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.