Today, on a worldwide scale, we remain in the same situation as one hundred years ago, only with less land and fewer people. - Winona LaDuke

Within a decade of the completion of the La Grande Complex, signs of environmental disasters have become obvious. Massive flooding had once again leached methyl Mercury from the soil, changing an inorganic Mercury compound in the water into organic mercury.

The tar sands is a boreal forest. You know, and you turn something that is the oxygen of the North—I mean, the boreal forest of northern Canada—of Canada is the equivalent of the lungs. It’s the Amazon of the North. It’s the Amazon of the North. And that is what is being destroyed by the tar sands. Wetland—this is just going through our wetlands. The value of a wetland—you know, I’m an economist by training, but how do you value a wetland for what it does for Mother Earth and for the planet and for your water and for insects and for where the wild things are?

The preamble to the U.S. Constitution declares its intent to be to "secure the blessings of liberty, to ourselves, and our posterity." In reality, U.S. laws have been transformed by corporate interests to cater to elite interests in society.