As the world burns…
First it was the Northwest Territories dealing with wildfires that forced several small communities to be evacuated. The town of Enterprise was destroyed by a blaze while the nearby community of Hay River was emptied, but appears to have mostly emerged unscathed. But by Wednesday evening, officials ordered more than 20,000 residents of the capital city of Yellowknife to evacuate by Friday at noon.
Meanwhile, in Kelowna, residents were gripped once again with fear and uncertainty as a ferocious fire, fed by strong winds and hot and dry conditions, swept to the city’s limits. It was 20 years and two days since a previous devastating fire, started by a lightning spark near Okanagan Mountain Provincial Park, forced 33,000 to evacuate and destroyed 200 homes.
- Western Canada: Unrelenting wildfires threaten Kelowna and Yellowknife as evacuations continue
By Gregg Wall (8-19-2023)
How much longer will world leaders ignore the global – fossil fuels – crisis they are responsible for?
Here in Canada, there is a full-scale meltdown underway, as Western Canada burns in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories. Tens of thousands of citizens have been ordered to evacuate, but to where? Alberta? The eye of the fossil fuels terror? For a country hungry for jobs and economic opportunity, a burning nation - Canada - surely isn’t a good look. Meanwhile, Hawaii, more specifically Maui and the town of Lahaina, has the look of a city that has been nuked. Biden insulted the people with $700 checks and a promise to do a flyby. And apparently, this is all politicians have to offer… the occasional band-aid, thoughts, prayers, a few words with the local mayor, governor, or provincial leader.
And nothing… nada, zilch, zip, and zero. Certainly no talk of reparations, remediation, and damages paid by Big Oil & Gas.
Instead, politicians, Western leaders are falling down in failure right before our very eyes: stammering, deer in the headlights, and nothing. (Check out the look a leader in NWT and Yellowknife gives PM Trudeau.) No declaration of a climate emergency. No declaration of war against this unholy terror. If a foreign power had done to Hawaii and Western Canada what fossil fuels has done, and continues to do, both nations would have declared war. But no, the Big Oil gangsters and thugs in the C-suites and Boardrooms – and their Wall St investors - get away with mass murder, buying off Western democracies, and hundreds of billions in property destruction. It’s estimated $209 billion annually in property destruction and a Harvard study has said one in five of the world’s inhabitants die, both as a direct result of fossil fuels. Numbers, both lives and property damage, that will undoubtedly soar over time. And fossil fuels and Wall St. makes tens of billions as America wages wars of aggression to create contrived shortages, both real & perceived. Indeed, wars designed to manufacture energy scarcity, so the industry & Wall St speculators have every opportunity to jack up prices globally.
Apparently, the unassailable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (aka property) only applies to the predatory elite. Everybody else gets a flyby and a pat on the back, while their homes are reduced to ash, their livelihoods are stolen, and their insurance premiums skyrocket. And the subsequent land grab ensues.
We are long past thinking any of this is natural, we know exactly who is responsible for pulling the trigger on a planet in flames. Just as power companies are sued for fires in California, and maybe Hawaii, and gun manufacturers are finally being sued… Big Oil & Gas and its bondholders & shareholders must also be sued from every angle imaginable.
Civil charges are not enough. And even though repugnant, far-right POTUS Biden had the audacity to tell the children they have no constitutional right to a stable environment… thankfully, there are laws against murder. There are international laws against: genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. And let’s not think for a moment that these latter laws don’t apply to multinationals. We typically think of crimes against humanity and war crimes as applying to nation states. However, when multinationals buyoff Western democracies & politicians and dictate state policy, there’s little doubt that Big Oil & Gas could & should be held responsible for the crimes of a state or multiple states. Check out the corruption in the U.S. Senate… is there any doubt who runs the Congress, the SCOTUS, and the Presidency? That’s right… fossil fuels, the MIC, and Wall St.
It is therefore, imperative, when our elected leaders fail us, for lawyers & prosecutors to wage war against CEOs, boardrooms, investors, the industry, and its representatives. It maybe daunting… I’m sure taking on Big Tobacco and Purdue Pharma was an ordeal… but at the end of the day, what alternative do citizens around the globe have (besides general strikes & civil disobedience)? Particularly when Western leaders continue to aid and abet these crimes and funnel endless corporate welfare and largesse in this deadly industry's direction. Indeed, wage war on this industry’s behalf (see also Iraq).
Who knows, perhaps the right attorneys and prosecutors can take down ultra-corrupt political parties and politicians in the process.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2023
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