Fishing for New Environmentalists
Belief:
Atheists, It's Time to Stand Up to Jesus
Russell Blackford, Udo Schuklenk
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
As Foreclosure Nightmares Increase, Will More Homeowners Pay Off Their Bankers in Violence?
Scott Thill
DrugReporter:
Lies About Marijuana Drive People to a Much More Harmful Drug -- Booze
Steve Fox
Environment:
Why We Need Bees and More People Becoming Organic Beekeepers
Makenna Goodman
Food:
Despite Censorship By Beef Magnate, Michael Pollan Spreads Message About the Real Price of Cheap Food
Health and Wellness:
New York May Stop Heartless Health Insurers from Dropping Coverage When It Stops Being Profitable
William Ehart
Immigration:
NYC Marathon Raises Question of Who Is American Enough?
James E. Johnson, Jr.
Media and Technology:
Focusing on Fort Hood Killer's Beliefs Is an Easy Out to Avoid the Deeper Reasons for the Massacre
Mark Ames
Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler
Politics:
What Michelle and Barack's Marriage Has in Common with 56 Million Other Ones
Annabelle Gurwitch
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Fetus-Shaped Potatoes? Going Undercover Inside the Weird World of Right-Wing Abortion Foes
Ann Neumann
Rights and Liberties:
"My Kids Want to Hide Their Identity; They're Scared Someone Will Attack Us": U.S. Muslims Being Targeted
Jaisal Noor
Sex and Relationships:
Instant Sex: Has the Digital Age Destroyed Relationships or Made Them Better?
Vanessa Richmond
Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Why Natural Gas Is Not a Clean Energy Panacea
Stan Cox
World:
With Unemployment at 40 Percent, Afghan Teens Enlist in Army, Police
Lal Aqa Sherin
In Thursday's New York Times, we read of concerns in New Hampshire about the Bush administration's relaxation of standards on factory mercury emissions. In case you haven't been following the controversy, mercury is that stuff that can badly damage the nervous systems of infants (and all of us, really), that settles into the food chain and ought to make us think twice about how much sushi we consume.
On March 15, 2005, the EPA announced new legislation that will cut mercury emissions by about 22 percent, a pittance compared to the 94 percent reduction that environmentalists say is essential and feasible. And the EPA proposes to do its pittance with unnecessary lethargy.
In the Times article, the reporter spoke with a fisherman. When she told him that the lake in which he was fishing was a probable mercury "hot spot," he replied, "You're worrying me."
And there, my friends, is a political goldmine for good environmental policy. For many years, the NRA has had the upper hand with the hunting-and-fishing crowd. It has been so successful in stressing threats to the right to carry a gun that the NRA almost single-handedly, with help from the Christian right, transformed Congress into a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Corporate State.
Hunters and fishermen are not all the same, to be sure, and they're also not as ideologically one-dimensional as they are often portrayed. If they understand the larger consequences of the NRA-wrought "revolution," they'll become alarmed about the threats that face them. Shrinking stocks of fish, more pollutants in the food chain, erosion of natural area by development and logging – all of these are disturbing developments for those of us who spend time outdoors.
Thus far, the environmental movement and progressives in general have not done nearly enough to engage the millions of Americans who hunt and fish. When they come to understand the direct consequences of the administration's steady unshackling of polluters, they will realize that there's more at stake in local, state and federal elections than the kind of gun they may carry. As for Christian fundamentalists, they have recently developed a vocal environmentalist wing, based on the religious conviction that humans should act as "good stewards," not despoilers, of God's green earth.
These people are a ready-made audience for a clear save-the-environment message. The facts are there, for sure. The state of Connecticut has noted, for example, that most types of fish have some mercury in them, and advised that the following people should not eat more than one meal a month of fish that are caught in Connecticut rivers and lakes:
Average air temperatures in the Pacific Northwest rose 1.5 degrees during the 20th century – faster than the average global rise of 1 degree. At the same time, annual precipitation increased, mostly in the form of rain, while snowpack declined. Most of Washington state's glaciers are receding rapidly, and several have disappeared altogether in recent decades.Bush's general relaxation of standards ignores the fact that nationwide, as far back as 2002, his own EPA was reporting that more than a third of surveyed rivers, and about half of all lakes and estuaries were too polluted for swimming or fishing.
Russ Baker is a freelance journalist and essayist. His web site is www.russbaker.com.
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Atheists, It's Time to Stand Up to Jesus Belief: Civility has its uses, but atheists should not be afraid to mock faith to undermine religious power. By Russell Blackford, Udo Schuklenk, Comment Is Free. November 9, 2009. |
As Foreclosure Nightmares Increase, Will More Homeowners Pay Off Their Bankers in Violence? World: The economic crisis revealed late-capitalism's central offense: Human beings are being transparently treated if they were mere transactions. And they're going postal over it. By Scott Thill, AlterNet. November 9, 2009. |
Instant Sex: Has the Digital Age Destroyed Relationships or Made Them Better? Sex and Relationships: Digitally-enabled mating culture has opened up the mate-finding process while also generating a whole new set of dating anxieties. By Vanessa Richmond, AlterNet. November 7, 2009. |
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