The Earth Hearing

by Daniel Plonix

  “Publicly traded corporations aim to internalize all gains—and externalize all costs.

  “In the Appalachian Mountains, they have been blowing up mountaintops, extracting coal, and in the process poisoning groundwater. The potable water there stains one’s knuckles and may cause inflammations. In Ecuador, they released into the rainforest almost twenty billion gallons of oil and toxic water: in all, about one thousand unlined, large pits filled with the noxious stuff. Children have been drinking and bathing in water reeking of oil; skin rashes and cancer cases have abounded.”

  Aratta went on, “The people who produce all the goods and services have neither a say in the governance of the corporation nor do they have a partnership role. In essence, they are little more than hired help in suits or hard hats. They are more of resident aliens than citizens of their firm.

  “A publicly-traded conglomerate is essentially a big pile of money taking a humanized form, national trapping, and flavor of identity to induce loyalty. Underneath the facade, it is nothing but capital trying to grow bigger. In contrast with human beings, this entity has no capacity for remorse and compassion. Or as someone observed, it has no soul to be damned and no body to be kicked. In human terms, it is an amoral entity, and its decisions whether to obey the law of the land may be a matter of cost-benefit analysis, once all the potential fines and lawsuits are factored in.

  “Six people burned in a rear-end collision when the gas tank exploded in the car they were driving in. It appears the car manufacturer was aware of the danger of locating the tank close to the rear axle. And it has decided it would be cheaper to settle lawsuits that arose from exploding gas tanks, rather than recall all the vehicles and do a retrofit.

  “Neither the directors nor the shareholders—the nominal owners of the corporation—were held accountable; none were thrown in prison for manslaughter. Instead, the corporation was ‘held liable.’” Aratta smiled thinly. “This simply means that if the corporation is found to be willfully negligent, money is taken from its reserves and given to the aggrieved party. But then again, it is likely the penalty will be defrayed in the long run by consumers.”

  He continued, “Individual foreign corporations are empowered to sue governments in front of a panel of corporate lawyers to demand compensation if they think a local law or a government action violates international trading treaties and indirectly causes the loss of expected future profits.

  “They call this Investor-State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS. This apparatus makes it easier for transnational corporations to attack environmental and health regulations in a given territory. ISDS tribunals have ordered to fork over billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to corporations in compensation for toxin bans, land-use rules, climate and energy laws, water and timber policies, and more. If said government does not pay up, public assets in an equivalent monetary amount can be seized.

  “As it turns out, even when a government wins a suit, foreign investment in that country drops. ISDS lawsuits are bad for the economy. Better to avoid them if at all possible and ease up on public interest laws and regulations.

  “Which brings me to the manufacture of pharmaceutical drugs.

  “The densely-populated city of Hyderabad in central India is a major hub of pharmaceutical and biotech companies, which each year produce millions of tons of medicines, chemicals, and pesticides. After some nominal treatment, they dump the effluent to the nearby Musi river. Its water now contains elements found in antidepressants, antihypertensives, contraceptives, antibiotics, steroids, and hormones.

  “The effects of the river’s toxic water range from higher abortion rates and birth defects to stunted growth in children and higher incidences of skin diseases. This effluent has also driven the creation of superbugs, costing the lives of over fifty-thousand newborns in India who die of infections resistant to antibiotics.

  “Now, in lieu of inflicting all that misery and ecological woes, they could have done the obvious. They could have allocated a fraction of the billions they annually spend on advertising to build and run plasma arc plants. But they must have reckoned that once you factor in the lawsuits and bribes, they still come up on top by dumping the effluent into the river. Or maybe I am overstating how deliberate and calculating they are at corporate headquarters; there is enormous inertia for the way things ‘always have been done.’”

  “Plasma arc?”

  “Yes, Your Grace. At five to ten thousand degrees Celsius, the heat from the plasma breaks the molecular bond asunder. From discarded batteries to paint containing PCBs to old tires, toxic waste can be broken down to its basic elemental components. It’s a clean process. No burning, no oxidation. A lot of what comes out is slag. Once air-cooled, it forms into black, glassy rocks with the look and feel of obsidian. The slag can be utilized as a concrete aggregate and be used in insulation and in roadbed construction. This technology is readily available on Earth.”

  Recognition dawned on the commissioner. The Cleanup Group was routinely utilizing plasma arcs in their work on various planets.

  “Whether in the distribution or in manufacture or in engineering, increased efficiency is one way products get to be inexpensive,” Aratta said. “Another way to arrive at cheap products is by paying people wages that cannot meet basic material needs. The race to the bottom is relentless, and the pressure on the producer is enormous.”

  “I understand protection measures are in place,” said the presiding chair mildly, “such as laws that regulate the number of work-hours in a given day.”

  “Your Grace, to solve this problem, a contractor can have one factory site that is like a Potemkin, that is, a model factory and another factory where much of the production is actually done. The big chain retailer may suspect but there is plausible deniability, and that is good enough for the legal team and the PR departments.

  “It is not that people want to work from morning to night, and it is not that the employer wants to afflict it. But in a dog-eat-dog manufacturing environment, that’s the only way to maintain a competitive edge and keep the lights on. In line with this, the plastic in products may get thinner as the imperative to cut corners is real. It is cost cost cost. And if the big chain retailer shows signs of growing soft, there are investment banks and entities like the National Legal and Policy Center to keep the retailer focused on the bottom line.

  “Executives negotiate the dynamics of their economy the best they can with the hope they are able to look at themselves in the mirror each morning. But they do what they need to do to hold onto their job; after all, there are always recent, bright-eyed MBA graduates hovering with resumes on the sidelines, hungrier and with a stronger stomach. Feeling good about oneself is important, but the priority is to be able to pay for the dental work of one’s kids, save money for their college tuition. And put a down payment on that spacious house in that upscale neighborhood they have been contemplating.”

  Aratta sighed. “The whole arrangement does not work best for people; it has never worked best for people. All the same, this economic system is universally supported. Foremost because the people of Earth cannot envision a better setup. Odd as this may be. And even if they could, they could not fathom how to transition to it. I am afraid, in a real sense, they are locked into the existing system. And they are locked into it in more than one way.

  “Your Graces, if society consumes less, people lose jobs and the purchasing power declines. Therefore, under their economic system, people must keep current consumption and production levels—or the whole setup they’re wedded to may go into a tailspin.

  “The very nature of their economic engine is like an airplane, which can stay airborne only by constantly injecting fuel into its engine. As long as it keeps moving forward, the plane is afloat. The economy must not stall.” Aratta waved his arms for emphasis. “Your Graces, perpetual, steady growth is not just an expression of greed or act of hubris; it is an imperative. The proce
ss of sucking the natural world dry can neither be halted nor seriously slowed down. It is an onward march to the bitter end, to the last twang of the ax and the fall of the last tree.

  “This is a problem of monumental proportion.

  “The capacity of humans for avarice and to conjure wants may be boundless, but the physical system underwriting these is not. The bedrock of the economy is Earth. It is a finite system with a quantifiable set of natural resources, a certain level of incoming energy from the sun, fixed land and water areas, specific rates of regeneration, and definite ecological needs.

  “Under their marketplace scheme, what is the likelihood of a carbon-­neutral economy if this entails shutting the valve on the many billions of dollars gushing from the ground in the form of black oil? The corporations are not only incentivized to exploit the lucrative fossil fuel reserves. It is much more pressing and immediate than that. To keep the stock prices robust, there is an imperative to maintain fossil fuel reserves robust. This drives the industry to venture into ever-more polluting, remote sources and to use ever-more aggressive methods to coax black fuel from the earth. It’s do or die.”

  After a moment, Aratta continued, “Naturally, in a finite physical system, the sensible thing to do is to make products with the lowest ecological footprint possible, which also means maximum durability and longevity. But this is not how their economy is set up.

  “A tee shirt can begin its way as cotton in Mississippi. The cotton is baled then shipped thousands of miles across the Pacific to be spun into yarn in Indonesia. Next, the yarn is shipped thousands of miles across the Pacific to Colombia for further processing. Next, the product is shipped back to the United States, where the raw material was originated in the first place. This makes no ecological sense. However, within the existing economic system, only human labor and perceived scarcity of raw materials compute and matter. Nothing else does.”

  Aratta brought both of his hands on the lectern. “Your Graces, I am ready to pronounce my recommendation.”

  The presiding chair nodded. “You may proceed, Lord Aratta.”

  “The foundation of their freewheeling economy is consuming as many resources as possible as rapidly as possible to generate as much money as possible. This economic imperative is the quickest way to suck dry the living environment.

  “This has set human activities on a collision course with the physical reality, with the planetary ecosystem. This is where the dominant system reveals the full scope of its pathology and harm.

  “As long as money is made by utilizing natural resources, and as long as they have entities whose purpose of existence is to amass money, there will be a fundamental conflict of interests.

  “The defects inherent in their economic setup make it impossible to reverse environmental course. Their economic system has a foundational structural flaw and cannot be used to affect any needed transformative measures.

  “They need another economic engine, one whose express purpose for existence is the well-being of humanity and the broader natural world. Nothing short of that will put a stop to the withering of the living environment and the biosphere.

  “I regret to say, I don’t believe they are capable of doing away with the current scheme and engendering a new, viable one.”

  He paused. “Considering all the above, I feel compelled to recommend the commission to relocate the human population from Earth.”

  Aratta was done.

  He bowed and the commissioners bowed back.

  Thus, the last session of the surveyor groups came to an end. Their work was complete.

  Rafirre and his two-hundred-member team were to return home, above ground, and await word of the verdict. His people prepared for the verdict and bid their time for a century. They could wait another week or two.

  Chapter 58

  The Reservation, Deep Underground, the Commission Building

  Against a wall covered in drapery of intricate design, the chief commissioner slid into a chair with a high back and drew about him his dark forest-green ceremonial robe.

  With the main segment of the hearing concluded, he was to give a short address, to be broadcast to the people of Earth.

  The presiding chair opened: “In the early part of the twentieth century, some artist schools in your world believed they would change the world. The Italian Futurism was the first among these schools and the most forceful. Its practitioners intended to have the art museums burned down. Begone with suffocating fossils and make space for a future that is not an extension of the past. It didn’t come about. When these artists passed away, their paintings and vision of a new future were respectfully placed in the aging art museums they wished to burn down; their cries have been dutifully quoted in countless publications and theses.

  “More often than not, any expressions of profound possibilities, of unpredictability, of humbling awe are brought in. They are debased through the years into righteous followers, dogmas, or money-churning enterprises.

  “And along the way, the cultural immune system adapts. Future trailblazers who venture down parallel paths are received as court jesters, providing high-end entertainment via talk shows, exhibitions, discussion clubs, and groundbreaking books. Life goes on.”

  He folded his arms over his lap.

  “Social reality is not everything. However, it is the nearest thing to being so.

  “Social reality is the thing that steers you in what you do, day-by-day. Social reality is the channels through which you flow and articulate personal identity. Social reality is the set of options from which you choose your attire, vocation, and opinions. Its soil determines what is sustained and what shrivels. Its weave defines what notions and ideas are interlocked and become a part of a culture and what concepts are ignored, left alone to waste away.

  “For all practical purposes, you are a creature of the social reality that you see around. Yes, individual life makeups are all different; however, they are all fabricated out of the same basic elements. They all share the same underlying flavor.

  “And in the case of Earth, I am afraid the flavor is not vanilla.

  “It all comes down to the way you, the people of the Earth, have predominantly chosen to interact.

  “To interact wholeheartedly, meaningfully, and earnestly entails the agony and ecstasy of being violently alive. It is a choice fraught with risks and requires an incredibly high personal investment. On the other hand, a low-quality interaction requires little of you, as it involves predictability, passivity, reassurance.

  “Reality continually asks of you to choose the depth and authenticity of your expression. And the quality of the resulting interactions defines the quality of your life, your world.

  “The choices people of your world have made throughout your collective history are as numerous as grains of sand.

  “Different people on different occasions have made choices of differing quality. Yet, a trend has existed. A trend which solidified through the millennia into a cultural roadway paved with the trillions of choices people had made—which at large were to blank out, sell out, evade, not to care, not to speak out, not to make an active choice, not to see, not to confront, not to think.

  “Millennia have passed. A dominant majority of evasiveness and apprehension driven choices—with subsequent low-quality interactions—forged corresponding social and economic entities and gave pro­minence to rationalizing, supporting philosophies and beliefs.

  “A social reality has coalesced.

  “This is what was—your history. This is what is—your present.

  “Tomorrow, you will come and tell us what you intend the future to be—and why it would be other than an extension of the past. Tomorrow, a delegation of your people will arrive, and we will hear your arguments.”

  The presiding chair rose to his feet.

  “It is in your hands now,” he said.

  Ch
apter 59

  Somewhere on the Reservation

  It was nighttime as thousands of people filed in and took seats on the stone benches that ringed the large amphitheater carved into the face of a hill. These were the chieftains and their deputies representing most clans of the Nation. It was an extraordinary gathering, the like of which had not been seen in many years. But then again, it was the eve of an extraordinary occasion, the one they had been preparing and discussing for generations. This was to be the year the Nation would rise as a mighty empire.

  All eyes were on Rafirre, who, along with two dozen of his most loyal men, took to the paved arena down below.

  Master Rafirre spread his arms wide, and throughout the amphitheater the murmurs died down. “Brothers,” he hollered, his amplified voice boomed. “Brothers, I want to show you something that took place on Earth about twenty years ago. Something that holds the key for our nation’s ascension to power. Something we ought to study and emulate.”

  He motioned, and a hologram sprung into view, enveloping the large amphitheater. This technology was a gift—by way of a temporary loan—from the Commission Building.

  The holographic video transported the thousands of viewers to another place, a ripple, where it was dawn. They could see numerous families wading through the thicket of reeds in an immense marsh that extended to the horizon. The mass of people broke up into ever smaller groups and dispersed in the vast wetland. The image zoomed in, and the amphitheater was filled with the buzzing of houseflies and the metallic hum of dragonflies. From somewhere in the distance, the spectators in the arena could hear the shrill hoots and howls of macaque monkeys and observe one group after another lay in the mud and camouflage themselves until they were hidden from view.