Tuesday, May 4, 2010

PIGS “R” US

By Octopus


Early this morning, I walked my fabled beach to partake of what little time may be left before the sludge arrives. My beach is one of the most beautiful on the Atlantic coast ... a wide expanse of fine white sand that crunches beneath your feet, and an infinite emerald green vista beyond the breakers. Here, you can walk for miles before encountering another person.

On any given day, beachcombers will see herons, egrets, sandpipers, and plovers teasing the surf, or black skimmers and pelicans strafing the waves.

The Gulf oil leak disaster comes on the heals of an unseasonably cold winter that left hundreds of manatees and endangered marine turtles cold stunned, dead, or dying. For decades, marine biologists have warned: Our coral reefs are vanishing; our fish stocks are depleted; storm runoff is destroying our wetlands; and floating garbage will bring our ocean ecosystem to the verge of collapse.


Public opinion is a pendulum that swings between fads and confabulations, a rhythm and discord orchestrated by sociopaths. When gas hit $4 at the pump, everyone chanted: Drill, baby, drill. When corporations threatened to close factories and move operations overseas unless the government eased environmental regulations, everyone chanted: Down with tree huggers - they kill jobs.

Nobody listened. How soon we forget past transgressions. How soon we forgot about the tragedy of Love Canal where a housing community was built upon a waste dump containing 21,000 tons of toxic chemicals. In short order, residents reported acrid liquids leaching into their basements, and higher than normal prevalence rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer. Children who played outdoors came home with burns on their skin. Eventually, the government evacuated 800 families and reimbursed them for their homes; however it took another 18 years before the successor corporation agreed to pay restitution.

How soon we forgot about the succession of fires along the Cuyahoga River: The first in 1912 that killed five, a fire in 1936 that burned five days, another in 1952 that burned three days and caused millions of dollars in damage, and the last in 1969 when accumulated trash and debris trapped in heavy black ooze was ignited by a sparks from a passing train.

How soon we forget the epidemic known as Minamata Disease, a severe neurological disorder resembling cerebral palsy caused by the release of methyl mercury in industrial wastewater. This highly toxic chemical accumulated in the seafood harvested from Minamata Bay, which when eaten by the populace resulted in mercury poisoning. By 2001, over 2,265 victims had been officially recognized, of whom 1,784 had died. At least 10,000 others still await compensation.


(Click on image to enlarge)

Each year, the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) publishes information and analyses on major polluters in America. This study relies on EPA Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI), which assesses the toxicity of chemicals released, impacts on human health, the risk to exposed populations, and the burden borne by local municipalities. How toxic is toxic?

The EPA tracks 600 toxic chemicals released into the environment as measured in millions of pounds per year. It should be noted that toxicity is not merely a measure of the quantity of pollutants released each year but the toxicity of each compound in relative terms. Toxicity varies by seven orders of magnitude meaning, pound-for-pound, some chemicals are ten million times more toxic than others. The EPA database includes known carcinogens such as asbestos (toxicity index = 1 million), benzidine (TI= 480,000), and bis chloromethyl ether (TI= 440,000), highly toxic industrial solvents, and millions of pounds of heavy metals such as cadmium (TI = 90,000), chromium (TI = 86,000), arsenic (TI = 60,000), lead (TI = 8,000), and mercury (TI = 6,000).

One would think the term Environmental Justice would place Mother Nature and the right of all citizens to clean air and water on an equal footing along with “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In fact, Environmental Justice is a ploy used by polluters to spread the impact of pollution without regard to race, religion, ethnicity, or station in life.
Pollution is good for business. It saves owners and shareholders the cost and inconvenience of cleanup and puts more money in their pockets. “Lets allow more arsenic in public drinking water,” says the coal lobby, “and who gives a damn if your worthless kid gets leukemia.” The perks and privileges of the few outweigh the health concerns of the many because public welfare, as Glenn Beck has told you, is tantamount to socialism.

“Have another Double Whopper with bacon and cheese,” says McDonalds, “Who who gives a damn if you die of diabetes. Shareholder value, baby!, that’s what’s its all about.”

“Go ahead. Beat your children and traumatize the crap out of them,” spouts Herr Doctor Freud, “Es ist goot fur beezniss.”

Corporate responsibility is an oxymoron. The titans of industry don’t want environmental regulations, banking reform, consumer product monitoring, food inspections, or workplace safety standards, because regulations are bad, big government is bad, and what’s good for business is good for America!  The 19th Century mindset of social Darwinists, libertarians, and the discontents of civilization are anachronisms living in the post-modern world.  And who the hell needs healthcare when you have no heart and no brain, and your head and your ass are interchangeable.

Inevitably, the cost of cleanup and compensation will be borne by the consumer as energy costs rise. Eventually taxpayers will get stuck with the bills when push comes to pay, because BP’s lawyers will delay and delay. When gas hits $4 at the pump, the pendulum will swing once again with chants of “drill, baby, drill,” because nothing in the human Universe ever changes, while Mother Nature suffers one more incremental death blow.

The longer the Louisiana oil leak persists, the more inevitable this becomes:  Oil will enter the Gulf of Mexico Loop Current that will transport it to the east coast of Florida … thus impacting our beaches and coastal ecosystems. The oil slick arribada may be weeks or months away. Heartbroken, livid, outraged, there are no words to describe what I feel.

5 comments:

  1. The Gulf Stream is only 4 - 6 miles offshore here and the local economy is heavily dependent on boating and sport fishing - even a little bit of commercial fishing.

    What the hell, I can always switch to frozen Tilapia from Viet Nam instead of the fresh Pompano and Snapper but of course the real danger everyone should be concerned with is to my boat. Suck that stuff into the engine cooling system and air conditioning intake and I might as well scuttle the thing. Seriously it could destroy the local economy -- but don't blame BP Amoco:

    Blame it on Obama
    Blame it on ObamUH!

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  2. Octo, livid and heartbroken describes my reactions, too.

    But, you know, your title it's unfair to pigs, who are decent animals and would never commit such a crime against nature on which their lives depend.

    Idiots R Us is more like it. Or perhaps Monsters R Us.

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  3. There's some small hope that they'll be able to block off the pipes in time to prevent the absolute worst, but I'm not optimistic. I think we are seeing the worst environmental disaster we have ever had, unfolding over the next few weeks. It is heartbreaking.

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  4. You know, brother Octo,

    I've often wondered why so much of the coastal life in the waters of Southern California died off so completely during my own lifetime. The character, Doc, in Cannery Row made his pilgrimage to La Jolla to collect octopi. 1976 was the one and only time I ever saw an octopus. Tide pools used to have tremendous swarms of baby fish. Scallops, abalones, oysters, large sea snails, sea urchins, sea anemones, sea hares and other life forms used to be very commonplace. Now only the hardiest species such as mussels, barnacles, skates, rays and sharks have survived. There are still a wide variety of fish in the deep ocean. But dedicated fishermen are taking as many as they can catch. Even hermit crabs and small snails are somewhat rare. There are basically no shells left to find on the beaches. Collecting shells used to be my favorite hobby as a teenager.

    In my mind, I roughly attributed it to pollution and too much specimen taking. But, looking back, there really was no widespread poisoning of the ocean water other than the oil leaked from wells and spills. It never really goes away, until one day it may drop to the ocean floor as sediment. I wonder if all the die-off I have seen in my lifetime was caused by off-shore drilling. It probably has a lot to do with storm drain runoff as well.

    There used to be a very pretty little fish called the Tide Pool Sculpin. Tide pools have been mostly dead for the past thirty years.

    ReplyDelete

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