If you watched the primetime broadcast of the Live Earth concerts last
Saturday night, you may have caught the segment where Sting and his
wife Trudie Styler told the 2 billion plus in the world-wide audience
about Chevron-Texaco’s war on the Amazon.
You can bet Chevron didn’t expect to have it’s toxic laundry aired
before the world. Sting’s song "Fragile", sums up the situation rather
well:
If blood will flow when flesh & steel are one,
Drying in the color of the evening sun.
Tomorrow’s rain will wash the stains away,
But something in our minds will always stay.
As we’ve
written about before,
an historic $6 billion lawsuit by Amazon rainforest dwellers against
ChevronTexaco demands that ChevronTexaco clean up the environmental
damage left behind by Texaco after 28 years of operation in the Amazon
rainforest region. While Texaco left Ecuador in 1992, the plaintiffs
say there are hundreds of toxic waste pits contaminated with heavy
metals and cancer-causing chemicals that have not been cleaned up. The
lawsuit argues nearly 30,000 people continue to suffer the effects of
Texaco’s operations through drinking, bathing and fishing in oil
polluted waters every day. And plantiffs also say ChevronTexaco
has never conducted a comprehensive health study to determine the
impact of its operations in the nearby communities.
Chevron hasn’t gone green yet, but paying its debt to the Amazon would
be a good start. If you want to help Chevron in its rehabilitation, you
can contact ChevronTexaco’s CEO David O’Reilly and urge him to remember
what’s "fragile" in the Amazon and why:
David J. O’Reilly
Chairman of the Board
Chevron Texaco
6001 Bollinger Canyon Rd.
San Ramon, CA 94583
Tel: 925-842-1000
Email: [email protected]