Killing the World Through Pollution

Killing the World

It was far from a pretty site as the commentator of Sunday Night, Mike Munroe, explored the horrendous environmental disaster in the Amazon Jungle of Ecuador. This was an Australian presentation of October 9th, and is a wakeup call for Australia and other countries thinking of doing business with such environmental polluters and criminals. Mike and his companion Zoe Tryon, an anthropologist from England, trekked over putrid oil polluted fields left deserted by an American Company who have extracted oil for some years before selling out.

In places the oil is over 3 meters deep and it is leaching into the water table to say nothing of its flow into the river which feeds into the Amazon River. This water-way is home to several tribes of Indians who have lived here for thousands of years and who are now being killed, maimed and scarred by the toxic waste.

Children are born deformed, skin disease and other traumas are rampant and nothing can live in the water that once fed them. It is now a case of buying their food at the market in the town centre.

The Loss of Species

The area was once home to many forms of life that have now disappeared. The birds, insects, fish, frogs, animals and plants that were once their supermarket have gone. Although they stay on their land one tribe’s numbers has dropped from over 5,000 to just 400.

The story is repeated over a huge area of the jungle and when the oil appeared to have disappeared from the surface it remains below the ground to an enormous depth. It would take over 8 billion US dollars to start to clean the mess up by the oil company, who was ordered to pay by the local court, but stated they will not do so.

Greed and More Greed

Everyone who drives a car is possibly somewhat responsible for the actions of oil companies who think that they can walk over landscapes and extract their wealth without consequences. But when the Gulf of Mexico was polluted by the accident on a company’s well it had to pay up and the US government took action. But in Ecuador there appears to be no real power to make the polluters accountable.

People power can make a difference if people have a mind and companies who shirk their responsibilities when it comes to the environment must be made to pay up, clean up and help local people when and wherever they are affected. It is up to governments to enforce penalties and strict rules.

Mining Tax

The Australian government is introducing a mining tax and in this case one can see that such a charge on the extraction of wealth from the ground is definitely warranted. While there is much opposition to it on the home front it is possibly something that all countries should take to heart and implement.

What is happening as a result of mining and the destruction of environmental habitats is killing the world and it is time it was stopped.