Towards an uncertain future

Document 11.1 consists of court documents about the company Chevron, who had dumped a vast amount of wastes in Ecuador. This had happened  between 1972 and 1990, and the waste was water which had contained extremely hazardous chemicals. While working in Ecuador, the company, which at this time was called Texaco,  had left an environmental catastrophe behind them, leaving toxic waters in the lands pits, which poisoned the soil and made it unsuitable for any type of farming, leaving the region's agriculture industry impaired. While workers for the company argued that this was a common practice at the times, and  though this  may be true, it still left the land extremely damaged and was overall irresponsible by the company, as displayed by the line "Texaco had the means, but not the w, to employ safer but perhaps more expensive methods"(pg 379). This was not the only issue between Texaco and Ecuador, as Texaco had apparently also broken a multitude of codes, though Texaco argued in the court that they had been not made aware of these laws, which was later explained to be false "The court found that Chevron was well aware that its operations fell short of legal mandates" (pg 378) The environmental damages that this pollution had an unfortunately large amount of side effects, and not just lack of ability to farm. These effects included cultural impacts, cancer, and other damages. The damages affected cultural activities that involved the usage of rivers an soils, which caused damage to the indigenous peoples ways of life. The chemicals caused many people to develop cancer, and even die from it. Document 11.2 again accuses on the company Chevron and it's damages towards the environment of Ecuador, more descriptively the pollution towards the rainforests, an event which occurred in 1992.