Corporations apply laxer environmental standards where victims are dark-skinned and poor

Evidence

This ruthless smoothing of Ogoniland was embarked on in a spirit of racism and ethnic hatred. Again, Saro-Wiwa resisted the temptation to reduce his people’s suffering to either term. Shell’s racism is manifest: in Africa, the company waives onshore drilling standards that it routinely upholds elsewhere. Indeed, 40 percent of all Shell oil spills worldwide have occurred in Nigeria. When operating in the Northern hemisphere—in the Shetlands, for instance—Shell pays lucrative rents to local councils; in the Niger Delta, village authorities receive no comparable compensation. A 1995 World Bank report noted that 76 percent of the natural gas resulting from petroleum production in Nigeria was flared (at temperatures of 14,000 degrees Celsius), while in Britain only 4.3 percent and in the United States a mere 0.6 percent was flared. This toxic practice foreshortened the life expectancy of the delta peoples. Children, moreover, who had no access to electricity to read or learn by also had no experience of night, as they lived 24/7 beneath the blazing false sun of interminable flares, as if in some seasonless equatorial rendition of an Arctic summer. … Given this backdrop, the irony was not lost on the Ogoni that Shell was winning awards in Europe for environmentally sensitive conduct—north-south greenwashing, par excellence. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 318

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the ‘Grafting & Growth’ infrastructure theme’s opposite pole and the extraction threads in the eco-justice polyad; the 76% vs 4.3% vs 0.6% gas-flaring disparity is a hard datum for the environmental-racism strand.
• XREF: Matches the slow-violence double standard of ch11 and the ‘corporate rhetoric flips slow poisoning’ claims; also ties to Soundscape’s chronic exposure as differential harm. — connects to: Waste firms sold toxic proposals to impoverished Tribes as green job schemes — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 599; Some communities are treated as more expendable under global environmental racism — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 156; Multinational corporations export products and wastes banned in their home countries to poor nations (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Some communities are treated as more expendable under global environmental racism #corroborates (0.90) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 156
• Global supply-chain efficiency transfers ecological costs onto the world’s most vulnerable people #corroborates (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 306
• Multinational corporations export products and wastes banned in their home countries to poor nations #corroborates (0.78)
• Distributive environmental justice requires equal treatment across race, class, and education. #qualifies (0.75) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 211
• Corporations shift blame for poisoning onto the victims themselves #expands (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1773