OIL AND GAS interests and the government recently offered a First Nation in the Skeena River estuary (BC, Canada) $1 billion to consent to construction of a controversial terminal to load fossil fuels onto tankers. Despite the First Nation rejecting the offer due to environmental and cultural concerns, the government has ratified fiscal agreements with terminal proponents. Identifying the proper spatial scale for environmental decision-making is a fundamental challenge for environmental policy and ethics. Science can and should inform the scale at which environ- mental decision-makers weigh risks to the environment and human rights against potential economic benefits.