Newtopia | Issue #17 - Summer 2004: "The Environment"

On May 6, 2003 a class action lawsuit was filed in the small oil-boom city of Lago Agrio, Ecuador, at the edge of the Amazon. The trial, known among journalists and students of law as "the trial of the century," has thousands of citizens of Ecuador and Peru suing Chevron-Texaco for indemnities and environmental clean-up due to catastrophic destruction and extreme illness in the region following Texaco's twenty-years of oil extraction there.

Chicago is sprinting into the 21st Century as the model urban habitat. With an Administration full of Green Initiatives, including a Department of the Environment and the city's first "Green Czars", the city has ceased its long standing war with nature and embraced the concepts of sustainability.

The ancient religious doctrine of dominion, supported by modern concepts of corporate entitlement today validates approaches to resource management that have led economist Herman Daly to observe that we "…treat the earth as if it was a business in liquidation."

When we say "Save the Earth" we really mean "Save the Humans." It is a statement of self-preservation. Humans have a responsibility to ourselves to not overwhelm the natural orders. Even today, this comes as a surprise to many.

"Ecology is a way of looking at the world, in a subjective and emotional way, not just as an objective and rational one. It involves seeing the world with wonder, awe, and humility - as something to feel part of, rather than to exploit."

The Palestinian Christian is an endangered species. When the modern state of Israel was established there were about 400000 of us. Two years ago the number was down to 80000. Now it’s down to 60000. At that rate, in a few years there will be none of us left.

A shift from an economy based on gasoline to one based upon hydrogen is as much a sociological problem as a technical one. It will require massive infrastructure investment, innovative public policy, changes to core consumer behavior, and a couple strokes of good luck just to get off the starting block.

The benefits of using the wind to provide necessary energy sources are obvious; the benefit of conservation, sustainability and an environmental-oriented social conscience. We will save enormously in the long run if we look at alternatives such as this to mechanize our nation.

Millions of Americans would like an alternative to suburban sprawl living. Across the nation some exceptional and courageous developers are building true communities based on smart growth and new urbanism principles. But if you want to live in such a place the odds are about 500 to 1 against you finding it in the region in which you prefer to live. The sprawl lobby has been corrupting government for decades.

Building "smart" in America is hard. There are a host of reasons which together render building smart growth projects both more difficult and less profitable than building conventional sprawl, regardless of the hundreds of articles and books penned in support of smart growth.

It is estimated that over the next three decades the majority of the world's population growth will take place in urban areas within developing countries. This will result in profound impacts on global health and the environment. The key to preparing for this trend is better understanding of the cycles of poverty, disease and violence that affect the urban poor today.

Researchers today have found that many of the chemicals used in daily home life cause brain damage, illness, learning disability and even death in children. Other pollutants, released in the air daily, are just as lethal. Children now live in a world where simply breathing can be hazardous to their health. What have we done?

"I wanted to know about what the Occupation meant for the occupied, which is a society that is still more or less agriculturally based, and how that translated into new economic realities for the people who produced and consumed from the land."

The notion of environment became central in modern life as a result of industrialization. The scientific and industrial revolutions allowed human beings for the first time to have some control over shaping their material circumstances. A technological culturescape, overlaid on the landscape, caused many unintended injurious impacts on human beings.

A minority Houston neighborhood sues an oil giant for choosing their land as a dumping ground. The Diamond community in Norco, Lousiania fight for years against the local Shell chemical plant which refuses to compensate them for the "toxic terrorism" it has been forced to live with for years. Welcome to Environmental Racism.

There is an emerging trend in business education that seeks to integrate traditional management with the values of human and environmental sustainability. As this trend develops, three new MBA programs dedicated to the interface of sustainability and management provide an indication of what may be the future of business education.

Saying that BushCo has a myopic vision for the world may appear all too generous. Myopia, without the benefit of periphery, at least peers ahead as far as the eye can see. But proctoscopy is limited by endless untidy collision with either anus or rectum, depending on the clumsy insertion of the instrument. No doubt, as the late Mr. Orwell might aver, it seems that our subliterate leader splutters with synaptic misfires from mentle muddle known as "Buttthink".

"A mass movement and a mountain of disturbing evidence has been growing beneath the radar of U.S. media. The U.S. media (including alternative media) has done an extraordinarily superhuman job of "hearing" "seeing" and "speaking no evil." However many researchers, ordinary citizens, and journalists began to smell something rotten . . . not in Denmark . . . but rather, right here in the good ol' US of A."

"These spawn of the Reagan Revolution--Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Jerry Falwell and Henry Hyde--have introduced a new level of meanness into America's domestic and international politics. America's claim to being a civilized nation is now very much in question.

"Black men, the logic goes, are not supposed to think in international or deep philosophical terms. Instead, if one is to be a "true brotha" life should be a lot more simple than that: quit school, slap "hoes", smoke weed, impregnate half the female population, sell drugs, and serve a couple of prison sentences."

"According to the Sierra Club, a large majority of Americans believe that protection of the environment should be given top priority. But there's a major disconnect between what we say we want, and what is actually happening. Why does this disconnect exist? Media coverage of environmental issues is a major culprit."

What role does poetry play into the environment at large, featuring a suite of poems from the author’s collection “When Birds Fly into Buildings?”

Review of the books: When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution, by Devra Davis (Basic Books, 2002, 316 pp), and Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood, by Sandra Steingraber (Berkley Books, 2001, 342 pp)

An EXCLUSIVE pre-release review of Michael Moore's incendiary documentary on the Bush Administration.

A look at the portrayal of the intimacy between two men of power.

Where movies meet myth and become much more than you thought they were.

In this issue the Cinemashrink analyzes Safe and Kill Bill Vol. 1 & II

Flashart, the new global mode of art production, capitalization and consumption seems to have placed a few significant parameters on the backburner while it readily remakes_ replays_ recycles everything and anything from past to present.