Extract from Curtis White's 'We, Robots'
"For what science
allows in the concept of sustainability is this: nature's system can
be integrated with the system of corporate industry. That's the story
and the ideology of sustainability. Sustainability is an effort to
integrate ecological thinking with the very industrial practices that
put nature in peril in the first place.
...
The most grotesque
of these cringe-worthy moments is the introduction of John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., as one of the great philanthropic heroes in the
establishment of our national parks. In 1928, Rockefeller stepped
forward with $5 million to save the Smokey Mountains. He thus put,
the film blandly asserts [Ken Burn's 2009 film 'The National Parks:
America's Best Idea'], a 'great family fortune' to public use. What
isn't said - and it's almost incredible that it needs to be pointed
out - is that Rockefeller's fortune came from his father's founding
of the Standard Oil Trust, notorious for it's cut-throat business
practices, for it's use of Pinkerton goons, and for enforcing
hideously exploitative wages and murderous conditions for workers in
it's mining operations. (It was at a Rockefeller mine that the IWW's
Frank Little was murdered by company thugs in 1917.) The Rockefeller
mine in Butte, Montana, turned that town into what it is to this day:
one of the most toxic spots on the face of the earth. (Dashiel Hammet
called it 'Poisonville' in his novel 'Red Harvest'.) The mine
(Anaconda Copper) created mountains of toxic slag, polluted 130 miles
of the Silver Bow Creek (known to locals as Shit Creek for it's
sulpherous stench), and filled an open pit with billions of gallons
of acidic water. The mine remains a giant crypt for the thousands of
workers who lost their lives underground and whose bodies were never
found. When the mines became unprofitable, Rockefeller simply
abandoned the town and pulled out. (The site is presently the
responsibility of, appropriately, British Petroleum.)"
~Curtis White, "We, Robots"
~Curtis White, "We, Robots"
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