Sheen reveals a familiar pattern of behaviour from capitalists (Pic: WikiMedia Commons)
The Welsh activist and actor Michael Sheen has been digging and what he has found in the abandoned quarries and waste tips of Wales reveals the consequences of capitalism.
Inspired by the late agricultural whistleblower, Douglas Gowan, Sheen sets out to discover the impacts of pollution in the investigative documentary Buried.
The work was undertaken with journalists, scientists, activists and the Open University. It focuses on the decades of toxic waste dumped by the US multinational Monsanto.
The pollutants concerned are polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a popular industrial chemical. A million and a half tons of it were produced until the late 1970s.
PCBs are highly toxic products that, as “forever chemicals”, stay active for generations.
They are cancer-causing and can seriously harm growth and reproduction.
What Sheen reveals is a familiar pattern of behaviour from capitalists.
First, the production of a poorly tested “miracle” substance.
Second, its aggressive marketing and expansion.
Third—when the health and ecological impacts are revealed—disinformation, bullying and blackmail.
Fourth, its inadequate disposal when even the corporations cannot deny its impacts.
And, last, its toxic legacy being pushed out of the private sector towards affected communities.
It’s what happens when our ecology is handed over to capitalist interests and their political allies who focus on profit and market competition at the expense of our lives and nature.
Sheen has produced a revealing and powerful documentary.
The only political problem with the work comes at the end. Sheen makes an appeal at the Senedd—Welsh parliament— for legislators to act.
What is needed for such campaigns to succeed was described brilliantly in the documentary by Donald Stuart. He is a US attorney representing Anniston,
Alabama, where PCBs were manufactured and dumped between 1929 and 1971.
Stuart advises Sheen, “I would tell the community to organise because the people have more power than they think.”
It is that kind of environmentalism from below that we’ll all need.
