Lac
Mégantic is a small town located near the border between the
province of Québec, Canada, and the state of Maine, United States;
it has a population of about 6,000 people. From Montreal, it’s
roughly a three-and-a-half hour drive. My father was born and raised
there and my mother also spent an important part of her youth there.
My mother,
the other day, took advantage of the fact that my cousin, who lives
in Australia, and I (I live in Mexico), were in Montreal to organize
a family dinner. The topic of Lac Mégantic took a little longer than
I thought to make its way into the conversation, but when it finally
did, one of my cousins (not the one who lives in Australia, but her
sister) said the following, striking thing: “The other day, I was
talking with some friends, recalling when we were in high school and
the teachers were telling us about people who take drugs, or commit
suicide, and so on. Now that I am a grown up, I’ve had friends who
got deep into drugs, a friend of mine committed suicide and... my
parents’ town just blew up!”
During the
night of June 5-6 2013, for a mysterious reason, a train without
driver started to advance and to move away from a train station in
Nante, a small town at a little more than 10 kilometers from Lac
Mégantic. Nante is 514 meters above the sea level and Lac Mégantic's
altitude is 415, which means that the the train trip between both
locations is a slight but continuous descent. The train started going
slowly, but it went increasingly faster until it reached
approximately 100 kilometers per hour.
Let me
reiterate: a 72-wagon train loaded with crude oil was descending
towards Lac Mégantic, without a driver, at 100 kilometers per hour.
On its
way, the train did not encounter any significant curve that could
have reduced its speed. The only important curve is located right
before arriving in downtown Lac Mégantic. It was too late. The speed
was too high. The train derailed. Four of its wagons exploded. 47
people died.
After the
tragedy, the media began evaluating the politicians' behavior. They
essentially had two criteria: their presence with the victims on site
and the quality of their speeches, which was analyzed in the
perspective of marketing strategies and public relations management
evaluation. As if image and speeches were the only responsibility
that the politicians had towards the victims.
Now, I am
no expert on the matter, but in my humble opinion, the role that the
politicians, the state and the legislative bodies must play in such
situations is not so hard to evaluate. Firstly, justice must be
rendered for the victims and their families, which means that they
must receive compensations that may be in direct proportion to the
damage they suffered. Secondly, qualify information is required,
which means that an independent investigation must be conducted,
during which the highest amount of knowledge on the event must be
gathered in order to subsequently determine what went wrong, if
someone is responsible and, the case being, who these people are, so
they can be brought to justice.
After
that, politicians must implement measures that will reduce the risks
of such a tragedy repeating itself, as much as possible. In this
case, Québec Solidaire, which is considered a left-wing political
party in Québec, referred to what happened in Lac Mégantic as a
sign that showed us the necessity of shifting to green energies. I am
aware that what I’m proposing does not totally go against what that
party proposed, though it seems it would have been more appropriate
for them to approach the topic with a more realistic perspective of
what was feasible at that moment.
The
management of ethanol, biofuels, wind energy and the like have proven
that any green energy – nay, any form energy - left in the hands of
people who put profit as their main priority may have a devastating
impact on the environment and human life. In this category, oil is
perhaps the undisputed champion. However, it is very unlikely that a
small nation of 7 million people, sandwiched between two different
batches of British settlers in countries that were practically born
from their eagerness to profiteer off of oil, will be the first to
carry out a quick and comprehensive shift from oil to green energy.
Such a transition can be compared to alcohol prohibition: almost all
of human kind is oilaholic.
Meanwhile,
we have to accept the fact that the Lac Mégantic tragedy
demonstrated once again that in such quantities, oil, its
derivatives, as well as any other explosive, flammable and/or toxic
substance must be handled with the same cautions as if handling an
atomic bomb cargo. Is it possible that people who put profit before
the common good will handle such substances with the required
caution? When one has profit as his main goal, he will choose – or
be forced to choose - not to invest in maintaining his railway, or
not to have security on-site 24 hours a day. It is also unlikely that
he will choose safer wagons if they are more expensive.
In our
imperfect societies, theoretically, the imperfect states are the ones
who are supposed to be in charge of protecting the common good.
Despite of their imperfection, the institutions of the state cannot
(at least openly) put profit as their main priority.
The
maintaining, production, distribution and transportation of
substances that have the capacity to eliminate a small city's
downtown core if four wagons loaded with it explode are not currently
in the hands of institutions that have the common good as their main
priority. Instead, the handling of such substances is in the hand of
entities that indeed have profit as their main concern. As long as
the government of Québec and the Prime Minister do not implement
policies that may transform that dangerous business into a service to
the population, intending to manage the substances according to the
greater good, they will not be doing anything. Their speeches, image,
their presence on site and their willingness to reach out to the
victims and their families will not mean anything. After all that, we
will still have the duty of taking big money out of politics.
It might
look like the Parti Québécois’ attempts to revive the project of
Quebec's sovereingty through a “Charter of Values” is meant to
protect Quebecers' fragile cultural situation. Nevertheless, they may
be forgetting the true meaning of a sovereign state: the total amount
of particular interests is supposed to constitute the collective
interest. For being the guarantor of those interests, the state is
sovereign. Therefore, it cannot afford itself to leave the
responsibility of maintaining something that can be compared to an
atomic bomb in the hands of institutions that operate according to
their particular interest – profit, in this case – instead of the
common good. Such situation goes against the sovereignty of the state
and has already made much more victims than the Islamic veil their
charter ‘mea«ns to protect people from’. Instead of using the
fictitious fear of others to push their project through, why don't
the sovereignists propose a project that would be based on defending
the population's common good from the real danger of particular
actors using their power to penetrate the state and submit it to
their profiteering goals?
