in a little island off the coast of South America a little oil company named EXXON MOBILE starts drilling a little ol oil well. You can see sludge and chemicals and oil from the drilling rig running down the once clear streams. The natives suddenly start getting cancer and other diseases, their babies are born with birth defects, their livestock and crops are dying. They sue in court. The court says they can't prove cause and effect and anyway the court says it has no jurisdiction and they have no standing.
in a little country called Kuwait black smoke and particulates are raining down because a little dictator named Saddam Hussein in a fit of pique set fire to the oil wells. Livestock, children, old people are getting sick and dying, it's hard for anybody to breathe. A petty bureaucrat comes out to address a little crowd gathered before a government office. He says, "Go home. The air is clean, the water is pure and good to drink. Go home to your farms and homes." It's the rule of law he says, you can't consider health effects of government action.
in cities and towns (see the documentary, "GASLAND") across the U.S. oil companies move in and start fracking, using explosives 12000 feet underground to crack the shale layer and capture natural gas trapped beneath it. People and their pets and livestock start getting sick and dying and they notice they can light a match under their water faucet while it's open and the water burns. The court will not hear their grievances. A special congressional committee will not allow an expert who has studied this practice for years to speak before it.
in neighborhoods across the U.S. communications companies such as AT&T put in cell towers. The neighborhood associations and citizens groups protest. They can be "heard" (in a way) but a large body of scientific evidence as to the health effects of electromagnetic radiation from cell towers cannot be considered. Why not? It's the rule of law, never mind how it's been influenced by the rule of money. Health insurance rates go up, property values go down. Even if people's fears are imaginary their stress is a health effect. The rule of law says this can't be discussed.
in a little jerkwater burg out west a big university with a big football program (almost rivaling that of Penn State with 20 towns clustered around it all beholding to IT'S football program) starts making deals with the millionaires' club and the City and out of state contractors to put up high rise dorms and parking garages and other monstrous buildings, using a little known code mechanism (subterfuge) called "OVERLAY" to subvert building and zoning codes. A few people, and an ex council person ask , "Whose Vision IS This Anyway?" (see OCCUPY newsletter). But it's progress, you can either help or watch or get out of the way, the gentrification steamroller (just like the Israeli bulldozers smashing down Palestinian villages) moves on regardless. Go ahead protest, write a letter to the editor, you've just been taken to a media concentration camp under extreme rendition, nobody can hear you scream....
in a little neighborhood near the Santa Cruz a large Southern Baptist University proposes to build a campus on 109 acres that used to be accessible as a park and golf course to a neighborhood. The City Council, the movers and shakers and various self appointed economic experts, all say this is a wonderful deal. Property values will go up, there will be jobs, there will be economic growth and downtown revitalization. A few neighbors protest that what's left of a riparian corridor to the desert beyond will be lost, coyotes will no longer sing there at night, wildfowl will no longer drop in for the night on their way south or north, the ambient temperature of the neighborhood will rise by 5 to 10 degrees. They propose instead, a wildlife sanctuary, golf course and recreation area combined....their voices are lost in the flurry of letter writers and budget wonks talking about jobs and growth for growth's sake.
Hey boys and girls can you see any similarity in the above instances? I knew you could! That's right, individuals, some of them your friends and neighbors, are being objectified, quantified, their health and the health of the natural community are being ignored, their constitutional and judicial rights are being subverted or violated, and the health of their habitat, the natural community is swirling in the toilet bowl, ready to go down the tube, because a little known economic concept called "intergenerational well being" (meaning the value of nature to future generations) is being unconsidered even as it's being developed by respectable economists.
Another common thread, as George Orwell and others have noted, one of the main jobs of government is to LIE, and petty bureaucracies (sometimes with the aid of new mechanisms like photo radar and cell phone surveillance, sometimes just with old fashioned building codes and older fashioned pride and arrogance) consider themselves above the constitution. These forces combine to create a situation where people are being used as monopoly chips and pawns in a highly abstract game of growth for growth's sake, never mind that's the philosophy of the cancer cell, we're talking the future of a town here. If you build it they will come, but, but, but....
But who's going to come when the urban heat island effect is exacerbating the natural rise of global warming induced temperatures to over 120 degrees?
And hey experts, officials, developers, budget wonkin fellas and gals, don't mean to rain on your parade or nothing, but by the way WE LIVE HERE!
