With the ongoing economic crisis and the much debated health care reform, I have been part of and overheard numerous arguments regarding the merits and evils s of government involvement. I have noticed that many Americans fear government regulation. In fact, they fear the government as a whole. They often refer to government as “in bed with corporations,” “trying to limit our freedoms,” “taking over,” etc. Considering the countless cases of war, dictatorships, genocide, and other cases of abuse of political power, I can understand why citizens the world over are to be cautious of government control. However, being that the U.S. practices and promotes democracy, and claims to have a “government of and for the people” these phobic attitudes seem pretty ironic to me.
I believe that part of the problem lies in the fact that the U.S. government has left behind the government of and for the people myth that was once so central to our identity, to become a government for corporations by corporations in which capitalism takes the central role. A la WTO, the U.S. government increasingly stands to protect commerce and profit-making at any cost, rather than to serve and represent the people. What should we call it? Corporacracy? There is no denying that money grants immense political power in capitalist, campaign-sponsoring, lobbying America. I argue that we should start demanding a separation of corporations and state as much as we demand a separation of church and state.
I have to acknowledge that Americans are often poorly informed about issues that affect them and demand very little of their government in terms of action or protective regulations. However, even when considerable numbers of people demand fair trade, mandatory recycling, higher mileage cars, labeling of genetically modified food, or, I don't know, say, accessible health care, initiatives are stifled over and over by powerful capital holders and corporations who would lose profits to such regulations. Furthermore, it seems many Americans, although they may agree with such needs, chose to trust the not-so-almighty market to eventually make their preferences prevail, rather than putting regulations in place themselves to protect people's health, lives, and freedom. Notice that I said putting regulations in place “themselves,” because although they are government regulations, government officials are supposed to be there representing each one of us.
If the people’s will supposedly rules in a democracy, then there should be no such fraction between the concepts of “government’s regulations” and “the interest and wellbeing of citizens”. Nonetheless, Americans seem to have regulation-phobia and a panic of government involvement, even when the goal is to protect themselves. Why are we so afraid of the government overstepping what we consider acceptable boundaries? We are supposed to be able to set those boundaries ourselves every time we vote, every time we write to our representatives, every time we sign a petition. Sadly, countless Americans have done none of those things in their lives. That is, they have never engaged in democracy, and therefore feel powerless “against” a government to which they have no relationship and in which they have no involvement. (Funny they still root for foreign invasions aimed at bringing democracy to others.)
I have come to believe that regulating corporations is a matter of national security. After reading books such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the work of Vandana Shiva, I feel immensely more threatened by the pesticides, hormones, and modified genes in my food and water; by the depletion of our current energy sources; and by the imminent pollution and destruction of the entire biosphere and its precariously balanced ecosystems; than by potential terrorist attacks.
We must remain aware of the fact that corporations are fictional entities created to care only about the bottom line. They have no morals and seek profits without even contemplating their consumer’s health (as long as potential health damages are rare enough or long term enough not to affect their sales), people’s wellbeing (underpaid employees who can barely make a living, displaced populations, families deprived of their livelihoods, etc.), the continuity of life in this planet, or even their own long term sustainability (since often they simply go on for as long as they can until they deplete the natural resources on which they base their own capital making). Because of the for-profit-at-any-cost nature of our market economy, it is imperative that the government regulate corporations, get involved with public health, become more proactive at regulating products (how come asbestos, CFCs, and countless medicines were aloud in the market for so long before their harmful effects rendered them illegal?), require longer term safety studies, limit pollution, make corporations responsible for clean-up and safety, and, among many other things, protect citizens’ freedom. That is, our freedom from being sued for unauthorized used by companies whose patented genetically modified seeds infested our fields without our knowledge (as in the case of Monsanto vs Schmeiser) – as well as our freedom to choose.
In my opinion, perhaps the most important regulation to advocate for is labeling. If we are unaware of what is in the products we purchase, or the processes by which they have been produced, we have no true freedom to choose, even if there are a variety of brands to pick from. Certainly, I wish corporations were not allowed to poison us or the environment (or even take the risk of poisoning if not enough long term research has been conducted). However, I expect that, at least, we should be able to choose which dangerous or even potentially risky substances we ingest or use in our houses or land. Whenever there is a risk involve, no matter how small, we have the right to choose whether to take it or not. In fact, we should be able to do choose by simple personal preference, even if the official claim is that no risks are involved. Therefore, foods containing genetically modified products; as well as meat, milk, and other products from animals that have been administered hormones, should be clearly labeled – so that consumers can opt to be free of them, if they so choose.
We need to pressure the government to protect our interests over the interests of corporations, to protect life over profits. Pressuring for government regulations to safeguard our health and freedom is not allowing government too much control. It is limiting corporations’ freedom if and when it endangers people or other life forms, or limits individual’s freedoms – just like we do with people who do the same to other people. As far as these and many other issues go, a political awakening that brings back empowerment to the people by fostering political engagement and the understanding that we are our government, rather than fearing our government as if it was a dictatorship, is the only way in which we can take action to protect ourselves, the generations to come, and the world we live in.
Monday, November 09, 2009
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Round 1: First Wold rips Third World of raw materials. Round 2: First World buries Third World in trash.
Someone brought up the issue of garbage shipped internationally in my Gender, Justice, and Sustainability class. I didn't have a clue of anything related to the topic, so I did a quick online research and here is what I have found.
There are apparently some situations of legal shipping of trash from Europe to developing countries to be recycled by authorized companies that are capable and accountable. However, there are also millions of tons of trash shipped illegally, to non-authorized recipient companies that just burn it or put it on landfills. This stuff has been going on for a while, as developed countries run out of space and options for the immense amounts of trash they produce. However, it became a huge industry when Europe passed regulations that all trash must be recycled or disposes of in a safe way, most dumping in landfills has been prohibited, and safe incineration is expensive and heavily taxed. That became an expensive responsibility for European companies, so they have opted to ship it abroad instead. Thus, in Europe, paper, plastic, metal, and electronics can be exported for recycling abroad. The U.S. has no such laws, so trash can be exported anywhere to whomever regardless of what they will do with it, since we have no regulations within our borders that mandate recycling and safe disposal anyway.
However, there are also international regulations outlawing the exportation of toxic wastes. According to a NY times article on the topic , titled "Smuggling Europe Wastes to Poor Countries" by Elisabeth Rosental (very interseting by the way: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/science/earth/27waste.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1) ports are constantly stopping such illegal cargos. In the case of legal exporting-recycling, I found an example of a woman who founded a company based on creating packaging material in China by recycling U.S. cardboard from Los Angeles. (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003544422_zhang280.html). It has made her very rich. It's a good example of capitalism. I guess some money and jobs are flowing back to China because of this. However, there is also the matter of the energy spent in transporting the cardboard, which monetarily speaking is obviously low enough to still allow for a profit. Nonetheless, I have been reading Vandana Shiva’s work, and learnt to look at the bigger picture and include costs that our market economy does not take into account (such as soil depletion, air and water pollution, sustainability, and the energy spent in creating input materials or substance). Thus, I must point out that we should also acknowledge that long distance transportation would be one less environmental cost if the waste was recycled in situ.
A good example to look at for the transportation issue is the fact that trash is currently shipped from Hawaii (where they have apparently run out of space for landfills) to Washington State, to a Seattle based company (http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/09/hawaii_trash_headed_for_northw.html). So, instead of trying to produce less trash to start with, to package less, to use biodegradable materials, to use, and to find viable ways of recycling and incinerating locally, Hawaii ships trash to the U.S. West Coast, and the U.S. West Coast ships trash to China. It would seem to me the only ones that truly benefit from that are the cargo companies and the oil giants who fuel them up. Oh, and the shareholders of the companies involved! That is after all much of the way in which economic “capital” has been created in the past centuries: by moving goods around the world. Raw materials were retrieved from developing countries, shipped to industrialized countries where they were transformed into products, which were shipped by to the original country and other regions of the world for a profit. Money was the fictional profit created by this processes. However, it doesn’t take much to see that it is not sustainable, especially when it depends on irreplaceable natural resources. “Growth” will continue and some will become richer and richer at the expense of others’ poverty only for long enough for us to drawn in our trash and man-made contaminating non0degradable chemicals, and deplete the natural resource upon which humanity and all other living beings depend on.
Going back to the cases in which Third World individuals and companies find an opportunity to capitalize on other countries’ trash, the truth is for every case of legal somewhat positive trash entrepreneurship, there seems to be many more cases of unregulated dumping of millions of tons of trash from U.S. and Europe into landfills in other countries, from dirty pipes to old computers to household trash. Construction debris and other wastes containing asbestos, mercury, and other toxic agents are dismantled by people, sometimes children, at high risk for their help, in Third World countries, where it is often burnt or left to rot, polluting air, soil, and water (Rosental’s article in the NY Times cited above). If that is not imperialism, I don’t what you’d call it.
European and American companies are tempted to export their waste, legally or illegally, because it is “cheaper” than dispensing of it appropriately according to their own regulations. Also, Third World countries may see an opportunity for profit by buying waste and recycling it into new material to be sold, or by charging fees for “taking care” of other countries’ wastes – even if that means contaminating and putting the health of their people at risk. This is a perfect example of what Vandana Shiva repeats over and over in her books: the potential or real economic benefits of these situations are fictional, they only exist from the point of view of a capitalist system, they only hold true if we choose to look exclusively at the monetary income and costs. The truth is, if we, as humans and citizens of the planet, allow for waste to be disposed of in polluting ways in Third World countries, then the regulations against it in Europe have done nothing to help the overall health of our planet. Furthermore, Third World countries continue to carry the heaviest responsibility for the wrongdoing of developed countries, to be abused and exploited, to carry with the consequences of the trash produced by the few who are well off. Ultimately humanity and planet Earth are paying a much higher cost by exporting trash than by recycling it and safely disposing of it locally. While the latter option might be more expensive money wise, exporting trash adds the pollution of long-distance transportation, furthers the disproportions of developed vs developing world relations – and ultimately pollutes the air, the water, and the soil we all share just as much, or worse.
There are apparently some situations of legal shipping of trash from Europe to developing countries to be recycled by authorized companies that are capable and accountable. However, there are also millions of tons of trash shipped illegally, to non-authorized recipient companies that just burn it or put it on landfills. This stuff has been going on for a while, as developed countries run out of space and options for the immense amounts of trash they produce. However, it became a huge industry when Europe passed regulations that all trash must be recycled or disposes of in a safe way, most dumping in landfills has been prohibited, and safe incineration is expensive and heavily taxed. That became an expensive responsibility for European companies, so they have opted to ship it abroad instead. Thus, in Europe, paper, plastic, metal, and electronics can be exported for recycling abroad. The U.S. has no such laws, so trash can be exported anywhere to whomever regardless of what they will do with it, since we have no regulations within our borders that mandate recycling and safe disposal anyway.
However, there are also international regulations outlawing the exportation of toxic wastes. According to a NY times article on the topic , titled "Smuggling Europe Wastes to Poor Countries" by Elisabeth Rosental (very interseting by the way: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/science/earth/27waste.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1) ports are constantly stopping such illegal cargos. In the case of legal exporting-recycling, I found an example of a woman who founded a company based on creating packaging material in China by recycling U.S. cardboard from Los Angeles. (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003544422_zhang280.html). It has made her very rich. It's a good example of capitalism. I guess some money and jobs are flowing back to China because of this. However, there is also the matter of the energy spent in transporting the cardboard, which monetarily speaking is obviously low enough to still allow for a profit. Nonetheless, I have been reading Vandana Shiva’s work, and learnt to look at the bigger picture and include costs that our market economy does not take into account (such as soil depletion, air and water pollution, sustainability, and the energy spent in creating input materials or substance). Thus, I must point out that we should also acknowledge that long distance transportation would be one less environmental cost if the waste was recycled in situ.
A good example to look at for the transportation issue is the fact that trash is currently shipped from Hawaii (where they have apparently run out of space for landfills) to Washington State, to a Seattle based company (http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/09/hawaii_trash_headed_for_northw.html). So, instead of trying to produce less trash to start with, to package less, to use biodegradable materials, to use, and to find viable ways of recycling and incinerating locally, Hawaii ships trash to the U.S. West Coast, and the U.S. West Coast ships trash to China. It would seem to me the only ones that truly benefit from that are the cargo companies and the oil giants who fuel them up. Oh, and the shareholders of the companies involved! That is after all much of the way in which economic “capital” has been created in the past centuries: by moving goods around the world. Raw materials were retrieved from developing countries, shipped to industrialized countries where they were transformed into products, which were shipped by to the original country and other regions of the world for a profit. Money was the fictional profit created by this processes. However, it doesn’t take much to see that it is not sustainable, especially when it depends on irreplaceable natural resources. “Growth” will continue and some will become richer and richer at the expense of others’ poverty only for long enough for us to drawn in our trash and man-made contaminating non0degradable chemicals, and deplete the natural resource upon which humanity and all other living beings depend on.
Going back to the cases in which Third World individuals and companies find an opportunity to capitalize on other countries’ trash, the truth is for every case of legal somewhat positive trash entrepreneurship, there seems to be many more cases of unregulated dumping of millions of tons of trash from U.S. and Europe into landfills in other countries, from dirty pipes to old computers to household trash. Construction debris and other wastes containing asbestos, mercury, and other toxic agents are dismantled by people, sometimes children, at high risk for their help, in Third World countries, where it is often burnt or left to rot, polluting air, soil, and water (Rosental’s article in the NY Times cited above). If that is not imperialism, I don’t what you’d call it.
European and American companies are tempted to export their waste, legally or illegally, because it is “cheaper” than dispensing of it appropriately according to their own regulations. Also, Third World countries may see an opportunity for profit by buying waste and recycling it into new material to be sold, or by charging fees for “taking care” of other countries’ wastes – even if that means contaminating and putting the health of their people at risk. This is a perfect example of what Vandana Shiva repeats over and over in her books: the potential or real economic benefits of these situations are fictional, they only exist from the point of view of a capitalist system, they only hold true if we choose to look exclusively at the monetary income and costs. The truth is, if we, as humans and citizens of the planet, allow for waste to be disposed of in polluting ways in Third World countries, then the regulations against it in Europe have done nothing to help the overall health of our planet. Furthermore, Third World countries continue to carry the heaviest responsibility for the wrongdoing of developed countries, to be abused and exploited, to carry with the consequences of the trash produced by the few who are well off. Ultimately humanity and planet Earth are paying a much higher cost by exporting trash than by recycling it and safely disposing of it locally. While the latter option might be more expensive money wise, exporting trash adds the pollution of long-distance transportation, furthers the disproportions of developed vs developing world relations – and ultimately pollutes the air, the water, and the soil we all share just as much, or worse.
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