Nathan Newman wrote:
> Or maybe work in environmental justice movements and realize that the predicted
> effects of global warming are often less severe than the day-to-day
> environmental devastation of communities afflicted by environmental racism and
> economic bias.
Nathan, there isn't a single word in your litany of urban disasters which I can't relate to. But I will have to break my promise to Doug not to fill his list with stuff about global warming, if people still think that's all involved. Global warming already compares in its generalised effects with the low-level environmental toxicity we all suffer from, and in its intense episodes as just as cataclysmic as the effects of heavy metal poisoning you mention.
But more than that, there is simply the unparalleled ferocity of climate disequilibria which will result from the doubling of atmospheric greenhouse gas next century, because Kyoto or no Kyoto, it will be business as usual until ALL the fossil fuels that can be recovered are burnt off. The problems you mention are serious, and they are perosnal tragedies. I was once a trade unionist who campaigned against blue asbestos in low-rent housing and schools so I know what kind of special despair, fury and passion these issues create.
But they are local, not general, and that by definition makes them containable. Anthropogenic climate change is different. It is apocalyptic, like a slow-motion thermonuclear war. It is happening, it is irreversible, it will destroy life in the oceans, make tropical zones virtually uninhabitable, raise sealevels and melt much of the ice-caps. It is the worst thing humans collectively have ever done.
Mark