Health Lover, Ilena Rosenthal
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http://www.amazonwatch.org/newsroom/view_news.php?id=1553
Chevron takes on the plaintiffs
2008-04-16
Los Angeles Times
by Lisa Richardson
A PAIR OF ECUADOREAN ACTIVISTS GO UP AGAINST THE COR****ATION OVER A
TOXIC POLLUTION CLEAN-UP.
The glorious Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, historic host to
presidents and royals, was the improbable scene of a brawl this week.
Squaring off beneath the cream-and-gilt ceilings and behind mahogany
doors were oil behemoth Chevron Corp. and a pair of Ecuadorean
environmental activists. It was not, however, a fair fight. Oil giant
vs. environmentalists? In San Francisco? Chevron never had a chance.
The occasion for the face-off was the prestigious Goldman
Environmental Prize. In green circles, the prize is huge -- sort of an
environmental Nobel. (Indeed, a past Goldman winner, Kenyan tree
planter Wangari Maathai, did go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.)
Among this year's recipients are lawyer Pablo Fajardo Mendoza and
community organizer Luis Yanza, who represent a class of 30,000
indigenous people in a lawsuit filed in Ecuador alleging that, from
1964 to 1992, Texaco Inc., which was bought by Chevron in 2001,
polluted their land and water, sickening their families, crops and
animals.
Faced with the powerful condemnation implied by the award to its
adversaries, Chevron did not flinch. It went after the activists, and
the Goldman Prize too -- saying the selection committee had been
misled and that it was about to tarnish the prize's illustrious
reputation by bestowing a bronze sculpture of Ouroboros and $150,000
on two charlatans. Learning that Fajardo and Yanza would hold a news
conference at the Fairmont on Monday at 10 a.m., Chevron held one of
its own one floor up, at 9.
The company's PR offensive is understandable: A re****t by a
court-appointed expert found that Chevron could have to pay up to $16
billion if it loses the case. So Chevron officials strove to get their
points across in their counter-conference, maintaining that the
company remediated any contamination that could have been laid at its
door long ago -- and that the state-owned oil company, Petroecuador,
is the real culprit for whatever pollution exists today.
But it's hard for a liberal city to love an oil company, and the
activists' message was heart-rending. At the awards ceremony at the
San Francisco Opera House later that night, the audience watched a
film -- narrated by Robert Redford -- showing oil-soaked earth,
physically disfigured people and the grave sites of Ecuadoreans
stricken with cancer. Viewers were left pondering not legal
distinctions but the fact that people in Ecuador are fighting for
their lives. And never, ever, Fajardo told the audience, would he give
up seeking justice for a humble people whose way of life had been
destroyed by Chevron. The case in Ecuador may take years to resolve,
but in the Opera House on Monday night, with the crowd on its feet for
Fajardo, Yanza and the other prize winners, Ecuador could claim a
victory.
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