The Invrionment

Everybody knows the Environment is in trouble and that it needs help. Of course we all help now-and- then, and will continue to do more in the future. We will pitch in when we have enough money to give, or when we have time to spare and we will contribute somehow if things continue to get worse, and so on and so forth.
Webster defines the Environment as “that by which one is surrounded”. While that emphasizes how important it is to all of us, it is also implies the Environment is something which is “out there”. To play a philosopher’s game of words, we could say the Environment is therefore “not-us”, i.e. by definition it is something other THAN us. Thus the Environment becomes a little bit like some old friends who are having problems - we are concerned, of course we are, and we really do feel sorry for them. We will keep them on our mind and perhaps even pray for them. Meanwhile we have to deal with our own problems.
But aren’t we missing something when we then eat food that was “out there” and digest it in our own insides? Or when we drink water from “out there” and use it to refresh and clean the insides of our bodies? Or when we breathe in air from “out there” and mix it with our own oxygen and blood, and pulse all of that deeply inside of us? Isn’t it strange how that which is “out there” keeps coming “in here”? The Environment (En-VIR-oment) keeps becoming our own Invironment (IN-vir-oment), and that’s becoming scary.
The Environment in the Smoky Mountains has become polluted with fine particulate dust and mercury emissions from nearby power plants. We are now finding our Invironments have also become polluted with those same particles and emissions, they are hung up in our lungs and they float through our blood.
The National Academy of Sciences tells us that lead used in paint and other places has become part of the Invironment of many of our children, especially those living in lower income homes, and it has gone deeply inside the brain cells of these children and it inclines them to a lifetime of violence. The Environment of our children has become the Invironment of our society.
An even more recent study indicates that methyl mercury is readily absorbed when ingested, then easily crosses the placenta and blood-brain barriers, and appears to create adverse effects on children while in the womb, and affect their ability to learn language, develop memory and attention skills, and these problems will last their entire life. The degree of affliction is directly related to the amount of mercury their mothers were exposed to during pregnancy. Autism has been found to increase in a predictable rates as mercury in the Environment increases. Mercury comes from eating fish, also in many places from breathing air. Too many American children are now born with permanent brain and nervous system damage due to mercury pollution. Our Environment begins to reach deeper and deeper into our being, no longer just personally but now collectively too, reaching in unknown ways into our posterity. Our government has promised to begin reducing mercury emissions in fifteen years.
All production requires purchasing of raw material from someone else, the labor of processing it and then distributing the product. Material and production costs are subtracted from revenues and the remainder is called "profit". Part of the raw material used in most production processes is clean air and fresh water that is also needed by the citizens of our land who also need that same raw material for their own life. But when many of our citizens receive their air and water it is already seriously damanged. When any business entity takes a resource, uses it and returned it damaged, they have not covered all of their costs of production. The profits they claim are therefore not valid. You rent a car, return it damaged, you will pay for the damage, maybe buy a new car. If a business refuses to pay their labor costs, or their suppliers, they will be sued and incur even greater costs.
Great corporations say they can reduce the pollution they have created but that would cost them more money, that would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. They present the problem/solution as being not really an issue to them, they are just trying to save us money. That seems to imply the problem is our fault, and they are just doing what we want!
But by absorbing the pollution from their production process we are also absorbing some of their costs of production that they did not pay but have taken as “profit” and already dispersed it to their shareholders and officers. Does it actually make no difference to them? not really. If they do pay the real costs of production, a true picture would be available to everyone, not hidden as it is today. While prices would rise for consumers, the profits would also shrink for the shareholders and corporate officers. This would reduce the capital available to the company because shareholders would move to other investments, while many mutual funds would automatically and instantaneously switch through computer programming procedures.
The rising prices would hurt the consumer, of course, but since it would also give a true picture of the costs of our current forms of production it would also encourage conservation among consumers and help them transfer to other forms of production - hybrids in automobiles, solar and wind in electrical, etc. These options are currently repressed because of the high relative price of purchasing them. The market system, so widely endorsed by conservatives, would at last be free to operate on its own in this market, and consumers would finally be able to make wise choices.
Meanwhile, there should be a corresponding decrease in illness costs for the consumers. This would be good for them, but would create a serious problem for the economy because it would significantly reduce money spent for medical care, insurance, pharmaceutical products and the criminal justice system. The costs to respond to the pollution of the Invironment is always much higher than the cost to clean up the Envirionment. So it's complicated - what do you think?
©John Womack, 2005, All Rights Reserved.