Chevron's In No Hurry To Settle the Case in Ecuador

I normally don’t bet against my own longevity, but it seems extremely unlikely that I’ll still be on this planet when the case against Chevron in Ecuador is finalized and the damages are paid.  Here’s an article that explains Chevron’s latest tactic to avoid justice, and overturn the judgment against it, in which the international courts have ruled that the oil company must pay reparations to the people whose land – and health – was ruined by arguably the largest and most blatantly deliberate environmental crime in the history of humankind. 

I base my remark about my mortality on the case study of the Exxon Valdez, which occurred in 1986.  ExxonMobil finally settled the case just a few years ago; 8000 claimants died, mostly of natural causes, before they received the restitution they were due, in the intervening decades as Exxon dragged the case out as long as humanly possible.  There’s no reason to think that Chevron can’t or won’t take the same tack.

One group of people that is definitely NOT going away is Amazon Watch, whose effort to preserve what’s left of the Amazon rain forest and to bring environmental and social justice to the region is a true inspiration.