In my case,
I worry that the usual bastards will give up their bastardry, but guess what?
There’s absolutely no hint, today, that that’s happening.
I bring you
our loveable old friends the Koch
brothers, who inherited their empire from their father as well as his rabid
conservatism (Papa was a founder of the John Birch Society,
as well as an oilman). So the Koch brothers have significantly expanded their
empire, and have moved into production of the tar sand oil of Alberta,
Canada.
What is tar
sand oil? It’s technically called bitumen, and here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:
Bitumen is
a thick, sticky form of hydrocarbon, so heavy and viscous (thick) that it will
not flow unless heated or diluted with lighter hydrocarbons. At room
temperature, it is much like cold molasses"
There are
tar sand deposits all over Montana and North Dakota, as well as vast amounts of
the stuff in Alberta. But because of the viscosity, the tar sands need to be
processed before they can be refined in conventional refineries. And how does
the tar sand oil get from Alberta or North Dakota to the pre-processing plant
in Whiting, Indiana?
Well,
there’s the famous Keystone
Pipeline XL, two phases of which are completed, one is under construction,
and the fourth is pending approval by the US government. But it’s important to
know—however ugly most petroleum products are, the tar sands are especially
toxic: here’s an excerpt from The New York Times from an article
from January of this year:
The
development of Alberta’s oil sands has increased levels of
cancer-causing compounds in surrounding lakes well beyond natural levels,
Canadian researchers reported in a study released on Monday. And they said the
contamination covered a wider area than had previously been believed.
Still not
convinced? Well, consider the town of Lac-Mégantic, in
which a train carrying the tar sands derailed,
caused a huge explosion, and killed 47 people. Oh, and here’s
more information:
Underneath
the remaining buildings, cleanup crews have discovered that much of
Lac-Mégantic's downtown is saturated with heavy metals — lead, arsenic, copper
— and that thick crude oil. Three months after the explosion, they are still
pumping spilled crude oil and chemicals from underneath what used to be a
gorgeous lakefront street.
OK—so the
tar sand oil is being processed in Indiana—but what about the by-products of
the processing? Called petroleum
coke—also known as pet coke—in Indiana, only 5 days of the stuff can be
stored. And according to one article:
Under
the company's federal permit and consent decree with the U.S. EPA, the waste is
surrounded by 40-foot walls; an enclosed conveyor and loading system is
equipped with wind screens and water sprayers to keep dust down.
Since
the Whiting facility is producing more pet coke than it can store, it’s
shipping the stuff to a facility on the Southeast side of Chicago—a poor area
of town. And guess who owns the facility, called KCBX? Right—the
you-know-whos….
And
guess what? The same stuff that is so toxic that it has to be enclosed over in
Indiana? Here’s what Koch
Chemical spokesman Paul Baltzer (and
however much they’re paying him, it’s not enough) has to say:
But
in letters to the Illinois EPA, the company said "it is not feasible"
to cover the piles because "stockpile locations and usage patterns are
constantly changing."
"KCBX
puts a priority on regulatory compliance and managing operations in a manner
that protects the health and safety of employees, the community, and the
environment," Baltzer said in a statement.
Well,
as you can see in the clip below—the skies over the Southeast side of Chicago
are frequently black, and so people are keeping their kids inside. Which, if
you have ever endured a Chicago summer, would be intolerable if you didn’t have
air conditioning. But as it happens, many people in Chicago—especially poor and
lower-middle class people, because of course that’s what these people are—don’t
have air conditioning.
So
a whole bunch of poor people are getting exposed to some really toxic stuff,
all for the benefit of some rich guys who are getting richer by the nanosecond
and who are using that money to buy state legislatures to ensure that laws are
vaguely written, that environmental regulation is weakened, and that a
reactionary point of view is pushed down our throats.
And
guess what? It’s not the first time. Here’s what the pet coke situation looked
like in Detroit, before the mayor ordered them
to be removed.
And
yes, the Koch brothers own that facility, too….
