“Industry does everything they can and gets away with it almost all the time, whether it’s the coal industry, ... or water or whatever. They will cut corners, and they will get away with it.”- Sen. Jay Rockefeller
Senator Rockefeller was talking about West Virginia water pollution, but he could have been talking about Wall Street crashing the economy or Dick Cheney and Halliburton leading America into the Iraq war. And what he said is exactly why American corporations will lead us into catastrophic climate change. It's their nature.
“I came from outside of Appalachia, so sometimes I see Appalachia in ways that are different than others,” the West Virginia Democrat said, adding that the myth is “the idea that somehow God has it in his plan to make sure that industry is going to make life safe for them.”
“Not true,” Rockefeller said. “Industry does everything they can and gets away with it almost all the time, whether it’s the coal industry, not the subject of this hearing, or water or whatever. They will cut corners, and they will get away with it.”
He also talked about “Scotch-Irish culture … I’m sorry, fatalism.”
“The world is as it is — we accept the world as it is,” Rockefeller said. “And the point is you don’t accept the world as it is, but as it should be, and you make it in that posture. I’m just — I’m here angry, upset, shocked, embarrassed that this would happen to 300,000 absolutely wonderful people, who, you know, work in coal mines and that stuff, but they’re depending on the fruit of the land, wherever it may be, for survival. They’re making it, but barely.”