Nature is the 99%, too

[a kennedy]

What if rising sea levels are yet another measure of inequality? What if the degradation of our planet's life-support systems - its atmosphere, oceans and biosphere - goes hand in hand with the accumulation of wealth, power and control by that corrupt and greedy 1 per cent we are hearing about from Zuccotti Park? What if the assault on America's middle class and the assault on the environment are one and the same?

It's not hard for me to understand how environmental quality and economic inequality came to be joined at the hip. In all my years as a grassroots organiser dealing with the tragic impact of degraded environments on public health, it was always the same: Someone got rich and someone got sick.

In the struggles that I was involved in to curb polluters and safeguard public health, those who wanted curbs, accountability and precautions were always outspent several times over by those who wanted no restrictions on their effluents.

We dug into our own pockets for postage money, they had expense accounts. We made flyers to slip under the windshield wipers of parked cars, they bought ads on television. We took time off from jobs to visit legislators, only to discover that they had gone to lunch with fulltime lobbyists.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011116132856199157.html

[HappyMe]

1. k&r

[lunatica]

2. And then there are the wars too

When was the last time someone didn't get rich off of creating wars for profit

[Newest Reality]

3. This may all center

on the concept of separateness.

When the worldview is predominately objective and projective, then how could we expect any subjective sense of connection with our environment or others.

When the feeling of isolation and the demonstrably false idea of the actuality of anything but a conceptual independence from others and the planet are dominant and useful to industry and culture, then the destructive results of that paradigm become self-reinforcing. The worse the condition of our culture(s) and environment become, the more we may seek solace or distraction within the notion of separateness because looking without honestly and openly becomes all the more painful and, initially at least, frightening.

This is a self-reinforcing circle of systemic disconnection. It underlies the nature of our self-destruction as a species, and the decimation of the other living things that we both depend on to survive and that share our existence on this planet.

In contrast to that, it is not difficult to discern the remedy, but the courage and kindness and caring that doing so requires is both immediately available to each of us and a incredible challenge for many in terms of questioning their conditioning and what it means to all life and even, future generations.

Our responsibility grows even as we feel compelled attempt to recoil and ignore the incredible demands and potentially healing and transforming shift that we are being called upon by the conditions of these times to participate in, in the ways that we are capable of. What an historical and vital time we find ourselves in and it certain is becoming a swift kick in our complacency across-the-board.

[Jim Lane]

4. Environmental issues are a classic case of the failure of free-market mechanisms.

In college, I took Economics 101 from a professor who believed strongly in the free market and the invisible hand. Even he, however, pointed out how the market doesn't readily account for environmental costs.

If you buy some coal and burn it at your power plant, the price you pay for the coal reflects some of the costs to society, such as the labor to mine it and the cost of shipping it to you. The price at which you can sell the electricity reflects the benefit to society. If the benefit exceeds the cost, you can make a profit, so you'll do it. If there's plenty of electricity already, then the cost exceeds the benefit, so you won't make a profit, so you won't build the power plant, which is the correct outcome.

The problem is that the mining of the coal (especially with modern mountaintop removal mining) polluted a nearby stream, and the burning of it contributed to global warm, but these costs to society aren't reflected in the decision about whether to do the activity.

Of course, to those who, unlike my professor, aren't just free-market advocates but are free-market worshipers, any discussion of this is anathema.

[Ghost Dog]

5. Now, that's well put: "Someone got rich and someone got sick."

: Someone got rich and the world got sick.