When people speak of the lessons of history, they are talking either of what we have learned from history, or what we had failed to learn.
Sometimes, experience gained from past mistakes informs future decisions and prevents us from treading the same inadvisable path so that we do not find ourselves once more arriving in a dangerous place; sometimes we realize our error too late, but are taught an important truth and, even though our subsequent efforts to mitigate the results are largely useless gestures, in these, at the very least, we have listened to the lessons we have learned. And then there are the times when we fail to act, when we just stand by the sidelines and watch events march past as we let history repeat itself. These are the times when we have not learned history’s lessons.
So what lessons have been learned from the recent gas explosions in Greater Kaohsiung, which stole 30 lives, ripped up busy thoroughfares and destroyed the houses and stores lining them? How are we to reflect on what happened there?
The pro-industrial development economic policy of the past has made a handful of people very wealthy, in money if not in virtue. However, we have to consider some of the repercussions of this policy. Is it the case that the social costs of the emissions polluting the air we breathe, of the toxic waste wantonly buried under fallow farmland, of the industrial waste water pumped into our rivers through surreptitiously buried pipelines, has all been paid for, in any meaningful way, by those responsible for the pollution?
The Environmental Protection Administration has done little more than issue fines and cessation orders that are like water off a duck’s back to the offending companies, while the environmental restoration efforts and the cleaning up of the rivers have been paid for out of taxpayers’ money.
What message does this send to the companies? Does it not show them that they have no need to invest in preventing pollution? We need to ask ourselves when we are going to see the type of astronomical compensation payments in Taiwan that the US’ Pacific Gas and Electric Co was forced to make in the litigation made famous by the Julia Roberts movie Erin Brockovich?
You cannot put a price on public health or individual lives. Thirty innocents lost their lives in the Greater Kaohsiung gas explosions. Even if the people in charge of the main culprit, LCY Chemical Corp, took their own lives to show the depth of their remorse, it would not bring these people back. And yet, the company even had the audacity recently to reassure the public that all due compensation would be paid. Clearly, the person responsible for that statement has no idea of the true value of human life.
After the Greater Kaohsiung Government ordered LCY to cease operations in the Da She (大社) industrial park plant, the company responded that this would mean a loss of revenue of NT$1 billion (US$33 million) a month. It added that the closing of the Da She plant would also affect more than 5,000 people, including workers and their families, and that it hoped it could resume production promptly for the sake of the livelihoods of those workers’ families.
That is, LCY is concerned about its own monthly revenue and about the livelihoods of its workers and their families. However, it does not seem too worried as to how it is going to guarantee that this kind of disaster never happens again, or that its operations will not “affect the livelihoods” of the 2,780,000 people who live in Greater Kao-hsiung when, as its own workers have testified, it neglected to teach them how to test the gas pressure properly, nor does it think this is its responsibility.
In addition, according to reports, some LCY workers have apparently expressed their concerns about their job security. This is surely putting the cart before the horse. Earning money is a means to raise your family and keep them safe, not to put them in harm’s way. To put it more bluntly, should the priority in the workplace be how much money you earn, or whether you can guarantee health, life and limb?
The reality is that the environmental war has been fought between unscrupulous industrialists, on one side, and more enlightened souls in this country on the other, for two or three decades now. In this war, one of the fiercest battles involved LCY. Back in 1984, the residents of Shuiyuan (水源), sick of the pollution they had endured from LCY’s nearby Hsinchu plant, laid siege to the plant for 450 days and even though the authorities sided with the company, David finally toppled his Goliath.
According to a recent survey published by the National Health Research Institutes, a study of the incidence of illness breakouts conducted in four elementary schools near the sixth naphtha cracker in Mailiao Township (麥寮), Yunlin County, levels of thioacetic acid in the urine of schoolchildren at Ciaotou Elementary School’s Syusi branch, which is the closest of the four to the cracker, were twice as high on average as those in pupils from the other three schools.
Formosa Plastics, showing not an ounce of desire to get to the bottom of this environmental issue, responded to these findings by saying it had profound reservations about the results and that the survey “was not sufficiently objective.”
Were the Shuiyuan residents who laid siege to the LCY plant being unreasonable? How about the fishermen who surrounded the Hoping Power Plant in Hualien County, protesting the spoiling of their fishing waters? Were they making an unwarranted fuss? And the local residents who announced a road-block protest after toxic nitric acid leaks from a TNC Industrial plant in Lujhu Township (蘆竹), Taoyuan County? Were they being unreasonable?
On this occasion, the price for prioritizing the economy over the environment was the lives of 30 people in the Greater Kaohsiung gas explosions. Who knows what it will be next time.
However, before the next disaster is visited upon us, we do have a choice: Is earning money more important than health and lives? Or do health and life come first?
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired associate professor at National Hsinchu University of Education and former deputy secretary-general of the Taiwan Association of University Professors.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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