The Observer, October 19, 2007
Volume XL, Issue 8
Political Connection: Intertwined government, corporations spell disaster for environment
On Oct. 14, the New York Times printed a third article in a series on China called "Choking on Growth." The article, "In China, a Lake's Champion Imperils Himself," penned by Joseph Kahn, told the discouraging story of Wu Lihong. In short, he and his wife lost their jobs and he went to jail due to his environmental whistleblowing. After some mild successes in his pursuits regarding the reduction of toxic discard into Lake Tai and being commended as "an environmental warrior" by the party parliament, things started to go downhill. His efforts had given the local government a bad reputation; he was eventually inhumanely interrogated and forced to confess to two charges of blackmail, one of which was later revised to fraud. Now, the lake is being overrun by toxic cyanobacteria. While the previously pristine lake once provided plenty of food and resources for the locals, one would be hard pressed to find even a few fish there today.
This is a heartbreaking story, but it is easy to interpret it in a non-constructive way. I think the New York Times has not only made it easy for others to do that, but they have also done so themselves. Since it is part of the series "Choking on Growth," it is natural to blame the Chinese government. 'If those socialists would stop being such dictators all the time, maybe their people could have some freedom and they wouldn't pollute all of their lakes,' some might complain. In fact, the problem is with the lack of centralization in this instance. The local government had too much jurisdiction, and they didn't want to slow progress, so they are the ones that punished Wu. His only praise came from the higher echelons of the party. China's increasingly capitalist economy is responsible for this tragedy – the 2800 chemical factories which were operating in the late 1990s were dumping toxic wastes despite regulations.
This story, rather than prompting further hatred toward the Chinese government, should promote a general concern for similar egregious environmental issues internationally, and an ambition for constructive action in that regard. However, before we imperialize the world in another moralistic blitzkrieg, we should introspect. This article is not about Lake Tai and Wu so much as it's about a lake of coal sludge and Jack Spadaro. Let's start with another sad story.
In 2000, in Martin County, Ky., a spill 30 times larger than the much-publicized Exxon Valdez incident occurred. Approximately 306 million gallons of coal sludge were emptied into a few tributaries of Tug Fork River, which turned one 10-foot-wide creek into a 100-yard-wide stream of coal sludge and killed everything in the area, according to investigator Jack Spadaro. At the time, he was the head of the National Mine Safety and Health Academy, part of the Department of Labor, which is responsible for mine inspection. During his investigations, an engineer from mine owner Massey Energy told him that not only did Massey know that this disaster was possible, they knew it was almost a certainty. Furthermore, it wasn't just the mine company who knew, but also individuals in the government responsible for inspections, according to Spadaro and his former boss, David McAteer.
This was all under intense scrutiny by Spadaro until January 2001, when the Bush administration descended upon the nation and appointed David Lauriski, a former mining executive, to take McAteer's place. CBS states without qualification that Massey Energy is a "generous contributor to the Bush administration." And when Bush came into power, Lauriski's appointment was a veritable deus ex machina for Massey. Lauriski quartered the number of citations in the report, and then informed Spadaro that he was "in a hard spot," asking him to sign his version of the report, much of which has been blacked out, NSA style, upon its release. At this point, Spadaro resigned from the investigation.
Ultimately Massey Energy was cited for two violations (the same as Wu), and fined a grand sum of $110,000 (approximately 2.75 percent of what the industry spent on campaigns since 1996 as of the beginning of last year). In addition, they received multiple contracts that weren't put out for bid, at least one of which totaled to almost $200,000. In 2003, Spadaro was locked out of his office by government agents while they rummaged through his files and then terminated from his position for "failing to follow procedures" and using his government credit card without authorization. Later, he was rehired with a demotion, relocation, and a $35,000 pay cut. Jack Spadaro's story may be dramatic, but it is neither the most tragic nor the least humane. The worst part is the effect on the communities and the environment, and the constant deception involved.
The money that the coal lobby spends on campaigns regularly results in governors like Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky, who was indicted for corruption charges that were later dropped, though the grand jury reports that he was attempting to turn the government into a corruption machine at every level. But he doesn't even have to veto any bills that reduce mining profits, because the legislation is also elected by King Coal, and any resolutions that are proffered are diluted before they leave the House.
Rather than feeling good that you are not in China when you read Joseph Kahn's article, you should get the sick feeling in your stomach that a Kentuckian gets driving through the Appalachians and seeing whole mountains mined apart, knowing that in a valley below there is a community entirely enslaved to an energy company that runs the mine. It's similar, I'm sure, to the sick feeling that Wu gets, along with the rice farmers who have to wear rubber gloves and boots to work on the paddies without their skin peeling off.
When Kahn says, "Fixing the environment is…a political problem," in China, I would argue that it's no more political there than here. It's a money problem. If corporations weren't putting profit above all, we wouldn't need regulation in the first place. It only becomes political when the government controls the corporations, as in China, or when the corporations control the government. As of Aug. 22 of this year, the Bush administration is approving a mining regulation that will allow the coal industry to mine using mountaintop removal wherever they want. If unchanged, it should go into effect today.
David Noll is a senior cognitive science major.
