Corporate Personhood Is the Ebola Virus of Climate Chaos

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Corporate-Personhood-Is-th-by-Harvey-Wasserman-Climate-Change_Corporate-Personhood-140918-556.html



Corporate Personhood Is the Ebola Virus of Climate Chaos
By Harvey Wasserman
OpEdNews Op Eds 9/18/2014 at 08:38:06

Unrestrained corporate power is the Ebola virus of our global ecological crisis. Rooting it out will demand a whole new level of resistance.

~snip~

The core engine of our economy must at last be made directly accountable to humankind and our Mother Earth. Until that happens, we are an endangered species.

But those who march must also focus on the real core problem: the nature of the modern corporation.

As currently structured, the corporation's sole mandate is to make profit. Its insatiable need for more and more money, and its immunity from the consequences of its actions, are unsustainable in any sense.

[CanonRay]

1. I couldn't agree more

Capitalism and corporations are out of control.

[GliderGuider]

2. That's an excellent framing of the issue! nt

[Jim Lane]

3. The article text doesn't support the headline

The text correctly identifies corporate practices that are not accountable to other interests. The core of the problem, however, does not arise from corporate personhood.

He writes: "The core engine of our economy must at last be made directly accountable to humankind and our Mother Earth." That's an issue of the nature and extent of how the people (through the government) restrict corporate misdeeds. If the political will existed for such control, though, it could be implemented despite corporate personhood. To take a few of his examples, corporate personhood wouldn't stop the Obama administration from refusing to license the Keystone XL pipeline, it wouldn't stop Congress from passing a law banning mountaintop removal mining, and it wouldn't stop the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from phasing out all nuclear power by not licensing or relicensing plants.

The real problem with corporations and the lack of political will is campaign spending, but that applies to spending by rich individuals as well as corporations. The Constitutional amendment that the Republicans just blocked in the Senate took the right approach of allowing regulation of spending (by individuals or by corporations) rather than stripping corporations of rights under the Due Process Clause and other bulwarks of liberty.

[marym625]

4. took the words right out of my mouth

But corporate personhood needs to end. And so do we need to stop electing greedy people.