A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

When the Hurricane hit, Occupy movement activists wanted to do good in the hood. However, their mission has inevitably become political as well as humanitarian. “Occupy Sandy illuminates how economic and political power shapes the geography of pain.”

“After the natural disaster, comes disaster capitalism.”
The Occupy Wall Street movement has rediscovered a reason for existence: service to the people. Hurricane Sandy provided the remnants of Occupy with a social service mission, and they responded with remarkable speed and efficiency, bringing aid and a semblance of relief infrastructure to battered neighborhoods in New York and New Jersey. The purpose was humanitarian but, simply by virtue of focusing on those neighborhoods of greatest need, Occupy Sandy illuminates how economic and political power shapes the geography of pain, even in natural disasters.

The Occupy activists have been most vital to the minority residents of New York public housing and places like ocean-swept Far Rockaway, Queens. New York’s subway system may have made a miraculous recovery from the worst damage inflicted in its history, but public housing tenants were largely left to fend for themselves. In Coney Island, until recent days there was no sign of FEMA or the Red Cross or much of a local government presence at all in the waterless, powerless, lightless high rise public housing projects. Residents have been forced to defecate in buckets [6], and then to carry those buckets down many flights of stairs in the darkness. Many of the elderly have been trapped in their apartments.

“The Occupy movement’s rescue efforts have served to point up the political and economic nature of the disaster.”

Occupy Sandy’s hubs for distribution of supplies and services have been a “godsend” to afflicted neighborhoods – in sharp contrast to the calculated callousness of New York’s billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg.  The city only launched its so-called “restoration centers” this Tuesday, two weeks after [7] the superstorm hit. Four were opened in Far Rockaway, Staten Island, Coney Island and the Gravesend neighborhood. Three others, in Red Hook, Breezy Point and Throgs Neck-Pelham Bay, will not be operational until later in the week.

Even New York’s corporate media, which are notorious for their fawning treatment of the mayor, have noted the glaring absence of aid to the poor – a logical extension of Bloomberg’s relentless gentrification of the city. The Occupy movement’s rescue efforts, which have been competent and efficient beyond even the activists’ own expectations, have served to point up the political and economic nature of the disaster.

On the New Jersey shore, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, quickly showed itself to be more concerned with people control [8], than service to the people. Hurricane victims found themselves treated like “prisoners” in a freezing tent city set up in Seaside Heights. The encampment is surrounded by armed guards who demand ID, even to use the showers. One displaced person said, “We honestly feel like we’re in a concentration camp” – an indication of what FEMA anticipates as its future national security mission.

Some Occupy movement activists believe their role in areas worst hit by Sandy has only just begun. After the natural disaster, comes disaster capitalism, as corporations and their servants in government transform afflicted neighborhoods into profit centers for new development – minus the poor people that used to live there. After Katrina, you don’t need a weatherman to read the warning signs, and know that a storm of human displacement is coming. For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com [9].
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20121114_gf_OccupySandy.mp3

Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/occupy-movement-finds-mission-combating-disaster-%E2%80%93-and-disaster-capitalism

//

Introduction by Ritt Goldstein
Theory by Dr. Bernt Danielsson and Ritt Goldstein
Copyright November 2012

According to Wikipedia, “Katrina cough is a putative respiratory illness thought to be linked to exposure to mold and dust”.  And, a new ‘illness’ has emerged in New York, Fox NY (and I never thought I’d cite Fox News) headlining “Far Rockaway Cough”, mold thought to play a role in it as well.  But beyond coughing there are other symptoms that mold can cause, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) even having an advisory site for storm victims.

The CDC warns those affected by flooding that mold can be hazardous, so when deciding what belongings can be salvaged, they urge, “When in doubt, take it out!”  As to how hazardous mold can be, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warns that some molds can produce mycotoxins, the EPA observing … Many symptoms and human health effects attributed to inhalation of mycotoxins have been reported including: mucous membrane irritation, skin rash, nausea, immune system suppression, acute or chronic liver damage, acute or chronic central nervous system damage, endocrine effects, and cancer. More studies are needed to get a clear picture of the health effects related to most mycotoxins. However, it is clearly prudent to avoid exposure to molds and mycotoxins.

Severe mold exposure can have significant and long-lasting health effects, some terming these effects ‘Sick Building Syndrome’.  Several years ago, I and a colleague developed a theory on the physical mechanism through which such sufferers were affected, a theory we were invited to present at a Mold Symposium in Sweden’s parliament organized by the Swedish Green Party.  The following is an article on the theory Dr. Bernt Danielsson and I developed, the below piece approximating the one we distributed at our Parliamentary presentation.

The theory is one which leans heavily upon Professor Beatrice Golomb’s work on Gulf War Illness, my readings of Golomb — coincidentally done in combination with readings upon research on the natural occurrence of chemical compounds called Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors in certain varieties of mold — leading me to contact Danielsson, spawning the work we did.  However, Golomb’s theory provoked considerable controversy and debate, and today the actual causes of Gulf War Illnesses are yet debated.  As for the mold theory Danielsson and I derived – while some medical scientists applauded it, it was never published in any journal, it remains untested.  There is one certainty, however – the severity of illnesses which some of those having significant mold exposure are known to have experienced.

In view of Superstorm Sandy’s impact, it seemed time for the following to be made public.

SICK BUILDING SYNDROME AND GULF WAR ILLNESS – A COMMON CAUSE?
By Bernt Danielsson, MD,  and Ritt Goldstein, UJ

A study linking the multisymptom problems of so-called Gulf War Illness (GWI) to acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEis) was recently published: Professor Beatrice Golomb’s ’Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and Gulf War illnesses’.  In our following  paper we hypothesize that AChEis are also connected to another, strikingly similar malady, but one vastly more widespread and affecting far larger numbers globally, particularly in The West – Sick Building Syndrome (SBS).

Since the 1970’s, debate has existed regarding the nature of so-called Sick Building Syndrome (SBS).  More recently, similarities between SBS and GWI have fueled speculation as to the basis for such a commonality, a commonality that may now well be explained.

Spring 2008 saw the publication of Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and Gulf War illnesses, Gulf War Illness (GWI) being the condition termed to describe the chronic symptoms endured by many veterans of the Gulf War (1990-91).  Expanding upon the study’s conclusions of AChEi linkage to GWI, one might theorize that exposures to comparable levels of AChEis, in non-Gulf War settings, could potentially yield symptoms resembling those of GWI.  Indeed, the study specifically states that its findings “may be relevant to a subset of civilians with chronic multisymptom complaints”,(1) opening a passageway to argue that AChEi rich mycotoxins, emanating from particular strains of indoor molds, may well be an unrealized cause of SBS.  Having said this, we also believe AChEi linkage suggests that non-biological, chemical contaminants containing sufficient AChEi levels, could also yield SBS symptoms; though, we focus our attention upon mold.

Soma or Psyche?
Again, since the 1970´s debate has existed regarding the nature of SBS. As the pathophysiologic mechanism of SBS’s puzzling combination of symptoms has been hard to understand, the question of psychosomatic reaction has often been raised.

Paralleling the SBS experience, findings have shown that about 25 to 30 percent of Gulf War veterans suffer a set of chronic and equally puzzling symptoms.(1)  As a result of these veteran’s symptoms, a very substantive amount of epidemiological, toxicological, and psychological research has sought both GWI’s cause and best treatment.   Posttraumatic stress, burning oil wells, burnt-out uranium, nerve agents, and more have all been proposed as explanations of GWI’s cause.(1)

Given the lengthy GWI debate, the conclusions presented by  Professor Golomb – that GWI resulted from AChEi exposure generally, and the use of pyridostigmine bromide as a nerve agent pretreatment particularly(1) – may be termed ’somewhat unexpected’ by some.  However, beyond her study’s publication in one of America’s most respected scientific journals,(1) Golomb’s findings were confirmed by the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veteran’s Illnesses – a body where the vast majority of members hold substantive scientific stature.

In a particularly telling observation, an observation upon what might be termed as a further similarity between GWI and SBS, the Committee pointedly observed that GWI had been ”poorly understood and, for too long, denied or trivialized”.(2)

However, regardless as to one’s position upon the relation of GWI to AChEis, Golomb’s study does note that there is a history of illness among agricultural workers – suffering AChEi exposure – whose symptoms ”mirror those” of GWI (1), implying a similar ‘mirroring’ with those of SBS.(3,4)

As quite potent AChEis are known to naturally occur in mold species associated with SBS, (5,6,7) there indeed appears to be a common denominator to explain the stated similarities of the symptoms/maladies in question.  Of course, beyond the fact of such similarities, a question is highlighted as to what the full public health impact of AChEi exposures may be, what maladies such exposures – in fact – may be the cause of.

GWI, AChEis, and SBS
”Each of the major types of AChEi exposure that GWV (Gulf War Veterans) experienced…is linked epidemiologically to illness with remarkable consistency.  A dose-response relationship is present”, (1) read the Spring 2008 findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.  Notably, the study emphasized that criteria widely accepted for the determination of causality based upon observational data, Hill’s causality criteria, had been “arguably satisfied”.(1)

Golomb noted that only Hill’s final criterion, that of specificity, was somewhat in question, Golomb highlighting that causal relationships – by their nature – “routinely violated” this demand that an “exposure be linked only to the outcome examined”, citing alcohol’s generation of multiple problematic outcomes (accidents, liver problems, neuropathy, cancer) to illustrate her argument.(1)  Then, assuming the linkage between GWI and AChEis as firm, an extraordinary similarity between symptoms of GWI and those of SBS would seem to suggest the possibility of common biochemical processes in play within both complaints.

Examining this GWI/SBS similarity, according to the so-called Kansas definition of GWI, there must be ”multiple or at least moderately severe symptoms in three or more of six symptom groups, focused on fatigue/sleep, pain, neurological/cognitive/mood, gastrointestinal, respiratory, and skin problems.”(1)  Providing a virtual ‘mirror image’, according to a 1997 study by Redlich, Sparer, and Cullen, symptoms of SBS include: ”mucus-membrane irritation – eye irritation, throat irritation, cough; neurotoxic effects – headaches, fatigue, lack of concentration; respiratory symptoms – shortness of breath, cough, wheeze; skin symptoms – rash, pruritus, dryness; chemosensory changes – enhanced or abnormal odour perception, visual disturbances”.(3)  In 1988, the World Health Organization listed similar symptoms, but also included ”gastrointestinal complaints”.(4)

_____

Does a common denominator of AChEi exposure explain such mirror imagery?
Again, potent AChEis emanate from particular groups of fungi often associated with incidents of SBS, or more specifically, from particular mycotoxins within these groups.(5,6,7)  However, to date and in contrast to GWI, it appears research has yet to address the potential health effects this AChEi exposure may generate, the explanation for SBS it may provide.

We believe the SBS question may well be associated with mycotoxins such as Territrem B (TRB), ”a potent and irreversible inhibitor of  acetylcholinesterase (AChE)”,(5) and one which has been found to exist in both Penicillium sp FO-4259 (6) and Aspergillus terreus.(5)  This is particularly significant given that both Penicillium and Aspergillus are commonly associated with SBS,(7) though questions remain as to how broadly AChEis generally, and mycotoxins such as TRB particularly, may be found within each genus, as well as within other indoor molds.

Further, should the linkage we hypothesize between SBS and mycotoxin borne AChEis be proven, this is again not to say that other causes of SBS do not exist, for we believe they do (chemical pollutants).  However, it is known that  Penicillium sp FO-4259 contains multiple AChEis, including Arisugacins A and B, plus Territrems B and C, with the table immediately below highlighting their respective potencies.(6)

Low-Level Exposure and Chronic Symptoms
Questions regarding the impact of repeated low-level exposures to potentially toxic agents exist within the circumstances of both GWI and SBS.  For GWI, ”evidence of chronic and delayed consequences to physiological systems from repeated low-level AChEi exposure” was found, with it being added that ”evidence for persistent and delayed effects of low-level exposure is accruing”.(1)

Paralleling the chronic nature of GWI, in 2004 it was observed that ”there is mounting evidence that some SBS symptoms do not abate quickly if at all”.(7)  These researchers then immediately proceeded to note that ”evidence by numerous investigations has shown the association of various species of fungi including Penicillium sp and Aspergillus sp and their spores with indoor air quality problems and SBS”,(7) emphasizing the role these two fungi play.

Completing the evidence in this area were findings published Summer 2008 in what is believed to be the first ever ”follow-up study of patients previously referred to hospital” with “non-specific building-related symptoms”, SBS.(8)  The study followed the experience of approximately 200 such patients who had indeed received hospital clinic treatment, observing that:
The level and severity of symptoms decreased over time, although nearly half of the patients claimed that symptoms were more or less unchanged after 7 years or more, despite actions taken. Twenty-five percent of the patients were on the sick-list, and 20% drew disability pension due to persistent symptoms at follow-up.(8)

The study also found that only about 7% of those patients followed had fully recovered from SBS’s effects.(8)

Evidence would seem to exist that repeated low-level exposures, in cases of both GWI and SBS, do appear to yield chronic and delayed consequences to physiological systems.  It is unfortunate though that the phrase ’low-level’ can be somewhat misleading.

500-Fold Larger Exposures and Aerosolized Fungal Fragments
Examining the question of AChEi exposure via the inhalation of aerosolized fungal agents, 2002 research demonstrated that Aspergillus versicolor and Pencillium melinii fungal fragments were found to be “aerosolized simultaneously with spores from contaminated agar and ceiling tile surfaces.”(9)  The study emphasized that the “considerable immunological reactivity, the high number, and the small particle size of the fungal fragments may contribute to human health effects that have been detected in buildings with mold problems but had no scientific explanation until now.”(9)

Mold fragments, not simply the spores, are thus suggested as harboring the potential to provide a key AChEi delivery mechanism.  Subsequent research further highlighted an extremely significant role for fungal fragments, one as the primary medium for mycotoxin exposure from indoor-molds.(10)  Specifically, a 2007 Swedish research study found, “indoor-molds may fragment into very small airborne mycotoxin-containing particles resulting in up to a 500-fold larger exposure than assumed previously.”(10)

Coupling the 2007 study’s findings with those from the independent 2002 research, a possible delivery mechanism for mycotoxins – and potentially AChEis – at levels hundreds of times higher than previously realized, would indeed seem suggested.

“Why are some ill and not others?”
Exploring beyond the possible role of AChEis in mold-related SBS, beyond the question as to how AChEi exposure might occur, the question of individual sensitivity to an AChEi exposure is raised.  Given that we are addressing an onset of symptoms resulting from extended ‘low-level’ exposures, a question regarding the effects of individual differences in AChEi detoxification levels exists.  We feel that the efforts of several studies are significant to cite in regards to this, with their findings of genetic variants noteworthy.

Returning to the findings published in the Spring 2008 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , of particular significance is the determination that GWV illness was “linked to lower activity of AChEi detoxifying enzymes and genotypes conferring less-avid AChEi detoxification.”(1)  The study noted that “low PON activity levels and concentration are significantly associated with multisymptom health problems in GWV”, singling out low PON1 activity for emphasis.(1)

Supporting such genetic linkage, a 1999 study’s title suffices: “Association of Low PON1 Type Q (Type A) Arylesterase Activity with Neurologic Symptom Complexes in Gulf War Veterans”.(11)  An independent 2004 study also noted that their “finding parallels others’ observation of a link between PON1 heterozygosity” and symptoms in GWV.(12)

Paraoxonase (PON) is an enzyme which is HDL-associated, and “one of many circulating antioxidants thought to play a vital protective role”.(13)   “The level of PON-1 gene expression is a major determinant of paraoxonase-1 status”, according to a 2003 French study.(14)

Evidence of a genetically based susceptibility to AChEi exposure appears to exist.  Of course, the key question raised by this hypothesis is the impact mycotoxin derived AChEi exposures may have, particularly upon those most susceptible, and whether we have come to often term such impact SBS.

Conclusions
AChEi exposure, via inhaled AChEi-rich mycotoxins carried by aerosolized fungal agents, may be a primary but unrealized cause of SBS.  Genetic variance, specifically involving low PON activity levels and concentrations, may be a key determinant of susceptibility to SBS.  Research is needed to determine the answers to both these questions, as well as potentially that of how broadly, and in what configurations and potencies, AChEis may exist within the range of those fungi typically associated with SBS problems – Penicillium sp, Aspergillus sp, and Stachybotrys sp.

Potential Path for Research
The path forward is fairly simple, though the execution of it is not.  A statistically significant sample of SBS sufferers would be secured, sufferers whose environment had remained essentially unaltered from the point of their symptoms’ onset, and where the environmental factors suggested the presence of mold (ie, dampness).  An AChEi ‘inventory’ of each subject’s environment is then required, with a key factor in this being a complete environmental analysis to determine both the specific agents present, their concentrations, and their AChEi values.  Testing the subjects to determine low PON activity levels and concentration would then further clarify the results.  This PON testing would be particularly significant in cases where a number of individuals experienced similar exposures which resulted in markedly differing outcomes.  A ‘control’ environment would also need to be ‘inventoried’, one where the environmental quality is known to be ‘high’.  Then, pursuing an examination of the correlation between environmental AChEi levels and their components, individual PON levels, and subject outcomes, should highlight the validity of this paper’s hypothesis.

References
1.   Golomb BA.  Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and Gulf War illnesses.  2008, PNAS,
vol. 105 no. 11, 4295-4300

2.   Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses  Gulf War
Illness and the Health of Gulf War Veterans.  Research Advisory Committee on Gulf
War Veterans’ Illnesses Home.  November 2008. http://www1.va.gov/RAC-GWVI/

3.   Redlich CA, Sparer J, Cullen MR.  Sick-building syndrome.  Lancet 1997; 349: 1013-
16

4.   World Health Organization  Indoor Air Quality: Biological Contaminants, 4-9,
Report on a WHO Meeting, Rautavaara, 29 August-2 September 1988

5.   Chen JW, Luo YL, Hwang MJ, Peng FC, Ling KH.  Territrem B, a
tremorgenic mycotoxin that inhibits acetylcholinesterase with a noncovalent yet
irreversible binding mechanism.  1999 J Biol Chem Dec 3; 274(49):34916-23

6.   Shiomi K, Tomoda H, Otoguro K, Omura S.  Meroterpenoids with various
biological activities produced by fungi.  1999 Pure Appl. Chem., Vol. 71, No. 6, pp.
1059-1064

7.   Schwab CJ, Straus DC.  The roles of Penicillium and Aspergillus in sick
building syndrome.  Adv Appl Microbiol 2004; 55:215-38

8.   Edvardsson B, Stenberg B, Bergdahl J, Eriksson N, Lindén G, Widman L.
Medical and social prognosis of non-specific building-related symptoms (Sick
Building Syndrome): a follow-up study of patients previously referred to hospital.
Int Arch Occup Environ Health  2008 Jul; 81(7):805-12

9.   Górny RL, Reponen T, Willeke K, Schmechel D, Robine E, Boissier M,
Grinshpun S.  Fungal Fragments as Indoor Air Biocontaminants. Appl Environ
Microbiol. 2002 July; 68(7): 3522-3531

10.  Bloom E, Bal K, Nyman E, Must A, Larsson L. Mass Spectrometry-Based
Strategy for Direct Detection and Quantification of Some Mycotoxins Produced
by Stachybotrys and Aspergillus spp. in Indoor Environments.  Appl Environ
Microbiol. 2007 July; p. 4211-4217, Vol. 73, No. 13

11.  Haley RW, Billecke S, La Du BN. Association of Low PON1 Type Q
(Type A) Arylesterase Activity with Neurologic Symptom Complexes in Gulf War
Veterans. Toxicol Appl Pharmacol 1999 Jun 15;157(3):227-33.

12.  McKeown-Eyssen G, Baines C, Cole DEC, Riley N, Tyndale RF, Marshall L,
Jazmaji V. Case-control study of genotypes in multiple chemical
sensitivity: CYP2D6, NAT1, NAT2, PON1, PON2 and MTHFR.  Int J Epidemiol
2004 Oct;33(5):971-8.

13.   Rainwater DL, Mahaney MC, Wang XL, Rogers J, Cox LA, Vandeberg JL
Determinants of variation in serum paraoxonase enzyme activity in baboons. 2005
Jul;46(7):1450-6. Epub 2005 Apr 16.

14.   Gouédard C, Koum-Besson N, Barouki R, Morel Y.  Opposite regulation of the
human paraoxonase-1  gene PON-1 by fenofibrate and statins.  Mol Pharmacol,
2003 Apr;63(4):945-56.

//

He’s a Big Gas Man

by Joshua Frank, Counterpunch.org
POSTED BY SEAN LENIHAN

Greenhouse gas emissions are hot news these days — especially in the lead up to an election when candidates, at least those who claim to believe in climate science, vow to do something about the biggest environmental crisis facing our little blue planet: climate change.

In early March of this year, while campaigning in New Hampshire, Obama vowed to end $4 billion in Big Oil and Gas subsidies. “You can either stand up for the oil companies, or you can stand up for the American people,” Obama said to an applauding audience. “You can keep subsidizing a fossil fuel that’s been getting taxpayer dollars for a century, or you can place your bets on a clean-energy future.”

That sounds dandy, but ending subsidies to polluters is only half the battle, and Obama’s idea of a “clean-energy future” is tenuous at best. In an attempt to round up the green vote, which he successfully accomplished, President Obama trumpeted his half-hearted attempt to put the breaks on climate change by tapping energy sources here at home and regulating the industry that’s doing most of the damage. Only days after the president announced he was looking to fast-track the southern portion of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, his administration released the first-ever federal standards to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants.

In what’s now become typical Obama fashion, the move was meant to appease environmental critics while at the same time ensure the fossil fuel industry that the so-called New Source Performance Standard would not actually hurt its bottom lines.

Here’s why: the EPA rule would only impact new coal-fired power plants, but only those that break ground in later next year. In all, 15 proposed coal plants in 10 states could be potentially impacted by the rule, even though most are already hung up in court battles. As such, no coal-fired power plants in the United States have broke ground over the past three years and tenacious environmentalists have seen far more victories than defeats when it comes to battling King Coal.

The new greenhouse rule will require fossil fuel-fired electricity generating units to restrict their emissions to 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) per megawatt-hour of electricity produced; a strict standard to be sure, but one that doesn’t come without caveats. All old power plants, some well over 50 years in age, will be exempt entirely from Obama’s greenhouse rule when it comes into effect, despite the fact that these archaic facilities alone account for over 40 percent of carbon emissions in the country. In a nutshell, the biggest coal polluters are being let off the hook altogether.

Five years ago a staggering 151 new coal plants were slated for construction, but with one of the greatest environmental achievements in our history, grassroots activists across the country stopped their development.

Obama is still riding on the coat-tails of these victories, but what’s underlying the greenhouse gas rule is a bit more sinister. As concerns about the impacts of fracking continue to grow, the power plants that burn natural gas extracted through this process of pumping a mix of water, chemicals and sand deep into the earth’s crust, won’t be covered by the rule. Generally, natural gas plants produce less than 900 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour. Indeed the limit set by the EPA was not arbitrary; it directly aids and abets the natural gas industry. Obama knows quite well that natural gas is poised to be the fossil fuel of the future and his administration and the EPA are not going to stand in the way of the big boom.

This isn’t to say the effect of natural gas on climate change is benign — far from it. While still producing a large amount of carbon emissions (albeit less than coal), natural gas also spews a whole bunch of methane (natural gas is methane), which is far more potent than CO2 when it comes to the immediate warming of our planet. In fact, it is estimated that methane gas has a global warming potential 25 times that of CO2 (averaged over 100 years). So, in absolute terms, natural gas does contribute substantially to greenhouse gas emissions, and with more production in the works, this contribution is going to grow a lot more in the years to come.

The EPA certainly understands methane is a big contributor to global warming. In an analysis released last year the agency doubled its earlier estimate for the amount of methane that leaks from natural gas wells and pipelines. This leaking is so extensive that it is equal to the annual emissions from over 35 million automobiles. In addition, the EPA reported that the levels of methane release during the fracking of shale gas were actually 9,000 times higher than previously thought.

Methane, unfortunately, is not covered by Obama’s proposed greenhouse gas rule. Perhaps that’s because Obama supports the expansion of natural gas exploration as well as the notion of “safe” fracking — an oxymoron akin to “clean” coal.

“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly one hundred years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” said President Obama in his last State of the Union address. “The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy … it was public research dollars, over the course of thirty years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock.”

The process Obama is touting is the fracking of natural gas and oil from underground geological formations, like the Marcellus Shale on the East Coast. The procedure has been documented in a draft report by the EPA as causing groundwater pollution in Wyoming, yet fracking remains exempt from the Clean Water Act.

As coal becomes a relic of the past in the U.S., natural gas, with fracking as its main source of extraction, is being set up as the fossil fuel of the future, thanks in large part to Obama’s embrace and the EPA’s blind eye. In 2008 the Obama campaign amassed $884,000 from the oil and gas industry. In 2012 that number topped $2 million.

Often seen as a “bridge fuel” from coal toward renewables, natural gas has not come under the same scrutiny as other fossil fuels. Instead natural gas has been seen as a safer, cleaner burning fuel — an improvement over dirty coal. Hence why the EPA continues to punt on proposing regulations on the industry, as it did for a second at the beginning of last April when it delayed the release of rules for the oil and gas industry. If the EPA caves to the natural gas industry, as it will likely continue to do, the majority of existing fracking wells will be exempt from regulation.

Yet, even if fracking wells begin to receive the regulatory oversight they so gravely deserve, the burning of natural gas is not about to come under intensified scrutiny any time soon. On the contrary, as long as the EPA’s attention remains on curbing coal’s carbon footprint, the natural gas industry is sure to benefit and more methane is sure to seep from the depths of Earth. A recent study by tech billionaire Nathan Myhrvold and climate scientist Ken Caldeira argues that shifting to natural gas “cannot substantially reduce the climate risk in the next 100 years.”

Those fighting the frackers ought to expand their focus from fracking’s immediate dangers, which are very real, to natural gas’ long-term impacts on climate change. Even if fracking were to one day be outlawed, as long as natural gas continues to be burned the planet will continue to heat up. In short, natural gas is not a bridge to renewable energy; it’s a bridge to an even more toxic planet.

Joshua Frank, Managing Editor of CounterPunch, is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland, and of Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is now available in Kindle format. He can be reached at brickburner@gmail.com.

//

____
[suffusion-widgets id=’1′]

Phil Rockstroh

“Personally, I’m done with attempting to persuade idiots by intelligent discourse and fools by plying them with common sense…finished with issuing reasoned warnings to dissemblers and dimwits who claim the iceberg directly in the path of our ocean liner is simply an ice dispenser, conveniently located to refresh our beverages…”

So much has been lost to the hubris and cupidity inherent to the hyper-industrialization and commercial hustler that defines the Anthropocene Epoch. To take it all in, to allow oneself to feel the full implications of the dire situation, of the ecocide and humanity lost to endless war and economic exploitation, one would be knocked to one’s knees with sorrow or compelled to give voice to bursts of full-throated rage.   

Therefore, as the grid-decimating tide of Sandy recedes and the power and lights have been restored to our East Village, fifth floor walk-up flat, I sit at my writing desk, and I am staring down the scope of my cerebral cortex, desiring to unload both barrels into the delusional asses of climate change deniers.

This mutant strain of hurricane (that has inflicted much disruption in our lives and a great amount of stress on my six month, pregnant wife, Angela) was caused by changes in the Gulf Stream, wrought by manmade greenhouse gasses.

Personally, I’m done with attempting to persuade idiots by intelligent discourse and fools by plying them with common sense…finished with issuing reasoned warnings to dissemblers and dimwits who claim the iceberg directly in the path of our ocean liner is simply an ice dispenser, conveniently located to refresh our beverages.

Sandy (as did Katrina) reveals, how tenuous the grid work of final stage capitalism is…how rapidly it comes unraveled by nature’s impersonal fury.

While composing the first draft of this essay (pre-Sandy) — as I was writing the following lines, “Often, the soul is forced to get your attention by guiding you into situations that serve to open your heart by means of breaking it. Closed off from the temptation and tumult …” — I received a phone call bearing the message that my best friend in this breathing world was dead.

The next lines I wrote were: Alright then, soul, you have my full attention, although my eyes are blurred and scalded by tears.

After inexplicable and heart shattering events, one’s mind searches for deeper meaning…even when there can be none gleaned from quotidian tragedy. In this case…a fall involving a bicycle, and a friend, a brilliant artist, a vivid soul, a warm, passionate human being, a generous, compassionate companion has been forever lost.

Meaning is an ad hoc, flimsy structure…erected of metaphysical eggshells…convictions garnered from happenstance, the traumas of early life, books happened upon, chance meetings, misheard advice, friendships lost and cultivated.

In the presence of death and in the aftermath of great storms, we apprehend how vainly we cling to the illusion of certainty and permanence. Yet, deep down, we know how insubstantial our constructs are…How fate and circumstance can intervene, and can leave us staring into the indifferent maw of eternity.

“For in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” –Ecclesiastes 1:18

To John, my departed friend: I’m not going to allow you to travel too far away from the realm of the living without your soul glistening with my abundant tears.

As Sandy raged around our home and then departed, I stood in grief’s dominion. There are empty spaces here — graceless voids — torn into the hours of the day after a person close to you has been, suddenly and without warning, taken by death.

John, you and I spoke often and for long durations about the necessity of artists and writers allowing themselves to be undone by life and remade by creative choices. For me, your sudden death has accomplished the primary. Through, our perpetual dialog, we explored the interplay of polis and ecosystem, and how this essential criteria was absent from so much current day art and curation e.g., how in art one might limn New Orleans’ ragged (yet vividly alive) grandeur — the city’s alluring, dangerous, vitally alive character — its crumbling agora — and the forever living, always dying nature of the bayous and wetlands that surround the city. And the manner one might merge and express those elements in one’s aesthetic. (Apropos: Much of the city of New Orleans itself was comprised of swamp land that was drained, thus creating the city’s familiar crescent shape and susceptibility to deadly flooding.)

In John’s art work and curation, he desired to evoke a dialog between the ghosts of the past and the living present, human beings and nature, cityscape to backwater, brain to gut, beating heart to eternal moment, phantom to flesh, memory to heavenly fire, compost to possibility, possibility to fruition.

John was driven to entice the individual artists out of his/her prison of enshrinement/exile of hyper-individualist alienation …to bring the work of an individual artist into a broadening dialog with the work of other artists…to create the affect of a vital agora. He grasped that art does not exist alone; it is not an embalmed corpse, but a living (and dying) thing; hence, it must share common space and communion to be fully alive as well as decay to compost (and therefore be granted renewal) when it dies.

John desired a dialog between passion and putrefaction. He grasped the nearer an artist drew to expressing the impossible was made possible by exploring the realm of the possible. But, in addition: messing with things quotidian, breaking them apart, caressing, tormenting, tweaking …reconfiguring all available material into new forms…Like lover’s, battling and entwined, whose love fuses the familiar and the alien, thus broadening the lives of both parties, by allowing them to become greater than the sum of their parts, art must challenge our verities; it must induce one to become more like one’s essential self by the dissolution of safe, but soul-defying, habitual thinking.

An awareness of the ongoing (and exponentially increasing) catastrophic changes to the ecological balance of our besieged planet can serve the same end. Otherwise, one would risks being as devoid of character as those reality-adverse creatures — monsters really — possessed of inexplicable self-regard, who wield power in this age of hype and hubris. Conversely, one’s suffering unites the psyche with the sorrows of the earth; teaches us that we are bound by its limits and laws. The knowledge grounds us in humility, by revealing that eternity is boundless, but we are not. Because eternity treats us with such callous disregard, we feel an affinity with other vulnerable things. One recognizes the commonality of suffering, thus one gains empathy.

Yes, death is implacable; the only thing close to matching death’s tenacity is: The persistence of memory and the urgency of the soul to make every moment holy.

Often, in the locations where one’s heart has been wounded by circumstance, thus seized by novel (even agonizing) apprehensions, as is the case in the sections of a forest that have been scoured by fire — new life, nourished by ash, will grow. Have you ever walked through a field of bright wild flowers, risen from the charred ground, where a wild fire has blazed?

Over the last few years, many people close to me have died. A firestorm has run riot through my heart. In its wake, regions of my soul are vivid with eternity’s wild flowers.

The view is breathtaking.

History is a story of bitter grace and pain-wrought wisdom: In this tale, we learn: Collective trust is a catastrophic misjudgment, made possible by its partner in crime, an artist of legerdemain, who goes by the moniker, Hope.

Once you have had your heart shattered into pieces, and even though time has mended it back together, because all of the shattered pieces and scattered shards can never be retrieved, you, as a result, will never be the same.

And that is a propitious development, because room has been made within you for novelty and wisdom. The process allows for transformation, for one remains oneself, as, all the while, alien elements are merged with one’s own uniqueness.

Accordingly, providence favors those whose faith has been shattered.

“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

Life begins in mystery, what lies after life ends is unknowable — and, in between, we experience constant bafflement. Yet, how exquisite the landscape is as it rolls by; what exquisite sorrow we yield by being part of it all.

My best friend was plucked from this tormented world. My father died last May…I’m buffeted, shattered by circumstance, but Angela, my dear wife, is more than half way through the second trimester of pregnancy. The event has engendered much soul-searching for a certain father-to-be i.e., wandering in awe and bewilderment through the landscape of his psyche, and forays, in his better moments, into the image-rich landscape of Animus Mundi.

Art is merely artifice, if it is not sown from the soul’s veritable soil. What is the song of the night bird sans the night? A thousand gradations of green comprise a swamp’s canopy. The heart is just a pump, sans a loving/embattled (both are borne of libido) connection to the soul of the world.

My recent proximity to the realities of birth and death has forced me close to the living heart/inhuman abyss of the soul of the world. Yet amid this startling landscape the mind abides greater, even agonizing truths.

Climate chaos. Dying oceans. The degradation of U.S. corporate/militarist empire and the concomitant collapse of the global, neoliberal order. Our child will be born into a world where there will be a paradigm shift — or there will come mass tragedy.

My father was born on an Indian reservation. My mother escaped Nazi Germany on a Kindertransport, shortly after her father was taken to a concentration camp for anti-Nazi activity.

Angela, was born in a small, rural home, a sharecroppers shack, in the South Carolina Low Country that housed generations of cotton-harvesters and tobacco-croppers.

Our people, sharing the fate of multitudes born into this world, have endured and even flourished under terrible conditions. The Tyler/Rockstroh whelp will be afforded the same opportunity. Who is his grim augury-prone old man to deny him the chance? That would be the very emblem of hubris, because, among the living, there exists no bottom line — only how you choose to write the book of your life.

“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.” ~Henry Miller

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. And at FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/phil.rockstroh

//