THE ECUADORIAN AMAZON'S BIGGEST OIL SPILL

Weeks before a high-stakes election, Ecuadorian President Noboa flew into Florida yesterday to meet with Trump over free trade discussions as well purported plans for a U.S. military base in his country. But that’s not the big story.

On March 13, a section of the 300 mile-long Trans-Ecuadorian Oil Pipeline stretching from the Amazon to the coast ruptured following a landslide. A geyser of crude oil erupted for 7 hours into the Esmeraldas River, flowing at least 50 miles downstream to the Pacific Ocean & into at least 2 other tributaries turning them anoxic. That’s an estimated 25,116 barrels spilled into the lungs of the world now saturating the wildlife refuge in thick, black sludge. An unprecedented ecocide that has limited access to potable water for more than half a million residents & Amazonian indigenous.

While this is certainly the biggest spill in the country’s history, the Ecuadorian Amazon has in fact been suffocating from over 30 years of oil contamination from a single US corporation, Chevron-Texaco, responsible for ecological damage from at least 25 million gallons of spilled oil into its surrounding land & waterways. Sadly, things did not improve when the state-owned company Petroecuador took over in 2013. Decades of environmental destruction have also brought with it many social consequences - more brothels exist today than pharmacies or schools in the affected areas, all the while the cartel wars rage on.

There is no left or right when it comes to disasters of this magnitude, only man’s greed & thirst for power & control. This insane drive for securing economic or geopolitical interests in the oil industry, I argue, is the single most significant driver of all major conflicts since World War II. Humanity has access to more knowledge today on free & alternative energy sources than at any other point in our modern history, certainly enough to shift the global policy dialogue away from an over-reliance on fossil fuels, electric, wind & solar. It is my hope that among the many conspiracies being proven true, that the source for free energy will no longer be suppressed.