Boeing
Greenhouse Pollution
Despite its titanic production of the carbon emissions fueling climate collapse, Boeing did not even release its first sustainability report until 2021.[1]
This report found that each commercial jet made by Boeing produces over 1 million tons of carbon dioxide while in operation, with the company's regular production of new commercial jets committing over 500 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere every year.
The company's plan is to reduce net carbon emissions by only 50% by 2050, dramatically less than other corporate pledges aiming for "net zero by 2050."
Boeing Field Expansion
The King County International Airport in Seattle, Cascadia - also known as Boring Field - serves commercial flights but also cargo, private jets, military aircraft, and various additional Boeing operations. [2]
As identified by 350 Seattle, aviation emissions make up over half of King County’s total climate impact.
In 2021, Boeing Field's Master Plan Update revealed the company's commitment to intensify its massive contribution to the environmental catastrophe, forecasting that its planned $282 million expansion will mean a 30% increase in CO₂ emissions by 2035.[3]
This not only illustrates Boeing's utter disregard for its alleged climate commitments, but also the company's undeniable environmental racism:
"In the Duwamish Valley we have a 13-year reduction in life expectancy compared to our neighbors in Laurelhurst,” she says, and eight years shorter than the Seattle average. That’s partly a result of dangerously high levels of fine particulates in the air, of which the airport is one cause among many. Children in Georgetown and South Park, across the Duwamish River from the airport, suffer high rates of hospitalization for asthma. A large majority of South Park residents are low-income people of color."[4]
Santa Susana Field Lab
The Santa Susana Field Lab is the location of one of the USA's worst nuclear contaminations. Over 30,000 rocket engine tests were conducted at the Lab by its former operator Rocketdyne, acquired by Boeing in 1996 along with a $1 billion toxic liability. [5]
Rocketdyne's decades of rocket testing contaminated soil and groundwater with hundreds of thousands of gallons of Trichloroethylene (TCE), perchlorate, dioxins, PCBs, and dozens of other dangerous chemicals.
In a study of over 4,500 Santa Susana Field Lab employees, workers were found to have “the effect of radiation exposure six to eight times greater than extrapolated from the results of the A-bomb survivors study.” A federally funded study showed a 60% higher cancer incidence rate for residents living within two miles of the SSFL. Over 250k people within a 5-mile-radius of the site are at risk of injury and illness due to the extreme toxicity.[6]
In 2007 Boeing signed a cleanup agreement with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control agency (DTSC), pledging to make the site clean enough that people could live on the land and eat vegetables from their gardens.[7]
Boeing stated the cleanup would be completed by 2017 and that a permanent groundwater remedy would be in place by that time as well.
Nearly two decades later, Boeing has conducted no meaningful cleanup of the site. The company now suggests it will leave the site 90% contaminated.
Instead, to avoid the billion-dollar cost of following through on its legal commitments, Boeing has undertaken an elaborate greenwashing PR campaign to “overcome negative perceptions using a countervailing narrative of environmental values, safety, and corporate responsibility.”
Boeing's greenwashing PR includes donating to a wildlife corridor adjacent to their toxic waste site, hosting propaganda tours to extoll its environmental benefits, and funding fake third-party astroturfing operations to "blunt allegations of green-washing."[8]
Following in the footsteps of the worst corporate polluters, Boeing also established a "conservation easement" to leave "the pollution untouched" as a pro-environmental campaign to "preserve nature" with EPA approval.
This strategy was successfully used by Chevron to avoid spending $45 million to decontaminate its molybdenum mining pollution in Questa, New Mexico. In the name of legal "conservation," Chevron left 25 times more cancer-causing PCBs and 75 times more molybdenum in the ground than federal environmental safety regulations required. Other corporate polluters Boeing is emulating in adopting this strategy include British Petroleum, DuPont, ExxonMobil, Citgo Petroleum, Lockheed Martin, and AstraZeneca.[9]
Meanwhile, Boeing has also been lobbying to relax their national stormwater pollution discharge permit (NPDES) so they can release even higher amounts of chemicals and heavy metals like lead, mercury, and selenium into the Los Angeles River and Calleguas Creek Watersheds. These toxins threaten to decimate endangered species in the ecosystem, such as Steelhead Trout. [10]
Sources
- ↑ https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-jets-contribute-1-mln-tonnes-co2-emissions-each-data-2021-07-26/
- ↑ https://crosscut.com/opinion/2021/06/facing-climate-concerns-will-king-county-stop-boeing-field-expansion
- ↑ https://www.registerguard.com/story/news/environment/2021/12/04/seattle-boeing-field-airport-debate-united-activists-fossil-fuels-carbon-emissions/8743717002/
- ↑ https://crosscut.com/opinion/2021/06/facing-climate-concerns-will-king-county-stop-boeing-field-expansion
- ↑ https://parentsagainstssfl.com/boeings-pr-campaign
- ↑ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-pollution-conservation-easements/
- ↑ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-pollution-conservation-easements/
- ↑ https://www.protectsantasusanafromboeing.com/boeings-greenwashing-campaign/
- ↑ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-pollution-conservation-easements/
- ↑ https://parentsagainstssfl.com/boeings-pr-campaign