Apparently, some coal was sold to Raven Coal and they paid for it. The company however, is taking more than what was up for sale and is taking more than what they paid for it. You have the legal right to tunnel underground and extract only the coal bits and no legal and moral right to take anything more.
In Shakepeare’s Merchant of Venice, Shylock insisted on his “pound of flesh” and Portia won the case because Shylock had not included the rights to any blood.
Their pound of flesh is the coal only; ours is the blood that is not included such as: air, land, ocean, fisheries, forests, vegetation, insects, animals, birds, roads and most of all, the welfare of human beings,
Sylvia M. Hofstetter
Qualicum Beach
