Environment
sold out by greed
Nuclear reactors, toxic waste dumps, logging,
emissions standards — a swell is building
every year into an environmental tidal wave
that the Environmental Protection Agency
does not seem able to quell. You would think
that once people realized the implications
of our haphazard industry and commercial
contamination standards our nation’s view
of our imminent future would change, and
perhaps some of its actions. Instead, the
newspaper is full of reports of relaxing
standards, of destructive government proposals
and of waste that has no place to go.
Insatiable greed appears to be behind the
move of selling our planet piecemeal to
the highest bidder. But government agencies,
some in place for the sole reason of protecting
our environment, are at the forefront of
this devastation, not the greedy corporations.
Behind the diluted, insubstantial facade
of environmental protection lay lobbyists
and lawyers and liars and leeches.
In the nation, Bushes administration is
steadily deregulating corporations and industry,
flouting the 20th century’s attempt to atone
for some of the damage it begat.
The federal government is now taking cues
from the logging industry as Alaskan Republican
Senator Ted Stevens proposes measures to
reopen deforestation on federal lands.
The measures allow for road building in
undeveloped forests and protect the forest
management plan from legal attacks. Lobbying
the plan from the position that the logging
industry has deteriorated this measure undoes
what environmentalist’s have been doing
for a century: Protecting our forests from
short-sighted greed.
From the land to the air the government
is working hand-in-hand with the EPA to
relax standards. Automobile emissions are
second-rate compared with the toxic emission
standards that the EPA plans to ease. Fumes
from steel and pulp mills, petrochemical
plants, auto factories and a variety of
other industries are cancer-causing and
will now be covered under an “opt-out” policy
where companies can choose to regulate their
own emissions. Favoring business is the
new rage, but at what cost to the public?
The rest of the nation relies on the EPA
but California has its own policies. Our
VOC, or Volatile Organic Content, laws are
the most stringent in the nation. These
laws apply to paints, coatings and glues
and place the burden of compliance upon
the companies. Many products that can be
sold in other states cannot even be shipped
here. Regulated jointly by the Air Quality
Management District and the EPA, California’s
VOC laws protect our already polluted air
from careless and indifferent contributions
from companies that make enough cash to
comply.
Although Southern California smog is the
most obvious indicator of rampant pollution,
we have other problems too. At the San Onofre
nuclear power plant there is a 950-ton decommissioned
reactor looking for a home. The surplus
of radioactive material is destined for
a nuclear waste dump in South Carolina,
which people must justify, is as good a
place as any; but getting it there has proved
to be a problem. The Panama Canal has refused
it passage based on the fact that it exceeds
their maximum weight for radioactive materials
by more than six times.
Superfund sounds like such a good thing
unless you’re talking about refuse. The
Casmalia toxic waste site in Santa Barbara
County has an estimated clean up time of
20 years with a price tag totaling $272
million.
The Bush administration’s environmental
policy is baffling, frustrating and unsustainable.
As areas become more polluted, the rich
will move up and out and the toxic plazas
will remain for the underprivileged. Eventually
there will be no place high enough and no
place far enough away for big business and
government agencies that just can not see
it coming.
As the pollution faux pas of yesteryear
come to a head today, we need an administration
that will handle the past and the future
of our environment with foresight, not
with greed. The current administration has
proven that it just does not care.
Monica Pardee is a journalism major
at Cal State Long Beach.
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