Investing in the Economy and the Environment

In just a little over 100 years business and industry--- big capital--- has made a mess of the Great Lakes Basin.

To date the only motivating factor has been sheer greed.

I have yet to hear any major industries or their organizations call for an end to sulfide mining in Michigan's Upper Peninsula or object to United States Steel's MinnTac operation dumping its contaminated waste water into Lake Superior or object to Nestle and other corporations turning water into a commodity for sale to profit from.

First business and industry contaminated most of our freshwater aquifers in the Great Lakes Basin, now they want to profit from selling us the water obtained from the few remaining freshwater aquifers capable of sustaining life.

Of course the list of abuses in quest of corporate profits is longer than there is room to state here... suffice it to say that from the shore of "Slag Beach" located in what is now Fayette State Park to the Big Rock nuclear plant stupidly built on one of the most beautiful Lake Michigan beaches to the new upscale housing developments for the well-heled situated in the dunes along the northern shore of Lake Michigan to the contamination of Lake Erie, business and industry has done a terrible job of protecting the Great Lakes and its many diverse ecosystems.  

Big capital has created an enormous mess in the Great Lakes Basin while running off with the profits; leaving us nothing but a huge clean-up bill, pollution and poverty and all the human misery it entails. 

The entire scenario is so absurd that politicians now hold up the clean-up of this mess as a source of jobs.

Production for people and their needs on a cooperative basis where there is a real demonstrated concern for our living environment and ecosystems is one thing... production for profit is quite another... and then you have the gall to suggest that it is only on occassion that profits are reaped.

Tremendous wealth has been created in the Great Lakes basin and all we have to show for it is rusting steel mills, abandoned auto plants, and "Slag Beach" with a few wealthy individuals who have inherited the wealth workers created, ending up owning beaches we are no longer allowed to use.

And we are supposed to believe big capital now has a change of heart?

The time has come to consider a new way of investing... investing in solving the problems of humanity without any consideration for corporate profits.

The solutions will be found in a cooperative form of socialism not in capitalist investments.

If the mission of the Council of Great Lakes Industries is sustainable development, then this is truly Mission Impossible, at least under current rules of the game.  The game really has it backwards when it  posits that the necessary investment in the ecosystem must wait on a viable economy to pay for it.  The economy is a subset of the ecosystem. Therefore,should not the investment be in the economy while at the same time, and not afterwards, paying dearly for what is used and misused in the ecosystem.  We produce goods and services in the economy, but the ecosystem that we work in, at least what remains of it, has been given to us.  I first became aware of  this distinction while growing up on an old-time farm, not to be confused with those farms of today that are subsidized to mine the land and the animals after which they collect more taxpayer monies for mitigation purposes.

In fact, a characteristic of a sustainable ecosystem might be its maintenance without government subsidies.  This could be too deep for many environmentalists, deep ecologists that they might be.  But subsidies, or investments, to maintain the ecosystem really means paying the polluter.

Too many environmentalists desire to destroy the economy through the taxation of labor and capital in order to secure funds to invest in the environment, which then entails further entrepreneurial-killing regulation to protect the environmental investment.  Conversely, too many industrialists are ambitious to destroy the environment to construct an economy that can then afford investment in restoration, somewhat akin to destroying the regimes of resource-rich countries lacking nuclear weapons to keep the world free for freebies.

If BP is a member of the council then please refer to the Bulletin Board "BP doesn't uphold biodiversity".

I live in Whiting and the BP Whiting Refinery is involved in a land transfer deal with the city officials to rob the community of their Whiting Park. The mayor of Whiting worked for BP and previously was a councilman while working for BP.  BP owns vacant lakefront land next to the park. Many times I asked BP about their role in the development, known as the Marquette Plan, to transform Whiting Park into a marina, condo, entertainment complex on Lake Michigan and they refuse to give out the information.

It just isn't sustainable to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on privatizing the Lake Michigan Whiting Park to benefit a new community of condo dwellers next to the refinery. 

We need greenspace not greenwashing.