http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1011-05.htm
Published on Saturday,
October 11, 2003 by the Los Angeles Times
'Environmental Terrorism' Is a Matter
of Definition
by Phil Zuckerman
"What color are we today?" my older daughter asks as
she saunters
to the kitchen table every morning. The color-coded air quality
chart
on The Times' weather page is often the first thing on her mind.
I always feel dreadful
when I answer "orange." It is a response
I've had to give a lot lately. She moans. The orange code means
"unhealthful for sensitive people," and my daughters,
ages 2 and 5,
certainly fall into that category.
How much poisonous
air can such little lungs handle? Not much.
A recent study done at USC found that children living in the Inland
Empire had a significantly reduced lung capacity compared with
children living in the mountains or by the sea.
The smog level is at
its worst since we moved here six years ago.
You can see it, brown and thick. And you can feel it: sore throats,
irritated eyes and buzzing headaches. And yet there are more Hummers
and SUVs on the road every day, adding to the pollution.
One would think that
smog is a social issue like child abuse or
drunk driving that would be universally condemned. What politician
would want to "protect" smog or fight for the rights
of smog producers?
Doesn't everyone agree that poisoned air is bad, that whatever
produces
it is detrimental to our children's health?
And yet many politicians,
rather than fight to protect children's
lungs, fight to protect smog producers. Like one who appoints
a fox
to guard the henhouse, President Bush has nominated for chief
of the
Environmental Protection Agency a man who wants to weaken pollution
standards. Something must be done.
- Major newspapers
and magazines should regularly publish lists
and profiles of the largest polluters in Southern California:
the company names, their products, the names of directors on
their boards and the names of the politicians they donate money
to.
- There should be one
standard to rate new cars on their environmental
impact, and high polluters should be penalized with a significant
fee that would go toward public health care and environmental
programs.
- If we can spend billions
to occupy and rebuild Iraq, surely there
must be more that can be allocated for alternative, cleaner sources
of transportation.
There are many additional
ideas for cleaning our air. But those
who make money at the expense of our air will do all they can
to
elect politicians who protect their assets. The rest of us need
to elect politicians who protect our air.
It is a sick era when
"environmental terrorist" is a label used
for people who destroy Hummers and fight urban sprawl, rather
than
the people who daily poison our air and the politicians who aid
and
abet their assault on our children's lungs.
Phil Zuckerman is a
professor of sociology at Pitzer College.
Copyright 2003 Los
Angeles Times
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