It’s like David and Goliath…

Except Goliath is a multinational corporation with more sovereignty and a bigger economy than most countries, and he uses that power to grow global inequality while simultaneously making the planet inhabitable to most living creatures…but yes, just like David and Goliath

Refinery in Norco, LA by Bonnet Carre Spillway

The David and Goliath story is cited over and over to describe environmental activists' fight with fossil fuel companies. And if you Google “oil companies David and Goliath,” you’ll find thousands of stories about individuals, small towns, and organizations taking on huge energy corporations, usually in an attempt to curb the pollution from a nearby production facility or dumping site. 

These articles intend to celebrate the hard work and bravery of these activists, but this comparison actually undercuts the complexity of environmental activism.

Let me first clarify the interpretation of David and Goliath that this discussion is rooted in. I’m not referencing the religious interpretation of the story (although there are many faith-based environmental justice groups fighting fossil fuel companies every day). If you learned about David and Goliath from a church pew, David’s success was likely attributed to his faith in God. This also isn’t a Malcolm Gladwell deep dive into the ballistics of barium sulphate, or whether or not Goliath had a tumor putting pressure on his pituitary gland which accounted for his size and slowness.

I’m talking about the most widely understood version of the story, the storyline that dominates the films and books we read, and sometimes makes the sports we watch more enjoyable. This version is best summed up by the image that comes to mind when someone says David and Goliath. It’s the plucky, tenacious underdog who takes on a much larger adversary and comes out victorious through some creative, unexpected, and sometimes charming means.

When we cast environmental justice seekers in the role of Archetype-David and fossil fuel companies as Archetype-Goliath in our storytelling, we communicate assumptions about both of these entities that restrict our critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Most importantly, this storyline oversimplifies and misrepresents the work effective environmental justice seekers are currently required to do. Because corporation-Goliath isn’t your normal type of Goliath, especially when it’s fossil-fuel-corporation-Goliath.

Sure, Archetype-Goliath is a formidable force. He is mighty, but his strength is static. Fossil-fuel-corporation-Goliath on the other hand has been growing larger and stronger for a century or so through mergers and buyouts. So the companies these small town heroes are fighting aren’t exactly a single Goliath; they are a group of Goliaths who consolidated their assets in order to control more resources. (In fact, all the oil-and-gas Goliath-groups have collectively earned $2.8 billion a day for the last fifty years.¹) David might have been less successful if he were facing a Goliath flanked by two or three other Goliath’s, all fighting to protect their shareholders’ interests. (Shareholders are smaller Goliath’s with considerable wealth and political power that could easily make David’s life hell for even trying.) 

It’s not just the unfathomable wealth and Blob-style growth of corporations that make them more dynamic than Archetype-Goliath. Corporations have also gained significant political power over the last hundred years. 

In the US, corporations were granted some game-changing civil rights. (In many states–like Louisiana–corporations now enjoy more autonomy than the people living there.) In 2010, the Supreme Court expanded corporations 1st Amendment Rights through Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This ruling allows corporations to donate unlimited dollars to political campaigns, giving them unprecedented power over election outcomes. This ruling legitimized the reciprocal relationships between politicians and their corporate donors. As we move into another traumatizing presidential election in the United States, we can accurately predict where fossil fuel corporations will funnel their billions, and what effect those donations will have on future policies.

Internationally, corporations also have the power to undermine a nation’s sovereignty through the Investor State Dispute System (ISDS). Federal trade agreements include ISDS treaties that give corporations the right to sue a government if laws are enforced, changed, or passed that hamper corporate profits (for example: new regulations that make air and water cleaner or jobs safer for people, but production more expensive for companies). 

These cases are handled through a private tribunal consisting of well-paid corporate lawyers who usually have a vested interest in the industry involved. Since these cases bypass a government’s court system, citizens might never hear about them or their outcomes. But if the government involved is forced to pay damages–and they usually are–that money comes from tax-payer dollars. Since the 1970s, fossil fuel companies have earned $82.8 billion dollars globally through Investor State Dispute Claims.²

With ISDS, corporations force governments to make impossible choices between million and sometimes billion dollar settlements (which could bankrupt a smaller or developing country’s entire economy) or passing laws that protect their citizens’ rights to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. 

Ultimately, ISDS gives corporations more sovereignty than many of the countries where they operate, and stagnates policy change everywhere, locking all countries (even world superpowers) into indefinite fossil fuel production.

Since we don’t frame the stories where Goliath wins as David and Goliath stories, it’s easy to forget that Goliaths are out there winning, every day. In referring to this fight as a David and Goliath story, we subconsciously assume the inevitability of David’s success, that environmental activists will eventually take down the fossil-fuel-Goliath. And like Archetype-David, they will do it in an unexpected way. 

Like Archetype-David, environmental justice seekers are plucky, tenacious, and creative, but they are fighting a moving and growing target. And their Goliaths can’t come down all at once without bringing considerable suffering to billions of people. The Davids in these stories bring their slings and stones, but they’ve also had to become environmental and social scientists, chemists, lawyers, public speakers, policy writers, corporate and environmental lawyers, futurists, statisticians, economists, hydrologists, historians, etc. in order to fight a Goliath that is often too big to comprehend. 

Despite my frustration with this comparison, I hope more than anything that this is a David and Goliath story, that there can and will be a world that isn’t structured around corporate extractivism. I also hope that more people will begin to look at this fight more bravely and more closely and more often. It is a fight that will show up at all of our front doors eventually. And when we are dealing with a Goliath as big and powerful and complex as fossil-fuel-Goliath, we need everyone’s help. 

Especially because if you asked fossil-fuel-Goliath his name, he’d tell you it’s David.