excerpts from The De-Greening of America

"A Killer Fog."

"there is nothing particularly unhealthy about smoke"

or so,

for decades,

most people felt,

because

smoke meant work,

meant economic health,

and

the falling soot that soiled clothing,

the smoke that choked,

causing coughs and worse,

and

increasing the frequency of night come at noon

were seen as acceptable trade-offs

Until one day . . .

There have been no anniversary celebrations,

scant,

if any,

mention in the nation's textbooks,

and

only a small local plaque commemorating

those several days leading up to Halloween 1948

in Donora, Pennsylvania,

a time

when a fog

created by one of the frequent temperature inversions

donned a deadly mask of fluoride gas

(belched in the air by a zinc-smelting plant)

"The air looked yellow"

and

those who were able to leave did so,

and

thus saved themselves;

others

(near the smelter)

were not so fortunate

The company running the smelter

waited five days,

until Halloween,

to finally shut down the poison-spewing smelter,

a too-little, too-late treat,

after the ultimate dirty trick,

for those residents who remained

The next day

(a day of religious celebration for many),

rain washed away the fatal chemical fog

that had taken at least twenty people

during those few days,

and

would take at least fifty more people

(unremarked upon)

in the next several months,

and

would shorten

(and reduce the quality of)

the lives

of countless others over the next several decades--

States of Grace.

Unfortunately,

for many millions,

NOT

that blessedness promised by many religions,

but

"an air that kills",

first foisted upon

Libby, Montana

by the W.R. Grace Corporation

(the chemical conglomerate)

in its mining operations

located there

For a long time

this was the only place in America

where vermiculite was mined;

said

vermiculite was contaminated with asbestos,

the asbestos ejected into the air when the ore was mined

The workers in the mine and its related operations

(rarely, if ever, the management)

not only breathed the dust regularly,

but

also took it home on their clothes,

so that

family members who had never been anywhere near the mine

would also develop asbestosis and mesothilioma

"It is now known that asbestos dust

is one of the most dangerous dusts

to which man is exposed"

(from 1932)

Which

the company knew but neglected to tell those workers

Nor did it tell the people who transported the dust-laden sack

to more than seven hundred fifty sites

in at least forty sites,

nor

did it tell any of the people who worked at those plants,

nor

did it tell any of the people who lived near those plants,

to say

nothing of the numerous foreign sites

where the deadly dust was also shipped

that fall outside the scope of this poem

(check your own backyard to see if it's near one of these)

(Great Moments in Corporate Headhunting

Project Paperclip,

the unacknowledged

unknown

importing of war criminals,

yielded,

in Grace's case,

and with Grace's help,

one Otto Ambros

[the a in Sarin,

the nerve agent

he helped develop,

convicted of slavery,

25,000 counts,

in running the factory

outside Auschwitz,

served a little over three years

of his eight-year sentence]

"We have developed a very deep admiration . . .

for his character in terms of truthfulness and integrity")

ignorance couldn't be used as an excuse

And so

hundreds of people in Libby,

and thousands elsewhere,

sickened and died as a result of their unknowing exposure

to the deadly dust

This was aided int eh eighties by this:

Grace chaired a commission created to cut costs

by reducing regulations,

including,

most likely,

for his own industry

Nice gig if you can get it

April 2, 2001

Grace declares its financial state

now matches its moral state

(there has never been a question about the moral state;

there were,

and are,

questions about the financial state:

just another indication of the moral state?)

And yet,

in spite of the deaths from the Demon Dust

in Libby and elsewhere

(can you say lobbying, in all its manifestations?),

it wasn't until 2007

(almost

twenty years after most mistakenly believed

that a total ban was made)

that even a partial ban on asbestos was put in place--

The Mobrodyssey.

It took place in just under four months, not over twenty years

It had no trickster hero, just three thousand tons of trash from a trickster civilization

It traveled five thousand miles, not a few hundred

It sang the siren's song of money that was successfully resisted by six states and three

foreign countries, rather than being the one who had to resist the siren's song

It had no battle scenes, though there were a few tense moments when Mexico mobilized

to prevent it from entering Mexico's waters

When it returned home there was no hiding it

It ended up being burned, possibly causing more long-term damage than the immediate

destruction in the original

It may have as much to instruct us about if we are willing to learn--

Great Moments in Presidential Environmental Pronouncements

"mines are operated only to earn immediate profits

No question of public utility enters"

-Herbert Hoover

Thus,

with the enthusiastic approval

of the former mining engineer,

"the water supply,

once abundant and pure,

is now utterly destroyed by the mining interests"--

Great Moments in Presidential Environmental Pronouncements

"the greatest service

which can be rendered to any country

is to add a useful plant to its culture"

-Thomas Jefferson

Should have stuck to politics Tommy:

one example

of a non-native plant as destructive when introduced

as the non-native humans were

was the Asian chestnut,

which harbored a fungus to which it was largely immune

but that was deadly to the American chestnut tree,

to the tune of three to four billion killed

(almost complete eradication)--