And so, the other shoe finally drops. The Greta Effect was all well and good, but just as Newton teaches us, no force ever exists without a reactionary power to rival it. Which brings us to this moment, when our corporate interests and established economical hegemonies muster to produce counter arguments and publicity in accordance to their single-minded interests to pilfer away capital to the deficit of coming generations.
And the media are either too stupid, too uninformed, or too complicit to stand up to corporate posturing.
The Swedish west coast has been a home to petroleum industries for some sixty years. Plenty of jobs revolve around the refinement of raw oil into everything from plastics to diesel and gasoline. And now, controversy has risen in the face of a planned expansion of Preem‘s oil refinery in the little Swedish coastal hamlet of Lysekil.
The plan is to expand the facilities to permit them to turn their ship fuel products into low-sulphur diesel and gasoline, and thus relieve the world’s oceans of ph-dumping hazards. In the process, however, the Preem facilities will double their carbon footprint from 1,7 million metric tonnes per year, to a whooping 3,4 million tonnes.
The company has invested millions in the project, before it has even begun construction. But environmental groups put a halt to it. Long story short, the project’s dangling in the wind, pending another trial in the environmental courts of the Swedish judicial system.
And thus they come crawling out of the woodwork. The skeavy sleazes, spin-doctors, and obfuscationists, suggesting that the increase in carbon emissions from raw oil refinement would be of lesser detriment to the world than the acidification of the oceans. When in reality, the world has had enough of both infractions.
So, to promote the Preem investments, the regional Swedish newspaper sneaks in a guest column on Midsummer Eve (GöteborgsPosten gästledare, 21/6-2019). Written by a man presenting himself as a business advisor, a past environmental Gothenburg city official and Greenpeace board member. And despite his environmentalist pedigree, the Big Business lobbyist downplays the validity of climate change and the influence of carbon emissions. Making intellectually dishonest arguments such as “carbon dioxide is a life vital gas”. Completely disregarding the concept of carbon balance in the atmosphere, and why digging up new carbon from ancient deposits is patently a bad idea. He goes on to top it all off, after having expunged the benefits of running ships on gasoline and diesel rather than the high-sulphuric alternatives, by casually dismissing climate change as the premier concern by stating, and I quote:
“So maybe the benefits outweigh the harm with this expansion – if you take into account more environmental facts other than just the climate.”
As if it matters if the scarce greenery along the western Swedish coast gets a carbon boost when it’ll all be under water in a few decades if the polar ice keeps melting.
But it surprises absolutely fuck all that this regional newspaper is publishing an anti-environment, pro-business column. They’ve been leaning harder and harder into their capitalist free-market ideology for years. Ever since it became apparent that unbiased newsmongering doesn’t make as much money as propaganda does. But it’s not just them. Even Swedish public service (supposedly our unbiased and a-political public news source) unabashedly and unquestioningly publish arguments to the benefit of the refinery expansion.
It’s true though, that we can’t let our transcontinental shipping keep regurgitating sulphur and other acidifying elements into our oceans. But neither can we allow our carbon emissions to rise either. Enough is enough, and studies show that we’re on the cusp of the breaking point. The environmental systems that govern how our world works are breaking beyond mend. It’s getting to the point of being only a matter of damage control. It’s not a matter of “if we’ve fucked our environment” but “how much we’ve fucked our environment”. And even if Saudi-owned Preem is taking efforts to limit its carbon and sulphur footprint, it will never be a carbon neutral business. Ever. It needs to die, because no manner of compromise will ever make it anything but a detriment to our survival chances.
The environment that we live in doesn’t care about relativistic decreases of human emissions. It doesn’t care about emission taxes or purchased emissions rights. Any carbon or sulphur brought out of imprisonment beneath the earth’s crust is going to have a detrimental effect on our current biosphere. Humanity has traded our future for momentary comfort for too long. And no measure of lobbyism, compromise, or white-washing is going to change that.
We’ve shat the bed. And we need to stop shitting. Altogether. Right. Now.
/Sebastian Lindberg 25/6-2019
WastedWords 