Political Blogs Don’t Seem to Talk About Environmental Issues
Over at the Left Coaster this week, Mary asked the question, “What do you think Bush's legacy will be? In my opinion, the worst legacy of Bush will be the damage to the environment from his policies and ignoring global warming. So why isn't the environment an issue in this election?”
In response, I posted the following:
Why isn't the environment more of an issue in this year's election? Here are some possibilities:
1) it's a difficult-to-understand issue - there's genuine scientific uncertainty that the politically motivated can use to confuse and immobilize voters; education hasn't met the challenge of showing clearly how one's choices are linked to environmental risks.
2) what little that people are hearing about environmental problems is scary; there is a faint awareness by many people that we've probably already screwed up with global climate change. Persistent organic pollutants (such as brominated fire retardants) are subtle and insidious - something you can't see, touch, taste or feel, that is in every mouthful you consume, could be making your kids stupid and unable to have children of their own. Extinction of other species through habitat destruction could be a sign that we're next.
3) Most of the consequences are a generation or more off which let those individuals, who are predisposed not to care about the environment anyway, off the hook. You can move to a new greenfield housing development an hour's drive from work without a care about the environmental impacts because it is something that won't affect you personally.
So, it's a combination of things. People are either confused and scared so that they just don't think hard about it, don't give it a high enough priority compared with economic or healthcare issues, or are willfully blind. The next question I have is why are environmental topics covered so little by the political and public affairs blogs?
I’ve been hearing about endocrine disruptors (or hormonally active agents, if the other term is prejudicial) for many years. The worst-case scenario is more than most people can bear (something you can’t see, touch, taste or feel is going to feminize or masculinize our kids, in addition to making them stupid). The economic impact of addressing this potential problem is more than most industries can bear. So, it doesn’t get a lot of attention these days. It may be time to start paying more attention to it, though.
kband cites an article from The Globe and Mail from GRIST months ago about the plight of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Canada. The Aamjiwnaang live surrounded by chemical plants, in an industrial area that contains 20 percent of Canada's refineries. For the last five years, the band has produced nearly two girls for every boy; in addition, women report a higher number of miscarriages and schools report more learning disabilities. No definitive link to chemical exposure has been established, but the band is pushing for further study.
In a related story, male bass in the South Branch of the Potomac River, in West Virginia, are producing eggs. The occurrence of “intersex” bass may be related to endocrine disruptors. The U.S. Geological Survey has been studying this problem, and has coined the phrase “emerging contaminants”, which covers chemicals in municipal sewer discharges as well as industrial discharges.
I haven’t followed endocrine disruptors closely, so all I have readily available is a fairly old reference – but it’s a start for learning something about the basic science and issues. Here is a current piece of research, on the potential risks to amphibians associated with the herbicide atrazine, care of Chris Mooney, which is useful as a snapshot of what ecological endocrine disruptor research looks likes these days. Chris also thinks the researcher has been the victim of some scientific censorship. As I said earlier – it’s a topic that noone wants to think about right now.
The next time you want to wring your hands about dioxins in the environment, take a good look at a real public health debacle. Perhaps AIDS will get some attention now that Russia seems to be going the way of Africa.
(Care of the Agonist, a wonderful resource that I will add to the blogroll)
