We face climate change, we face plastic pollution, we face many problems caused by the use of fossil fuels, but also many problems caused by humans that use those fossil fuels to make other things, to mass produce, industry.
Industry is visible, you can see it, but it has no real identity to us, it’s a bunch of pipes and blue lights at night. You hear humming and see flares. It smells weird. The above picture could be of an installation who’s waste polluted dutch waters for years, because one company took in all the waste and pretended to pump it onto a barge, but in fact dumped it in the water next to the barge. This happened on a non descript terrain in a sparsely populated area by people that lived private lives. That did not want to be known.
Truth : Industry does not care about human lives
We read in the news that German chemical factories are once again polluting the Rhine, which ends in the North Sea and supplies the dutch with drinking water. They used to pollute the Rhine much worse, but then they where forced to clean up, but now new chemicals are being produced that do not fit the restrictions. It is an endless process of running after companies that just dump their waste through the route of least resistance.
Golden rule : Be boring and inconspicuous
The people in the polluting industry are not world news. They are smarter if they remain inconspicuous. High pay of CEOs is less in companies that want to offer no grip for resistance, critical judgement or even agression. If you earn 200,000 Euro in Europe you can have a nice life, with your family. Only in highly competitive jobs, like in banking, something many people can do, you see that pay rises to insane heights. This is also a result of the fact that there is no oversight on contracts, or very little. We worry about banks, and we should, because they finance industry that may as we speak introduce another chemical or product that will damage lives for decades if not centuries to come.
tbc