As far back as the Eighties, many of us realized that we are all victims of chem. warfare, virtually all of the time. From Alar on apples to dioxins and furans, in the environment. Heck even banned pesticides are hanging around from back in the good old days before we had coined the terms mutagen and teratogen. Additionally over four hundred new chemicals are created each year and the regulations on them are similar to the way we treat human beings, innocent until proven guilty. We collectively suck the fumes of agricultural and industrial warfare practiced by the ultra wealthy upon local populations. In the research that I did on my own location, I found that within just a few miles of my home, over 65 tons of hazardous metals, toxic compounds and poisons are released into the air annually, just from industrial sources. This does not include any thing designed to be spewed from mobile sources like automobiles, trucks and buses, nor are releases from small companies or home use of hazardous chemicals. Some may ask themselves who uses toxic chemicals at home? Well, one of my neighbors has a body shop in which he customizes cars for fun, another thinks his lawn needs to look like a green at an expensive golf course and yet a third loves to burn plastic to heat his garage. The chem. warfare pants that I used to sell in my clothing shop were Army issue, but the general public should demand to be treated at least as well as the expendable soldiers that are supposed to "protect" us.
Just because the concentrations are sub-lethal in the short term does not mean that they are safe. On the contrary, they are just as deadly and because of the small doses of many hundreds of chemicals that we get through our skin, our lungs and in our food, pining the damage on a single source or "attack" is impossible. We need to ask serious questions about our level of tolerance for these toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic agents that we are routinely exposed to. Cancer rates continue to increase, there has been a spike in several childhood diseases, each and every day we learn of ways that the current leaders allow us to be exploited. Just because we don't keel over and die on the spot, is not enough to prove safety. Even when we know that our jobs are killing us, as in the coal mining industry, the government subsidizes the destruction of families and "compensates" victim's families with black lung insurance. There has been a push in the arts community to teach young artists ways to avoid deadly contact with their materials and to try to reign in the hazards in and around art studios, but the fact is that many materials used for art remain dangerous to the people who use them. In iron work, welding, paint shops, pottery works, jewelry making and even pastels or other sorts of sculpture, fumes are most often vented out of the workshop where they contaminate the neighborhood.
Environmentalists have known for decades that dilution is not a solution to pollution, but our regulators and politicians, through consultation with the "regulated community" have seen fit to make up every sort of rule and excuse to allow continued poisoning of our neighborhoods. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions are dying right now, today from their poisoned environment. Who will avenge their deaths? When T. S. Elliot wrote that the world would end, not with a bang but a whimper. Perhaps he presaged our current plight. My regular readers know that this is not the end I will accept lying down. I have invested too much in making the world a better place, in raising exemplary children and reclaiming as much of the planet as possible so that future generations might enjoy the place after I am gone. Putting profits above people has always led to destruction and death. People places and entire cities have fallen victim to the fickle "markets" created by greedy people in faraway places.
We the people who have to pick up the pieces and carry on after the exploiters have left need to understand that corporate welfare is class warfare and that silence on this matter is complicity. We stand poised on the verge of another war. By every accounting the costs of war have never justified perpetrating violence against another. what I have spoken here in these few paragraphs is not meant to justify or lessen the heinous actions of a regime currently in power in Syria, nor is it meant to dissuade the rest of the world from taking those who authorized such barbarism to task for their actions, but what I do intend to do is to highlight the fact that we are doing the exact same thing to our own people around the planet. The ultra wealthy do not have to lay down the carpet of poison that produces their wealth, that is what their wage slaves are for. I beg the people of the planet to stand up and be represented, speak out in favor of another way and in each and every act bring clarity and focus to the art of living lightly on the Earth. We can stop the poisons that flow into our environment, but it will take diligence, creativity and commitment. We the people have these resources and the fickle expediency of amassing great wealth will buckle and crumble under the weight of public opinion if we all begin to stand together and say in unison, "No more!"
Just because the concentrations are sub-lethal in the short term does not mean that they are safe. On the contrary, they are just as deadly and because of the small doses of many hundreds of chemicals that we get through our skin, our lungs and in our food, pining the damage on a single source or "attack" is impossible. We need to ask serious questions about our level of tolerance for these toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic agents that we are routinely exposed to. Cancer rates continue to increase, there has been a spike in several childhood diseases, each and every day we learn of ways that the current leaders allow us to be exploited. Just because we don't keel over and die on the spot, is not enough to prove safety. Even when we know that our jobs are killing us, as in the coal mining industry, the government subsidizes the destruction of families and "compensates" victim's families with black lung insurance. There has been a push in the arts community to teach young artists ways to avoid deadly contact with their materials and to try to reign in the hazards in and around art studios, but the fact is that many materials used for art remain dangerous to the people who use them. In iron work, welding, paint shops, pottery works, jewelry making and even pastels or other sorts of sculpture, fumes are most often vented out of the workshop where they contaminate the neighborhood.
Environmentalists have known for decades that dilution is not a solution to pollution, but our regulators and politicians, through consultation with the "regulated community" have seen fit to make up every sort of rule and excuse to allow continued poisoning of our neighborhoods. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions are dying right now, today from their poisoned environment. Who will avenge their deaths? When T. S. Elliot wrote that the world would end, not with a bang but a whimper. Perhaps he presaged our current plight. My regular readers know that this is not the end I will accept lying down. I have invested too much in making the world a better place, in raising exemplary children and reclaiming as much of the planet as possible so that future generations might enjoy the place after I am gone. Putting profits above people has always led to destruction and death. People places and entire cities have fallen victim to the fickle "markets" created by greedy people in faraway places.
We the people who have to pick up the pieces and carry on after the exploiters have left need to understand that corporate welfare is class warfare and that silence on this matter is complicity. We stand poised on the verge of another war. By every accounting the costs of war have never justified perpetrating violence against another. what I have spoken here in these few paragraphs is not meant to justify or lessen the heinous actions of a regime currently in power in Syria, nor is it meant to dissuade the rest of the world from taking those who authorized such barbarism to task for their actions, but what I do intend to do is to highlight the fact that we are doing the exact same thing to our own people around the planet. The ultra wealthy do not have to lay down the carpet of poison that produces their wealth, that is what their wage slaves are for. I beg the people of the planet to stand up and be represented, speak out in favor of another way and in each and every act bring clarity and focus to the art of living lightly on the Earth. We can stop the poisons that flow into our environment, but it will take diligence, creativity and commitment. We the people have these resources and the fickle expediency of amassing great wealth will buckle and crumble under the weight of public opinion if we all begin to stand together and say in unison, "No more!"
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