Pay for Poisoning — Suing Monsanto
Marin County and nine Marin cities and towns are suing Monsanto and two other companies for alleged damages caused by the sale of products containing PCBs, a known carcinogen. “The companies responsible need to contribute to the solution so that the taxpayers do not have to carry the entire burden,” Brian Washington, Marin, CA, County Counsel.
This was headlined in my local newspaper, the Marin Independent Journal on September 16, 2022. I’m highlighting it here because it follows directly on my last blog mentioning the president of Barbados asking the International Monetary Fund to, “Forgive our debt. Charge it back to the profiteers who brought us to ruin,” from more frequent and severe hurricanes resulting from climate changes from industrial nation emissions.
Are these the beginnings of a cultural shift? Might we come to believe that companies that intentionally dump waste products or poisons into the environment should pay for cleaning up their damage? I hope so. Wouldn’t that bring us a better world!
More Good News — Patagonia
NYT, Sept 14, 2022, David Gelles. Yvon Chouinard, the rock climber who became a reluctant billionaire, with his unconventional spin on capitalism, gave away Patagonia, the apparel company he founded.
To ensure independence and that all its profits — some $100 million a year — are used to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe, Chouinard created a nonprofit 501(c)(4), the Holdfast Collective. To donate their shares to this trust, the family paid a social contribution (aka taxes) of about $17.5 million. That contrasts with most wealthy donors who use various tax structures to avoid social contributions and reap enormous personal gains.
Shifting a corporation’s profits into a charitable trust is an extraordinary move. The company remains a moneymaker, but the profits go to socially desirable actions, rather than to amorphous stockholders.
Mr. Chouinard said much of the trust’s focus will be on nature-based climate solutions such as preserving wild lands. The Holdfast Collective will also be able to build on Patagonia’s history of funding grassroots activists, but it could also lobby and donate to political campaigns. “I don’t respect the stock market at all,” he said. “Once you’re public, you’ve lost control over the company, and you have to maximize profits for the shareholder, and then you become one of these irresponsible companies.”
Responsibility?
My personal understanding of companies is slightly different. Corporations are responsible, but currently only to their shareholders, not to society. Legally we treat them as people, though they have no morality or human empathy. While they bring enormous social benefits, they are inherently parasitic, relentlessly pursuing their single-minded goal — profits. They have no incentive to use sustainable production processes, and every incentive to externalize costs wherever possible, hence giving us planetwide poisoning, species depletion, and global climate change. They gain and profit, we suffer and pay. Enough already!
“One swallow does not a summer make,” but I’m heartened and encouraged by these tiny glimpses of other possibilities.
On December 2, 1970, President Richard Nixon created the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Now, 52 years later, we urgently need a Planet Protection Agency. A key part of that would be requiring sustainable production processes — pay as you go. No more kicking the can down the road.
More Good News — My Relationship
My new lady friend and I are picking up the pace. We see every reason to accelerate our, “Getting to know you,” meeting each other’s friends, entertaining together, planning travels, and so on.
It’s been years since I thought of myself as two people, “an item.,” It’s exciting, just what we each dreamed might happen at this stage of life.
Thank you for reading.
Barry
P.S. I’ll be in Australia for most of October so these regular postings may go south also.
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