Off the Rails

Progress is a two edged sword. The main reason some of us are so eager to embrace fundamentalism whether it be religious or economic is an increasingly fatalistic sense that the problems facing the world have become too complex, too intractable for any practical solutions. But despite our yearnings it is unlikely, barring some enormous cataclysm, that we will retreat to those 'simpler' times. Most of us Americans cannot imagine going to shop without driving our cars.

Ironically, it is the falsehoods of those most responsible for our sense of doom and gloom that keep us too fearful to think in a pragmatic fashion and instead seek the comforts of excess and fatuous bromides--our children be damned. Take for example this issue of climate change. While we argue about whether or not the earth is capable of absorbing our destructive activities there is evidence aplenty that the pollution we are busy pumping into the air is steadily killing us.

"We found a link between post-menopausal breast cancer and exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is a 'marker' for traffic-related air pollution," says Dr. Goldberg. "Across Montreal, levels of NO2 varied between 5 ppb to over 30 ppb. We found that risk increased by about 25 per cent with every increase of NO2 of five parts per billion. Another way of saying this is that women living in the areas with the highest levels of pollution were almost twice as likely to develop breast cancer as those living in the least polluted areas." -- Science Daily

What is more tragic than a pink ribbon proudly displayed on a humongous SUV? Perhaps the news that New Jersey's governor on the supposed grounds of cutting "waste" just canceled a federally funded project to expand mass transit. This at a time when U.S. unemployment figures are just short of what they were during the Great Depression.

Now that's real intelligent leadership.

Yes building efficient mass transit can be expensive-- until you consider the costs of treating cancer.

Borrowing Disaster

We've heard it all-- bail-out the banks--no nationalize them!--no--let the market "play out"--oh just let the whole steaming pile collapse! What we have not heard much about is that despite the obvious fraud that has brought the global market to its knees the current financial crisis was bound to happen sooner or later.

"There are two ways to boost profits: you either make your workforce work more effectively, or you make them work harder and longer."

Our Wall St. bankers understand that wealth is power. In trying to wring more "surplus value" vs the ruthless Asian tigers (see China's spectacular growth) they have been suppressing wages and then lending the workers back the difference through inflated mortgages and usurious loans. But just as the Madoff scheme blew up once the economy began to unravel, so has the value of the bankers' portfolio crashed and burned as more and more borrowers are laid off or simply can no longer pay back their lenders.

The reason even nationalization may not help to stem the crisis is that there are not enough industries left to absorb the jobless-- at least not nearly in time to boost consumption. On this point Obama is exactly right. The only chance for an appreciable "rebound" of the global economy is a stimulus package large enough to employ America's "excess labor." Had we not been trapped in the vise of neo-liberal ideologues we would have seen the danger years ago and responded proactively. Instead Bush and Greenspan ignored the rising employment and mushroomed the debt rate. But then we Americans are all middle-class and scornful to call ourselves "labor " like those "wine-sipping, surrender monkeys" in France who have the nerve to believe that workers have rights.

The Financial Times: April 10 2006
Chirac backs down over labour law
Adam Jones, Paris

Confronted by massive street protests as well as blockades and closures of schools and universities, the government had already offered to dilute its plan to introduce the CPE, a new type of job contract that would make it easier to hire and fire people aged under 26. Yet that olive branch was rejected by the unions. They are demanding the total withdrawal of the contract, which had been proposed as a way of cutting youth unemployment in France.

But even back then any political economist with a functioning brain should have understood that the neo-liberal ideal of unlimited trade and constant growth was simply not sustainable. It is fine for well-meaning folks like Krugman to be concerned about the starving peasants in Bangladesh, it's time for someone with some standing and foresight to put forward an alternative to Western-style capitalism. Consider this warning from 2005:

"If its growth continues at 8 per cent a year by 2031 China's grain consumption alone will be two-thirds of the current grain consumption for the entire world. [ ] According to China's deputy environment minister, Pan Yue, five of the 10 most polluted cities worldwide are in China; acid rain is falling on one-third of the country; half of the water in its seven largest rivers is "completely useless"; a quarter of China's citizens lack access to clean drinking water; one-third of the urban population is breathing polluted air."

It's past time we stop letting Wall St. obsess us with thinking of dollars and start speaking sense.

Death By Laziness, Corruption and Greed

In an era when investigative journalism has to be expensively packaged, hyped and sold it is unsurprising that most Americans seem largely disengaged from the great challenges of the day.
It's hard to blame them.

At a time when we are increasing despoiling our land, air and water the corporate-run media have been steadily reducing the amount of time they spend discussing the environment. Worse, half of that is crap and hot air. Somehow the lack of interest in the planet's destruction (compared to coverage of Lindsey Lohan or the O.J. trial it could be called near indifference) seems fitting seeing that the modern reporter's idea of using a little "shoe-leather" is checking the internet for the latest on "Drudge".

One would think even our laziest reporters would want to expose the extent to which we are poisoning the land and what even they will have to eat. But since 2001 the Bush Administration has been able to pretend it is running a government when in fact big business is now running the country and free to bombard us with ecological "shock and awe".

Safeguards are ignored, the EPA neutered while rivers are polluted and wetlands are destroyed. Livestock left to sicken and make sick. Even when an industry pleads for regulation the Bushites can't be budged.

The president of the United Fresh Produce Association pleaded that the industry’s problems “can’t be solved without strong mandatory federal regulations”: without such regulations, scrupulous growers and processors risk being undercut by competitors more willing to cut corners on food safety. Yet the administration refuses to do more than issue nonbinding guidelines because it fears that might lead to the regulation of other industries.

It's not hard to figure once you realize that George Bush supporters are the worst offenders

• Top polluters identified.The study ranks the top 50 power plants for each of three pollutant categories – mercury, sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide.According to the report, the three worst polluters in terms of SO2 are: Bowen (Georgia); W.H. Sammis (Ohio); and Keystone (Pennsylvania).The three worst polluters in terms of CO2 are:Martin Lake (Texas); Scherer (Georgia); and Bowen (Georgia). The three worst polluters for mercury are:Keystone (Pennsyvlania); Mount Storm (West Virginia); and Monticello (Texas). Of this group, only one – Mount Storm, operated by Dominion Electric – has agreed to a comprehensive clean up of its pollution, particularly sulfur dioxide.

• Key campaign contributors identified.The study looked at the 89 plants that comprise the three top 50 lists and found that the majority of the plants were owned by 30 corporations. Those utility companies and their trade association engaged in an intense fundraising campaign that netted $6.6 million for Bush and the RNC since 1999. They also produced 10 Bush Rangers and Pioneers who have between them raised at least $1.5 million.

• Key pollution indicators are up. The EPA’s recently released 2003 emissions data show that power plant SO2 emissions increased by more than 400,000 tons between 2002 and 2003, rising from 10.19 million tons to 10.59 million tons, or 3.9 percent.Carbon dioxide emissions increased by roughly 47 million tons during the same period, from 2.425 billion tons in 2002, to 2.472 billion tons in 2003, a 2 percent increase.Nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants declined 5.6 percent, dropping from 4.36 million to 4.12 million tons.

• Over half of major polluters have been in hot water.Of the 89 plants that made it onto one or more of the dirtiest plant lists, 47 – well over half – either have been sued or placed under investigation by the EPA for violating the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review requirement.Of the top 50 SO2 emitters, 18 plants have been brought to court and another 11 were placed under investigation by the government.In August 2003, the EPA relaxed the rules for New Source Review – exempting many facilities from the law’s permit and pollution control requirements – only to have a court stay the rules. Nonetheless, the result of the administration’s policy, coupled with the program’s current legal limbo, is that many of these companies have either had the cases against them undermined or simply dropped by the Bush administration.

• Major harm inflicted by pollution. In addition to causing major environmental and property damage from acid rain, sulfur dioxide inflicts a serious health toll in terms of asthma attacks and lung ailments.According to EPA studies, pollution from power plants is linked to heart and lung diseases, which contribute to more than 20,000 premature deaths a year.Mercury is a highly toxic metal that, once released into the atmosphere, settles in lakes and rivers, where it moves up the food chain to humans.In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that roughly 10 percent of American women carry mercury concentrations at levels considered to put a fetus at risk to neurological damage.

• Major lobbying clout for polluters. Once President Bush was in office, many of the utilities that had helped to elect him hired lobbying and law firms with Rangers and Pioneers to lobby the government or defend them against the EPA’s pollution lawsuits. The 30 big companies on the three dirtiest plants lists hired at least 16 firms that between them have 23 different Rangers and Pioneers who raised at least $3.4 million for Bush’s campaigns. Their firms, together with the trade association for most coal-fired electric utility corporations (whose president is himself a Pioneer for 2000 and 2004), met with Cheney’s national energy task force at least 17 times to help formulate the country’s energy and pollution policies.The recommendations of that task force led directly to EPA’s reassessment and rewriting of the Clean Air Act rule that the utilities had been accused of violating.
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Sixteen years ago that marvelous 14-year-old put us to shame. Although our grown-up Severn Cullis-Suzuki has been shoved offstage so we can obsess about Paris and Britney, she is still fighting the good fight. Watching our vapid media circus there must be times Ms. Cullis-Suzuki shakes her head and wonders if it is all a waste of breath.