Niger Delta Oil Spills

In Nigeria today, people are being harmed by the continuous Oil Spills that are occurring every year. About three hundred of spills occur every year, causing up to six hundred gallons that are being spilled in the time period of fifty years now. Environmental Justice is wondering why anyone hasn’t stopped this and who is responsible for the crucial act. Oil companies in Nigeria have consistently blamed oil spills on poor farmers and fisher men and women; which in some cases this may be true. But a great deal of spills are due first to pipes which are old and rusted and irregularly maintained; and secondly the fact that the many pipelines run over ground in front of built up areas even in front of people’s homes and are therefore more vulnerable to accidental damages. Their denial of responsibility also ignores why the pipelines are located in highly built up areas and near to fishing ponds, creeks, and farmlands causing them to live in toxic waste. Since the pipelines are located in these general area it are threatening the wildlife of species and animals; causing fish, turtles, and birds to live in harmful and deadly environment, the pollution is destroying the livelihoods of many of the twenty million people living there, and damaging crops and fueling the upsurge in violence. Instead of having a Restorative Justice and government to say that is enough and wanting to rebuild its country and save everything that is endanger; the Nigeria government is earning profit from the oil industry, about sixty percent of the oil profit that is made from the oil companies are supposed to go to the government and forty percent goes to the oil companies. They say that Nigeria government is supposed to donate the percentage that they receive to the Delta, but they are claiming that they haven’t received a dime from them. Which is leading to believe that the government of Nigeria is pocketing the money for themselves, because number prove to say about three hundred billions of dollars in revenue has disappeared and is not able to trace where it went. Then one half of the daily oil production that is earned goes to the United States, so in a sense the Nigeria government and the United States benefits from this act that is occurring right now.

The Distrubutive justice is aware of the crisis that is going on to Nigeria, but instead of wanting progress and development in the country they are sitting back and doing nothing of what sort. By wanting good in a society, deontological ethics need to come into play. In the reading “Environmental Justice,” Figueroa states that when the environmental justice takes a burden or an effect on the environment it leads to movement and development to occur. “Examples of environmental burdens include exposure to industrial pollution and hazardous materials, unsanitary or unsafe working conditions, the exploitation and loss of traditional environmental heritage, and the depletion of essential natural resources. Environmental benefits include access to clean, safe environments at home and at work, and access to nonindustrial milieus like national parks and forests and regional open-space preserves.” Why hasn’t the government stepped in and put a stop in this? Many environmentalists has been wondering the same thing, knowing that the homes, and general popular areas were consisting of major pipelines for oil, you would think that they would not build homes there but instead they did causing crisis and life’s to be in danger. EPA wanted to put a stop to this since toxic waste and pipelines were affect the environment, but capitalism played a major part because they were receiving money so in a sense they did not see an issue. Figueroa relates to the issue by saying, “Homeowners Association, which sparked the national antitoxic movement by forcing state and federal agencies to relocate more than 900 families from their neighborhood, which had been built on top of 21,000 tons of buried chemical waste.” In Summers perspective in “Environmental Justice,” it discusses that we can look at different issues and the level of thinking a human has. “Living together in a community creates benefits and burdens that exists only within community, and we cannot account for community benefits ad burdens solely in terms of individual rights and responsibilities.” By saying the government did not stand up and put a stop to the oil spills, there is only so much a community can do without causing issues. In a sense will this crisis ever end and someone will stand up to what is right, even though this has been going on for fifty years now. Will the animals and humans be able to survive in a country that is polluted and contaminated?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z3UfehL5JU

www.worldweatherpost.com/2011/01/27/shell-refuses-to-pay-for-nigeria-oil-spill-pollution/

Criticism of Mansanto

Monsanto has some good ideas on how to fix the worlds agricultural problems such as food output. They believe that they can fix our agricultural problems by providing people and communities with better tools and innovation, increasing output per acre, and reducing the amount of land, water, and energy needed to grow the crops. But Monsanto is forgetting some of the important issues with food production such as our food export and import system and food dependency. According to one of the videos from class, many countries are not only not given the proper tools, but they are having to either sell most of their crop in the export system leaving themselves with little to nothing to feed themselves, and/or they are stuck in the food dependency circle. The food dependency circle refers to the circle of growing whatever is in demand at the time and not necessarily the crop one needs for themselves. But with our market the way that it is, demand can shift instantaneously from say cotton to pineapples. So the farmer that was harvesting cotton will no longer get the most money for their crop and it is now useless. The video argues that we need to change our whole import/export marketing system, and this would help our agricultural problem. Monsanto has some good ideas, but they forgot about theway our market works. If our market system was to change; however, Monsantos ideas could definitely benefit our agricultural system.

Monsanto PR material

Additional material

Farm animal cruelty

   I looked at two pieces of media.The first was a video about factory farm abuse in Ohio. Employees would beat, and hit animals with pitch forks.In the other piece of media, it told the story of two men that were camping and decided that they were hungry. They stole a baby calf and shot it with an arrow and sliced its neck.
   In the first piece I feel that Beating and stabbing cows with a pitch fork is no better than the conditions with in a farm factory. Most animals with in a factory farm are already placed in horrible conditions in which they fight with other animals causing death or health problems. There are other forms of cruelty to the factory farm animals that are around the same level. In an article by Jim mason and Mary Finelli called "Brave New Farm", they describe the harsh realities of factory farm conditions. For example, many chickens are caused stress by their by "the crowded,poorly ventilated sheds.[Because of this] Birds pecked each other to death and ate their remains...[this] could be reduced by burning off the tips of chickens' beaks with a blowtorch"(Mason 159). Usually this causes chickens pain for many months or longer. Chickens have lots of nerves within their beaks. This action of debeaking causes longer pain than beating an cow. Another example of cruelty near the same extent is among veal and "beef cattle" practices. After a day of having been given birth to, many calves are taken from their mothers and placed in veal crates or wooden stalls. They are "confined to a space scarcely larger than his own body, and is tied at the neck to restrict movement further"(Mason 162). These calves are practically starved for a living to keep their skin white because that is a higher valued product. The reason the neck is tethered is because  the farmers do not want them to eat the iron from their own secretion. The skin will turn more brown and have less value in the veal market. For beef cattle, they call "be dehorned and branded, and males are castrated, all without anesthesia"(Mason 162). Castrating and dehorning without pain killers can be just as painful or more compared to the beating of the cows in the video. Abuse at the Ohio farms are bad but they are no better than the conditions at a CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation).
  The perspective of Both articles show that the people in the video and article relate to Aristotle.The men who killed the calf can be seen in Aristotle's "Animals are for Our Use". Towards the beginning of his writing, he says that "for tame animals are naturally better than wild ones, and it is advantageous that both should be under subjection to man; for this is productive of their common safety: so it is naturally with the male and the female[female being the calf]; the one is superior, the other inferior"(56-7). A cow is looked at as a tamed animal for the necessity of providing food for humans. Due to this explanation, The men in the article see it fit to steal and eat a cow because cows are used as a main source of food and are inferior to the men. Also using this to critique the video, Because humans make use of cows and see them as inferior, it does not matter how cows are treated. I do not agree with this view because just because some "tame" animals like the cows are used as a food source and seen as nothing more, does not mean we have a right to treat them that way.Singer who wrote "All Animals are Equal" would say that these animals are being seen in a speciesist view point. This means that people value one animal over another based on their belonging to a certain species. The men who killed the baby calf would fit this description because they chose the cow because it is seen a source of meat due to the United States preferring beef as one of its main sources that are daily consumed. If they were camping they could have found different types of animals in the area that could have just as edible as the calf.
   These perspectives are just one way of viewing these articles on farm animal abuse. Animal abuse publicized by news is just as bad as many conditions animals live in on factory farms. Also due to the idea that a cow is meat, we look down on them and that can be seen as a speciesist view on the type of animals we eat in the United States.

Links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUhm9mctSwc
http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2009/05/02/2766704-hungry-ny-men-accused-of-stealing-eating-calf
picture of debeaking:
http://www.liveexportshame.com/photos/welfare/Debeaking.jpg