Prefer to listen? Click play.
Everybody remembers “The Jungle,” Upton Sinclair’s horrifying novel about abuses in the meat-packing industry in Chicago. What few remember, however, is that Sinclair ran for governor of California in 1934, won the Democratic nomination, and then waged an EPIC campaign, EPIC in this case standing for “End Poverty in California.”
Corporations panicked and spent heavily to defeat him. After he lost, Sinclair observed, “it is difficult for a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” That’s an elegant way of saying that almost all of us can be bought.
Here’s something you should never forget when it comes to the environment: There’s a great deal of money to be made, at least in the short run, by badly damaging our environment. Others make money by defending the polluters.
They never tell the truth about why they are doing it, however.
Which brings me to Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, the Republican nominee for governor. The non-profit Online magazine Bridge had a good piece Tuesday documenting how Schuette last month filed a brief in an ongoing federal lawsuit about Exxon/Mobil and climate change, and said that the whole notion of climate change was “unsettled science.”
That is essentially almost as absurd as saying the question of whether the earth is round or flat has yet to be determined. There is no longer any debate to speak of in serious scientific circles. Science has confirmed that global warming, aka “climate change” is very real. As Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan told Bridge, “there’s no longer any serious debate that humans are changing the climate and causing the vast majority of warming … primarily through the burning of fossil fuels.” Again, every legitimate, independent scientific study shows the same.
Bill Schuette has no scientific background, but it would seem the man who wants to be governor knows better. Later, when Bridge Magazine pressed an aide to Schuette, she didn’t say what he really believes, but said the attorney general filed the brief in support of Exxon/Mobil “for one reason: to preserve the right to free speech.”
I thought that’s what the First Amendment did. It will be interesting to see whether Exxon/Mobil is donating to his current campaign. Joni Mitchell isn’t a scientist either, but in her song Big Yellow Taxi, she had one line that made more sense that the attorney general does when it comes to the environment: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” It is quite possible that we may permanently ruin the Great Lakes, and/or foul the air and blight the earth beyond repair.
Indeed, it often seems as if that is exactly what we are likely to do. By the way, fifty years ago, there was a large body of water called the Aral Sea in the former Soviet Union.
Planners abused it, diverted too much of the water that replenished it, until the Aral Sea was almost totally destroyed. It had been about the size of Lake Superior. Imagine what it would be like if Lakes Huron, Michigan or even Erie were damaged beyond repair.
We’ve got one earth, period. We can be stewards of it, and hand it over to our children in decent shape, or we can trash and maybe destroy it. The choice should be a no-brainer.
It’s up to all of us. To speak out for justice – and to elect leaders this November who share our values, and who would like the honor of being stewards of the earth.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
