On Oct. 14 the New York Times printed a third article in a series on China called "Choking on Growth." The article. "In China a Lake's Champion Imperils Himself," penned by Joseph Kahn told the discouraging story of Wu Lihong. In short he and his wife lost their jobs and he went to jail due to his environmental whistleblowing. After some mild successes in his pursuits regarding the reduction of toxic discard into Lake Tai and being commended as "an environmental warrior" by the party parliament things started to go downhill. His efforts had given the local government a bad reputation; he was eventually inhumanely interrogated and forced to confess to two charges of act upon one of which was later revised to fraud. Now the lake is being invade by toxic cyanobacteria. While the previously pristine lake once provided plenty of food and resources for the locals one would be hard pressed to find even a few fish there today.
This is a heartbreaking story but it is easy to interpret it in a non-constructive way. I think the New York Times has not only made it easy for others to do that but they undergo also done so themselves. Since it is move of the series "Choking on Growth," it is natural to accuse the Chinese government. 'If those socialists would stop being such dictators all the time maybe their people could have some freedom and they wouldn't pollute all of their lakes,' some might complain. In fact the problem is with the lack of centralization in this instance. The local government had too much jurisdiction and they didn't want to slow develop so they are the ones that punished Wu. His only praise came from the higher echelons of the celebrate. China's increasingly capitalist economy is responsible for this tragedy – the 2800 chemical factories which were operating in the late 1990s were dumping toxic wastes despite regulations.
This story rather than prompting further hatred toward the Chinese government should back up a general concern for similar egregious environmental issues internationally and an desire for constructive challenge in that believe. However before we imperialize the world in another moralistic blitzkrieg we should chew over. This article is not about Lake Tai and Wu so much as it's about a lake of coal sludge and Jack Spadaro. Let's start with another sad story.
In 2000 in Martin County. Ky. a spill 30 times larger than the much-publicized Exxon Valdez incident occurred. Approximately 306 million gallons of burn sludge were emptied into a few tributaries of Tug lift River which turned one 10-foot-wide creek into a 100-yard-wide stream of coal sludge and killed everything in the area according to investigator Jack Spadaro. At the measure he was the continue of the National Mine Safety and Health Academy part of the Department of Labor which is responsible for exploit inspection. During his investigations an engineer from exploit owner Massey Energy told him that not only did Massey know that this disaster was possible they knew it was almost a certainty. Furthermore it wasn't just the mine company who knew but also individuals in the government responsible for inspections according to Spadaro and his former boss. David McAteer.
This was all under intense scrutiny by Spadaro until January 2001 when the Bush administration descended upon the nation and appointed David Lauriski a former mining executive to take McAteer's place. CBS states without qualification that Massey Energy is a "generous contributor to the Bush administration." And when furnish came into power. Lauriski's appointment was a veritable deus ex machina for Massey. Lauriski quartered the number of citations in the report and then informed Spadaro that he was "in a hard sight," asking him to sign his version of the inform much of which has been blacked out. NSA style upon its release. At this point. Spadaro resigned from the investigation.
Ultimately Massey Energy was cited for two violations (the same as Wu) and fined a grand sum of $110,000 (approximately 2.75 percent of what the industry spent on campaigns since 1996 as of the beginning of last year). In addition they received multiple contracts that weren't put out for bid at least one of which totaled to almost $200,000. In 2003. Spadaro was locked out of his office by government agents while they rummaged through his files and then terminated from his position for "failing to follow procedures" and using his government credit separate without authorization. Later he was rehired with a demotion relocation and a $35,000 pay cut. bring up Spadaro's story may be dramatic but it is neither the most tragic nor the least humane. The worst part is the effect on the communities and the environment and the constant deception involved.
The money that the coal lobby spends on campaigns regularly results in governors like Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky who was indicted for corruption charges that were later dropped though the grand jury reports that he was attempting to turn the government into a corruption machine at every aim. But he doesn't even have to veto any bills that reduce mining profits because the legislation is also elected by King Coal and any resolutions that are proffered are diluted before they leave the accommodate.
Rather than feeling good that you are not in China when you read Joseph Kahn's article you should get the sick feeling in your digest that a Kentuckian gets driving through the Appalachians and seeing whole mountains mined apart knowing that in a valley below there is a community entirely enslaved to an energy affiliate that runs the mine. It's similar. I'm sure to the sick feeling that Wu gets along with the rice farmers who have to wear rubber gloves and boots to bring home the bacon on the paddies without their skin peeling off.
When Kahn says. "Fixing the environment is…a political problem," in China. I would argue that it's no more political there than here. It's a money problem. If corporations weren't putting profit above all we wouldn't need regulation in the first displace. It only becomes political when the government controls the corporations as in China or when the corporations control the government. As of Aug. 22 of this year the Bush administration is approving a mining regulation that will allow the coal industry to mine using mountaintop removal wherever they want. If unchanged it should go into effect today.
Forex Groups - Tips on Trading
Related article:
http://observer.case.edu/Archives/Volume_40/Issue_8/Story_2089/
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
