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Climate Change is something that has been discussed since the late 1800s. The beginning of the industrialization era here in America is when climate change started to rapidly progress. Although we now have the tools to try and slow down climate change, there isn't much being done. That is because corporate America is trying to cover up climate change and its devastating effects by manipulating and misleading not only us, the public but also our government. Climate change, also known as global warming, is a change in global or regional climate patterns attributed largely to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by the use of fossil fuels.
This toxic amount of carbon dioxide is being heavily produced by maquiladoras, and gas and oil companies. Many of these American-based gas and oil companies, such as today’s ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, started up in the late 19th century. Whereas the term “maquiladora” wasn’t around until the 1960s. A maquiladora is an American-owned plant that sits along the United States - Mexican border.
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The reason many big corporations decide to settle in Mexico is not only for the cheap labor but also for the more leeway that they have.
The host government doesn’t stop and regulate them. These corporations are allowed to pay low wages, create unsafe work environments, and dump toxic waste in any way they please. Gas and oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips hold a lot of power not just in the United States but all over the world.
When these companies, along with other American-owned corporations, are selling their products in foreign countries, they “donate” money to the host government, which is the government that is allowing them to set up shop in their countries. This money is usually used as a form of bribery or incentive to keep the government of those countries compliant. ExxonMobil themselves admitted to this when they decided to try and move away from corruption after the “much-publicized bribery scandal in Italy in the early 1970s.” (Pratt). It’s also not just in foreign places. Here in the U.S. many of these corporations pour money into Republican and Conservative financial reserves or coffers and label it as campaign donations. This, of course, has kept these companies in the good graces of these government officials which is why many politicians are hesitant to speak badly of these big corporations or make a move against them. For the election cycle from 2017 through 2018 alone, Koch industries donated about ten million dollars, Marathon Petroleum donated six million dollars, Chevron donated three million dollars, and the list goes on (Glorioso). It is not a coincidence that most of the contributions go to Republicans and Conservatives because they are the ones who don’t speak out of terms with these corporations. Maquiladoras also use their power to keep the Mexican government cooperative. They can get away with surpassing environmental protection laws, because the country in which they settle down, in this case, Mexico, just turns and looks the other way. The primary reason why foreign companies are encouraged to settle outside of their own countries is that they are given a tax break. The reason why the Mexican government allows them to settle in their country is governmentthe that according to NAFTA, these companies are supposed to help the country’s developing economy.
Not all of the plants that settle in Mexico are American-owned, but does that are, find it quite easy to run across the border when the environmental and employee protection laws begin to get enforced. Take for example Metales y Derivados, “a former battery and lead waste recycling facility located in Tijuana, Mexico, that was shut down [by PROFEPA, the Office of Environmental Protection,] in March [of] 1994 and abandoned the next year by its U.S. owner, Jose Kahn.” (Yang). This plant, after taking out the lead from the old car batteries, would simply throw the useless car batteries into a monstrous pile, which would be their way of disposing of them. The owner, Jose Kahn, did not find it necessary to properly dispose of all the waste his company had left behind. Not only did Kahn leave behind a landfill amount of car batteries, but he also left behind contaminated soil that contained lead and other heavy metals, such as cadmium, along with sulfuric acid (Yang). The company decided to just cover the piles of old car batteries and wrap the contaminated soil in tarps and plastic. This method didn’t work well for very long and the mishandling of the waste began affecting the residents that lived near the plant. Many health problems arose, from skin problems to birth defects. In the article, “The Effectiveness of the NAFTA Environmental Side Agreement's Citizen Submission Process: A Case Study of Metales Y Derivados” by Tseming Yang, it was also stated that after the course of ogovernment-established several years the residents living near the abandoned plant complained about the horrible environmental violations done by the plant. When the Mexican government finally initiated “…criminal enforcement proceedings, Kahn fled across the border to the United States rather than face charges in Mexico” (Yang). This plant for a very long time was left in a horrible state and PROFEPA, which is part of the Mexican government, did not do much to help clean it up. There are still government established programs meant to regulate these corporations and make sure they don’t have big effects on the environment and us. We have the Environmental Protection Agency, also known as the EPA, which creates regulations to keep corporations in check and sets guidelines for environmental safety. According to David Rosner in his article, “Climate Denial and a (Hopeful) Lesson From History”, he states that when the Environmental Protection Agency started, around the 1970s, it was extremely effective.
Unfortunately, during the Reagan administration era, it went downhill. The Reagan administration appointed Thorne Auchter to Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Anne Gorsuch to the EPA (Rosner). Rosner’s article also stated that they both prioritized reducing the size and scope of both agencies and eliminating some of their primary functions. This caused new regulations to be set in place, not to protect the environment but to hide the truth from the public. In the same article, it is mentioned that Senator Whitehouse along with others arethat government trying to get these very same regulations disbanded so that there is more transparency within the EPA. Many people do not believe climate change is real because scientists have admitted to not knowing everything about climate change. This leads to assumptions that what they do know must not be very reliable. They much less believe that gas and oil companies, along with the rest of corporate America, have anything to do with climate change accelerating. Corporations such as present-day ExxonMobil knew for years that with their help climate change was accelerating and hid that information from the public (“New York City Sues Five Oil Majors City Demands Money to Fund Climate Resiliency Measures”). It is the very reason why New York City made a lawsuit against ExxonMobil and four other major oil companies. As explained in the article “New York City Sues Five Oil Majors: City Demands Money to Fund Climate Resiliency Measures”, New York City wanted these five major oil companies to cover the cost of climate change. The rising sea level, high temperatures, and high precipitation all increase the possibility of intense flooding.
There is also the situation in places like Tijuana, where many of these maquiladoras set up shops very close to urban slums, which are heavily populated areas that already have to deal with inadequate water, sewer, electricity, and trash service. On top of all that, they have to deal with the neighboring plants that are suffocating them with pollution, such as toxic waste and the release of hazardous chemicals. Both in the form of liquid and gas. Many of these corporations will also deny the manipulation of politicians or government officials. When accused of donating hefty amounts of money to certain political campaigns, they stand behind the line “corporations are people too” and therefore they should be allowed to donate as much as they want to whomever they want. This of course conflicts with their position when it comes to NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. This agreement allows them, as a corporation to move from country to country freely in search of their best interest without paying any fees, whereas if an actual individual did this, it would be considered a crime. Two years ago, during his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump had around one million dollars in donations from gas and oil companies (Meier). Not long after taking office in 2017, Trump approved the controversial TransCanada Keystone XL oil pipeline, which was halted by the Obama administration back in 2015 (Meier). This supports the notion that political campaign donations are used to sway people in government. Corporate America has gotten away with too much over the years. They have suppressed us from the truth and have placed us in a state of global warming crisis. We have gone on for years without doing something because we have been lied to, and deceived, and the reason why our government hasn’t been able to do anything is that they are being manipulated and lied to as well. That is why it’s up to us to push for stricter legislation that will once and for all force these companies and the rest of corporate America to be completely transparent.
Corporate America and their Plan to Cover Up Climate Change. (2022, Aug 22). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/corporate-america-and-their-plan-to-cover-up-climate-change-essay
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