revenues is in excess of $10 billion per year!

Shell admits that it averages 221 spills per year in the Nigerian Delta, the basin of a rich tropical mangrove forest that supports an amazing diversity of life. Over 7,000 barrels of oil are released from these spills. Forty percent of Shell's spills in the world are concentrated in Nigeria.

Once the oil is extracted, it is separated from water, resulting in a hazardous sludge that is dumped around the oil refining operations. The pollution dumped by Shell is 50 times more than would be legally allowed in the United States or Europe. This toxic dumping is destroying not only the ecosystem, but the livelihoods of the people as well in this land, Africa's most populated country.

We face a powerful challenge in this new year. We must broaden our awareness of issues beyond the comfort zone. It is no longer enough to know that driving produces pollution and, if convenient, we should drive less. It is no longer acceptable to put off writing that protest letter or finding another gas station to patronize. Thirty people have been killed in Nigeria since December 30, 1999 standing up for what they believe in. What have you and I done since December 30 to stand up for what we know is right?

We all know that fossil fuel comes from the remains of dead plants and animals who lived millions of years ago. The gasoline we refine from that oil is also the product of death - death of suffering people and ecosystems whose blood was spilled yesterday in the name of greed.

As the end-users of that product, we have a responsibility to do something about it. If everyone wrote Shell and Chevron today and said stop or we won't buy what you sell, it would stop.

We must bring the painful awareness to the front of our minds that we are filling our gas tanks with blood - and stop it.

RESOURCES

1. Learn activist tools and techniques from Protest Web's Activist Handbook at http://www.protest.net/activists_handbook/

2. Bring yourself up-to-date on the events in Nigeria with a release from Corporate Watch at http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/corner/worldnews/other/269.html

3. Learn about Shell's operation in Nigeria at http://www.gem.co.za/ELA/ogoni.fact.html

4. Find out how to add your voice to this obscene situation at http://www.prairienet.org/acas/foealert.html and find out how to boycott Shell at http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/gallery/shell/boycottshell.html

5. For a good list of links, visit Corporate Watch at http://www.igc.org/trac/gallery/shell/dontkill.html

6. Fighting large corporations can be daunting. Find out how to research corporate activities from Friends of the Earth at http://www.foe.org/global/corps/res.html

7. Learn about the Friends of the Earth campaign to boycott those harming Nigeria at http://www.foe.org/global/corps/shell.html

8. Read the material at the web site of Pacifica radio program Democracy now. They have a transcript of their recent program on the Nigerian situation at http://www.pacifica.org/programs/nigeria/transcript.html

9. Learn about problems with the other oil companies at http://www.mcspotlight.org/beyond/oil.html

10. Find out who your Congressional representatives are and e-mail them. Write them often about issues that matter to you. If you know your Zip code, you can find them at http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html or you can search by state at http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html

11. Learn about the issues. Seek out books on the subject. A good source for used (and new) books is Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, Oregon at http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/associate?assoc_id=212 where you will find a wonderful alternative to the massive chain bookstores taking over the market.

Visit the Healing Our World Archive and check out the many resource links in past articles.

This Healing Our World article appear courtesy of Jackie Giuliano (copyright 1998)
and is printed with the permission of the Environment News Service.

Jackie Giuliano, Ph.D., can be found in Venice, California, trying hard to pass by the Shell and Chevron stations so close to his home. He is a Professor of Environmental Studies for Antioch University, Los Angeles, and the University of Phoenix Southern California Campuses. Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at jackie@healingourworld.com  and visit his web site at http://www.healingourworld.com