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Tuesday, April 06, 2004

News from everywhere

Marc Cooper has a new blog, and it’s about bloody time, too.  I see that Micah Sifry has already commented on it, which is good, because that reminds me that Micah Sifry has a blog too (as I should have noticed long ago).  I’ll be adding these guys to the blogroll, but in the meantime, blogroll right over to their blogs yourself, and say hello.  And if there are any more straggling, earthbound progressive-left writers out there without blogs, get with the program already.

In more traditional media:  Paul Krugman continues, valiantly, to try to keep pace with the flurry of Bush Administration outrages.  This time it’s the new “pro-mercury poisoning” position of the White House:

For some pollutants, setting a cap on total emissions, while letting polluters buy and sell emission rights, is a cost-efficient way to reduce pollution. The cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain, has been a big success. But the science clearly shows that cap-and-trade is inappropriate for mercury.

Sulfur dioxide is light, and travels long distances: power plants in the Midwest can cause acid rain in Maine. So a cap on total national emissions makes sense. Mercury is heavy: much of it precipitates to the ground near the source. As a result, coal-fired power plants in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan create “hot spots”—chemical Chernobyls—where the risks of mercury poisoning are severe. Under a cap-and-trade system, these plants are likely to purchase pollution rights rather than cut emissions. In other words, the administration proposal would perpetuate mercury pollution where it does the most harm. That probably means thousands of children born with preventable neurological problems.

So how did the original plan get replaced with a plan so obviously wrong on the science?

The answer is that the foxes have been put in charge of the henhouse. The head of the E.P.A.’s Office of Air and Radiation, like most key environmental appointees in the Bush administration, previously made his living representing polluting industries (which, in case you haven’t guessed, are huge Republican donors). On mercury, the administration didn’t just take industry views into account, it literally let the polluters write the regulations: much of the language of the administration’s proposal came directly from lobbyists’ memos.

New Bush/Cheney ‘04 slogan:  Steady leadership and thousands of children born with preventable neurological problems.

Shorter version for bumper sticker use:  Bush/Cheney:  A Fox in Every Henhouse.

Last and least, my latest essay ("Race and Modernity in Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist”wink is now available in your grocer’s freezer, if your grocer’s freezer contains the new Dalkey Archive Press book, The Holodeck in the Garden:  Science and Technology in Contemporary American Fiction.

Posted by Michael on 04/06 at 07:08 AM
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