> >The most polluted places are those who haven't yet reached a sufficiently
> >developed stage, be they ruled by right-wing dictatorships, or by socialist
> >(China, URSS) or social-democratic (India) governments. Rich countries, be
> >they California or Singapore, can afford paying the costs of cleaning up. If
> >you can provide a *realistic* path from a subsistence economy to the
> >Information Age, skipping the "Dickens phase", I'm ready to follow you. But
> >this time it must work for real: even if the enemy is bad, ugly and unfair.
> >
> >Enzo
>
> In actuality, pollution has not been cleaned up in places like California
> in such a way as to really resolve the ecological crisis. What has happened
> is that pollutants do not go directly into the atmosphere any longer, but
> are collected at the smokestack and then deposited in "toxic dumps", which
> are in working-class or poor neighborhoods.
I am looking out my window in Long Beach, California. There's a hefty plume directly in front of me from an industrial district in Wilmington, one of the most polluted areas in Southern California. Are you telling me I'm hallucinating, Louis? I see that plume every day. It's a VERY persistent hallucination.
Obviously, it's not nearly as extensive as Enzo's hallucinations, but his are composed of vague generalities, this one is depressingly specific.
(This is part of what's wrong with the LA Area pollution-trading scheme, BTW. These oil companies got credits for removing old, pollution-spewing cars. On the one hand, many of the cars were NOT actually being driven before being turned in, so there was no benefit. On the other hand, the pollution being traded for was concentrated in poor, and mostly minority communities.)
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"