The Control of Nature

Posted by collectivist

"I started the day (Sunday, March 29, 2020) in relatively good spirits. The Sun was bathing nature in light and pleasant warmth. Spring and flowers were everywhere. My wife and I were walking in our beautiful neighborhood in Claremont, California.

Poisoning the Wind

But, suddenly, a man holding a sprayer was furiously drenching his front yard with  chemicals. I asked him what he was spraying and why and he angrily said miticides, and, besides, he said, it was none of my business what he was doing.

Mites are tiny insects related to spiders and ticks. And, like most pesticides, chemicals designed to kill mites, miticides, are toxic poisons that may harm the brain and the nervous system and probably cause cancer.

I continued my walk and  tried to forget my unpleasant confrontation with this illiterate and irresponsible person. However, he is not alone. In the last three years of the Trump administration, I have seen enough infractions of civilized life, that I am almost certain Trump’s influence has reached even in this small town in southern California. Several of the houses for sale are covered with a canvas for fumigation. More home owners or their “gardeners” attack the natural world with poisons.

The Tyranny of Trump 

The example of Trump is insidious, though compelling of a cultural and business tradition and pathology. He sought and succeeded in resurrecting Ronald Reagan’s hatred for environmental protection and contempt for public health. The first act of Ann Gorsuch, the first EPA administrator under Reagan and mother of Supreme Court Judge Gorsuch, was to fire the EPA attorneys enforcing the laws.

Trump left the powerless EPA lawyers alone, but, immediately, started diluting and weakening the country’s laws protecting public and environmental health. Electricity power plants could go back to increasing pollution. Owners of farms, coal mines, timber, and oil fracking and drilling would not have to worry about polluting creeks, rivers of groundwater or destroying wetlands or threatening and killing wildlife and endangered species. All 450 million acres of public lands would continue being haciendas of the timber, petroleum, cattle grazing cowboys and miners. And, thanks to Trump, hundreds of millions of cars would be designed to emit more poisons affecting human health and intensifying global warming. In other words, the United States would undermine its strongest policy of fighting climate change.

The Pandemic of Abusing Nature

In the midst of the Trump and industry onslaught on public and environmental health, this country and the world came under another attack – this time, in early 2020, by the corona virus. This pandemic was the product of human abuse, poisoning, and destruction of the natural world. But Trump did not see the corona virus’ connection to the business as usual annihilation of nature. His narrow mind and ecological illiteracy pushed him to another giveaway to polluters. He ordered EPA to stop its rare environmental enforcement. Now all bets are off. The chief beneficiaries of the tax cuts, and the two trillion dollars corona virus economic stimulus would have another environmental cut. Forget that there are people and the natural world beyond factory gates. And forget that people compromised by pollution, like those living in the neighborhood of the Cancer Valley in Louisiana, would die in droves from the raging pandemic.

In fact, all people, here and abroad, who have been victimized by the prevailing Wall Street billionaire economy, are likely to take their anger to the streets. Francesco Rocca, director of the International Federation of Red Cross, warned of a social bomb ready to go off.

Ignoring the social volcano is typical of oligarchic and plutocratic regimes. American billionaires think they can outsource this security threat to the feds.

However, things are complicated, especially now that an invisible enemy makes no distinction between rich and poor. . ."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04/03/the-control-of-nature/