The top two-thirds of the picture is dominated by a huge disembodied hand, unmistakably the hand of a light-skinned white male, extending downward from the upper right. The hand is so large that it covers most of the pale orange sky. The hand is pouring a clear red fluid out of a chemist's flask, and the red fluid is streaming down, partially obscuring the agricultural scene below. The hand seems clearly intended to remind us of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo depicted the hand of God bestowing life by touching Adam. The text of the ad says, in part, "...Union Carbide recently made available its vast scientific resources to help build a major chemicals and plastics plant near Bombay." Below the text is the Union Carbide logo and the slogan, "A hand in things to come."
It was 12 years ago yesterday that the Union Carbide corporation killed an estimated 8000 residents of Bhopal, India and injured 300,000 others, some 50,000 to 70,000 of those injuries permanent.[1,2,3] Starting about two o'clock in the morning, Carbide's Bhopal pesticide-manufacturing plant leaked 42 metric tonnes (46.3 tons) of methyl isocyanate, a heavy, deadly gas, into a sleeping, impoverished community, killing and injuring hundreds of thousands.
In 1988 --when Indian authorities were still aggressively pursuing legal remedies against Carbide --the WALL STREET JOURNAL reported that corporate executives throughout American industry were following Carbide's case closely because it was the first major test of a U.S. corporation's liability for an industrial accident in a third-world country. Carbide almost immediately accepted "moral responsibility" for the Bhopal massacre, but the corporation subsequently denied and evaded any other kind of responsibility. The Indian government initially sought $3 billion from Carbide. In response, Carbide hired $50 million worth of legal talent to fight the claim and eventually agreed to pay $470 million to compensate its victims or their surviving relatives, a settlement that cost Carbide 43 cents per share of stock. (Later Carbide kicked in another $20 million to support a hospital in Bhopal.) In return for the settlement, the government of India agreed to protect Carbide against any further lawsuits by victims. The day the settlement was announced, Carbide's stock price rose $2.00 per share on Wall Street because investors realized that the company's fortunes couldn't be touched. After all the lawyers and Indian government officials had taken their fees and bribes, the average claimant received about $300, which, for most victims, was not enough to pay their medical bills.
Carbide says a disgruntled employee caused the gas leak that devastated Bhopal but Carbide has steadfastly refused to allow this theory to be tested in a court of law under judicial rules of evidence. It is conclusively known that Carbide's Bhopal plant was designed in such a way that, after the deadly gas leak began, the main safety system --water sprays intended to "knock down" such a leak --could not spray water high enough to reach the escaping stream of gas. In sum, the plant's safety systems had been designed negligently. Internal documents show that the company knew this prior to the disaster, but did nothing about it.[4,p.12] Small wonder that Carbide officials --for all their cheap talk about accepting moral responsibility --do not want the issues of causation and blame adjudicated.
Methyl isocyanate (MIC) burns (in a corrosive chemical sense, not a fire sense) when it combines with water --water in a person's eyes, or a person's throat and lungs, for example. Thousands who survived are blind, or had their lungs burned so badly that they cannot work or, in many cases, even breathe well enough to walk.
Carbide initially said that MIC injuries would all become apparent immediately after exposure and no long-term consequences could be expected. This has turned out to be wishful thinking. This week, the International Medical Commission on Bhopal (IMCB) released the results of a multi-year controlled study of people living in Bhopal and they reported numerous injuries now becoming apparent in victims who had appeared to recover after their initial exposure. For example, small airway deterioration --a kind of emphysema --is apparent among people who have never smoked tobacco, but who inhaled MIC as youngsters that night 12 years ago. Central nervous system damage is becoming apparent in another group. As time passes, the harms attributable to the Bhopal disaster are growing worse and more numerous.[5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
In December, 1987, India's Central Bureau of Investigation, the equivalent of the U.S. FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], filed criminal charges of "culpable homicide," a crime just short of murder, against 10 Carbide officials, including then-president Warren Anderson.
Warren Anderson now lives comfortably in Vero Beach, Florida. He and his fellow Carbide executives have continued to thumb their noses at India's courts, where, if convicted, they would face sentences ranging from 3 years to life in prison. Carbide has successfully resisted all efforts to extradite those responsible for the Bhopal massacre, and Carbide's executives remain fugitives from justice. The Indian government has not pursued the matter aggressively, for fear of appearing unfriendly to the petrochemical industry.[4,p.11] Carbide itself has become even more profitable than it was before the massacre; indeed, Carbide's chairman, Robert D. Kennedy, described the firm in late 1994 as "a darling of Wall Street."[4,p.10]
Carbide had no choice but to evade liability for its actions, says Ward Morehouse, one of Carbide's most thorough critics: "Had they been genuinely forthcoming and made truly disinterested offers of help on a scale appropriate to the magnitude of the disaster, they would almost certainly have been confronted with suits by shareholders seeking to hold the management accountable for mishandling company funds...."[12,p.490] In other words, because the Bhopal massacre was perpetrated by a publicly-held corporation (i.e., one in which members of the public can buy stock), the victims could not possibly have received fair compensation for damages. The legal nature of the corporate form prevents management from "doing the right thing" whenever it would cost investors dearly. (A privately-held corporation could do the right thing if the stockholders agreed to make an unprofitable decision.)
This of course tells us that the future holds more Bhopals because the overseers of publicly-traded corporations now have real, tangible evidence that they cannot be brought to justice, no matter how great the crimes they commit. That would appear to be the dreary lesson that Bhopal portends for things to come. As HARPER'S magazine said recently (describing Juarez, Mexico, not Bhopal), "The future is based on the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, and industrial growth producing poverty faster than it distributes wealth."[13] The Bhopal story affirms that this is the future promised by a "free trade" world. Carbide has closed and abandoned its Bhopal plant, refused to clean up the substantial pollution of water and soil that it created there, and left town, forsaking its tens of thousands of victims who must now fend for themselves.
But all is not gloomy. Some good may yet emerge from Bhopal.
** In January 1996, a group of organizations petitioned the New York Attorney General demanding that Carbide's corporate charter be revoked. (A corporate charter is a piece of paper issued by a state legislature giving a corporation the privilege of doing business.) Under New York law, a corporation's charter can be revoked if the corporation causes great harm. By any reasonable standard, Carbide would appear to fall within such a definition. A charter revocation could be a signpost pointing toward a quite different future.
** This week 300 groups and individuals issued a new "Charter on Industrial Hazards and Human Rights" --a document some are calling a Magna Carta of corporate harms and human rights. The charter tries to draw positive examples from the Bhopal experience, gathering all the lessons into one human rights document that emphasizes the need to address the impact of industrial hazards on women, indigenous peoples, and minority groups.[14]
** In Bhopal, a new medical clinic has opened its doors, dedicated to serving the victims of Carbide's negligence and managerial malfeasance. The Bhopal People's Health and Documentation Clinic is real, and is serving the day-to-day needs of gas victims and their families. You can help by sending a donation to their U.S. fiscal agent, the Pesticide Action Network in San Francisco. Make your check out to "Pesticide Action Network/Bhopal" and mail it to PAN, Suite 810, 116 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. To discuss a donation, telephone PAN at (415) 541-9253.
Carbide's successful evasion of liability for the Bhopal massacre stands as a dark statement of things to come in a "free trade" future. In this new world order, multinational corporations do whatever feels good for them, and after they've had their way with a community, they wash their hands and move on.
On the other hand, the continuing struggle in Bhopal to put things right is a testament to the power of the human spirit, which refuses to be crushed.
--Peter Montague
We read about 30 scientific and medical journals on a regular basis. In recent years, a remarkable quantity of bad news for humans and the environment has appeared in these and other peer-reviewed journals. Because these results were gathered by the scientific method, they are pretty convincing. On the basis of this work, it seems safe to say that our civilization is pulling the rug out from under itself. Business as usual is relentlessly destroying the community of creatures and ecosystems upon which our survival depends. On the other hand, business as usual is enormously profitable for a small group of people, who fiercely defend what they are doing and who now sponsor an entire industry dedicated to denying that trouble lies ahead.
According to the NEW YORK TIMES, the business community has developed a specific wish list for the new Congress: they want less environmental regulation, and they want to curb the rights of citizens to bring lawsuits against corporations for harms.[1]
It seems apparent that the long-term strategy for achieving both goals is to diminish the power of science. The aim seems to be to bring science out of the laboratory and turn it into more of a street fight where the most powerful and ruthless adversary has the best chance of winning. By this means, it seems apparent, corporations intend to undercut the credibility (and therefore the power) of scientific findings.
In these two arenas --the courts, and government regulations --contradictory tactics are being pursued.
In the courts, corporations (and the representatives they paid to install in Congress) are trying to limit scientific evidence by excluding views they claim are outside the mainstream. For example, the Republican Party's 1996 Platform contains a section called "Restoring Justice to the Courts," which proposes to "eliminate the use of 'junk science'... by requiring courts to verify that the science of those called as expert witnesses is reasonably acceptable within the scientific community..."[2] In other words, testimony by expert witnesses would be disallowed unless it represented the views of the scientific mainstream. Scientists with new research findings and new information about cause-and-effect would be effectively excluded from the courts until their work had been absorbed into the mainstream of science --a process that might take years or even decades.
On the other hand, in the arena of environmental regulation, the same corporations (and their same representatives in Congress) are working hard to undermine the credibility of mainstream scientific views. In this arena, their goal is to boost the standing and credibility of the scientific fringe --the handful of dissidents who say that global warming is not harmful and may even be beneficial; that the ozone hole is natural or has perhaps been faked; and that dioxin is not nearly as poisonous as most scientists say it is --and it may even be good for you.
The thread that ties these contradictory views together is the goal of making science into something that confuses people and thus drives people apart, instead of something that helps people reach agreement about the nature of reality.
The effort to make science more political has been gathering momentum since the election of 1994 when self-styled "conservatives" gained control of Congress. During 1995, the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment held three public hearings, one devoted to depletion of the ozone layer, one to global warming, and one to the powerfully poisonous industrial byproduct, dioxin. According to a recent analysis of the hearing transcripts, a common theme emerged from the three hearings:
(1) Research funded by the federal government is not sound science because scientists have an economic incentive to exaggerate the importance of their work ("to shill for the apocalypse," as one witness, Patrick Michaels, phrased it);
(2) Consensus science derived from peer review is not sound science because it represents a conspiracy by the scientific establishment to suppress dissenting views;
(3) Science which contains uncertainties in its conclusions is not sound science;
(4) Science that is not strictly empirical (meaning based on observations and not based on theories or models derived from observations) is not sound science.[3]
Clearly, if these definitions of "sound science" were accepted, most environmental science could not be considered sound, and nearly all studies linking human health to environmental degradation would be declared unsound. There is --and always will be --uncertainty in our understanding of complex domains, such as the environment and human health. Models are used in all complex scientific studies--purely "empirical" studies, without reference to theoretical constructs, are rare. Peer review is how scientists find errors; without it, science could not proceed. And much environmental science must be funded by public agencies because the private sector has no interest in funding it (and, indeed, often has a strong interest in seeing that it is NOT funded.).
The effort to politicize science is proceeding outside the halls of Congress as well. Individual scientists, science writers, and scientific societies, are being intimidated by lawsuits and the threat of lawsuits. Examples:
Last August, Bette Hileman, a veteran science writer for CHEMICAL & ENGINEERING NEWS (C&EN), which is published by the American Chemical Society, wrote an opinion piece titled, "Global warming is target of disinformation campaign."[4] In it, Hileman described "a systematic campaign of disinformation" being conducted by a small group of scientists calling themselves the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) whose work is funded by coal, oil, utility, automobile, and chemical companies --the corporations whose profits might decline if Congress took global warming seriously.
A prominent member of GCC is Patrick Michaels, a faculty member at the University of Virginia and a fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Michaels often publishes commentaries covering everything from global warming to the free market and tax policy in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's newspaper, the WASHINGTON TIMES.[5] In recent months, Michaels has been attacking the work of Benjamin D. Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Santer wrote the final draft of Chapter 8 of the latest report from the IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Chapter 8 concluded that "the balance of scientific evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate" --a conclusion fully supported by the IPCC but one that the coal and oil industries cannot leave unchallenged. Hileman evaluates Michaels's attack on Santer's work, concluding, "...[E]ither Michaels does not understand Santer's work or he is deliberately distorting it." In the normal course of scientific debate, such criticisms are routine.
But no longer. Now S. Fred Singer --a former colleague of Michaels and a frequent author in the Reverend Moon's WASHINGTON TIMES --has threatened a lawsuit against the American Chemical Society: "The American Chemical Society may well be courting one or more libel suits," Singer writes in the Moonie TIMES November 13, 1996, referring to Hileman's opinion piece.[6]
Singer is himself one of the fringe scientists who appeared as a witness (as did Michaels) at the 1995 Congressional ozone hearing described above. During the hearing, Singer tried to establish his ozone credentials by claiming to have published several peer-reviewed papers in which he presented his current theories about why the continent-sized ozone hole over the South Pole isn't a problem. However, when Congressional staff checked his references, they found that Singer's only published work on ozone depletion during the past 20 years had been one letter to the editor of SCIENCE magazine, and two articles in magazines that are not peer reviewed.[7] And of course his many articles in the Moonie WASHINGTON TIMES, where Singer is a regular blowhard columnist--the scientific equivalent of Rush Limbaugh. In fact, Limbaugh says he gets his information about the ozone depletion nonproblem from sources that have been traced back to Singer.[8]
The assault on science doesn't stop with threats aimed at intimidating journalists. The LOS ANGELES TIMES reported (Nov. 22, pg. A3) that U.S. Ecology --a corporation trying to build a huge nuclear waste dump at Ward Valley in the California desert --has threatened to sue two scientists who were commissioned by the U.S. Department of the Interior to study the safety of the proposed dump. In a letter to the two scientists, U.S. Ecology wrote, "Should you continue your participation in Interior's ill-advised project, please do so based on the knowledge that U.S. Ecology intends to seek compensation from any persons or entities whose conduct wrongfully injures its interests in this manner."
The two scientists --hydrogeologists Martin Mifflin and Scott W. Tyler --are employees of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and are both members of the National Academy of Science's panel on Ward Valley.
The U.S. Ecology tactic is working. The two scientists have said they must stop work on Ward Valley until the federal government agrees to pay their legal costs, if they are sued. A Department of Interior official called U.S. Ecology's tactic "disgusting" but said under law the government cannot indemnify contractors, so the Ward Valley safety analysis has been put on hold.
The message is unmistakable: if science is standing in the way of corporate goals, then the methods of science will be discredited, modified or discarded, and individual science writers and scientists, and even scientific societies like the American Chemical Society, will be threatened and intimidated.
It seems clear that the root cause of these problems is a corporate form run amuck. This legal form, which limits corporate owners' liability yet provides full Constitutional protections for corporate actions, is providing legal cover and nearly unbounded resources for continuing unprincipled attacks on our most important social institutions, including courts, elections, and the scientific method itself. Now would be an appropriate time to examine the corporate form, and modify it as necessary, to make corporations once again subordinate to the will, and the general welfare, of the American people.
--Peter Montague (National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)
===============
[1] Robert D. Hershey, Jr., "The Election Changes Little; Business Can Live With That," NEW YORK TIMES November 15, 1996, pg. D1.
[2] Republican platform quoted in Representative George E. Brown, Jr., ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE UNDER SIEGE: FRINGE SCIENCE AND THE 104TH CONGRESS (Washington, D.C.: Office of Representative George E. Brown, Jr., October 23, 1996), pg. 7, note 16. Brown is the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Science.
[3] George E. Brown, Jr., report cited above in note 2, pg. 15; see also the rest of Brown's report, including the appendices.
[4] Bette Hileman, "Global warming is target of disinformation campaign," C&EN August 19, 1996, pg. 33.
[5] Michaels writes regularly in the Reverend Moon's WASHINGTON TIMES; see, for example, March 30, 1994, pg. A14; October 18, 1993, pg. A16; March 17, 1993, pg. G3; February 5, 1993, pg. F1; and December 15, 1992, pg. F1. The WASHINGTON TIMES was founded, and has been subsidized to the tune of a billion dollars since its founding, by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. See Daniel Junas, "The Washington Times: Who Pays the Bills for the Right's Daily Paper?" EXTRA! (March/April, 1995), pgs. 15-16. EXTRA! is published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 130 West 25th Street, NY, NY 10001; phone: (212) 633-6700.
[6] S. Fred Singer, "Disinformation about global warming?" WASHINGTON TIMES November 13, 1996, pg. A15.
[7] George E. Brown, Jr., report cited above in note 2, pg. 11, note 26, evaluates Singer's recent publications.
[8] See Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, BETRAYAL OF SCIENCE AND REASON (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996), pg. 41.
Descriptor terms: science; courts; corporations; junk science; regulation; dioxin; global warming; ozone deplation; congress; lawsuits; slapp suits; bette hileman; patrick michaels; cato institute; sun myoung moon; banjamin santer; ipcc; fred singer; washington times; american chemical society; u.s. ecology; ward valley; radioactive waste; george e. brown, jr.;
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NOTICE Environmental Research Foundation provides this electronic version of RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY free of charge even though it costs our organization considerable time and money to produce it. We would like to continue to provide this service free. You could help by making a tax-deductible contribution (anything you can afford, whether $5.00 or $500.00). Please send your contribution to: Environmental Research Foundation, P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403-7036.
--Peter Montague, Editor
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