Playing Politics With Irene

She came…She went… In my neck of the woods, she ushered in a wet basement and a few hours without power. Can we say Good Night, Irene? My family may have been spared, but many in neighboring towns were not so lucky. Along with suffering from the aftermath of the hurricane, they are enduring the type of political storm that arrives when the Tea Party comes to town.

Politics and disasters are strange bedfellows…they separate the humane from the monsters. Please bear with me as I wade into the local political realm and tell you about two Republicans who left an impression in the wake of Irene.

The first one was Mayor Bloomberg of New York City. Given the reports and the facts - the odds of Irene wiping out parts of the city were high. Bloomberg made the right call. He evacuated low-lying areas and shut down the transit system. While the storm didn't hit as directly or devastatingly as expected, that doesn't change the levelheaded choices the Mayor made for his people. Bravo Bloomberg.

On the other end of the GOP spectrum, and a few miles north of NYC, days after Irene ripped through neighboring areas of Orange, Dutchess, Putnam and Westchester Counties, Rep. Nan Hayworth is threatening to withhold disaster money if lawmakers don't cut additional spending from the federal budget. Yes, this is the same Nan Hayworth who outspent and won the election out from under the fabulous Rep. John Hall…and yes, Hayworth was a Tea Party candidate.

Hayworth is saying she would only vote to replenish the federal disaster fund if new spending is offset by budget cuts. According to her, those cuts should come from "non-defense discretionary spending." Hayworth likened her position on bringing more pain and suffering to those affected by Irene, to “a family skipping vacation if it was overwhelmed by bills.”

"We're facing a natural disaster in the middle of an economic disaster. Certainly, the challenges we face with the national budget have not changed."

No they haven’t, but people's lives have changed.

It makes me sick to think an elected official would hold its constituents hostage. It's almost a week after the storm, and as I drive around the area, the devastation is horrifying...so many are left with flooded homes, crumbling roads, no water and no power. What are they supposed to do? These folks have been paying taxes just for an emergency such as this. Will they lose their homes while Hayworth positions the politics in her favor? Disgusting.

If you can stomach more of this type of nonsense, read today's NYTimes op-ed from Paul Krugman, Eric and Irene.

OK, I’ll stop now because you may have just checked in to see my latest, greatest eco-finds. Those are coming, I promise. But, Irene has been on my mind, and it inspired a few non-political posts from me that you may want to check out. This one over on Moms Clean Air Force site, and this one at Care2 discuss the after effects of hurricanes on wildlife, pollution and our stuff. Of course, in both posts I couldn’t repress my deep feeling that climate change is at the root of many of these latest natural disasters. That’s not politics. That’s reality.

Credits: Charles Krupa/AP for New York Times, Charles Dharapak/AP for Guardian

Mother Love Is A Force Of Nature

We launched! It's been a busy time for the folks at Moms Clean Air Force. We've been writing, designing, developing, and finally launching a shiny new website!

While I've been holed up with my computer for hours on end, the collaborative effort has been incredibly inspiring. Working with a team is something I've missed being a freelance writer/editor/blogger these past four years.

Once I corral the talented team of writers, and teach them how to use all the nifty new tools, I will have time to write again. Yay!

In the meantime, do you want to learn more about MCAF? Of course you do!

Below is the MCAF welcome note from founder, Dominique Browning. After you check out the website (just beautiful, huh?), please come back and tell me what your thoughts are about the site and our mission to clean up the air. Thank you!

Mother Love Is A Force of Nature

Moms Clean Air Force has a newly designed website, and I’m delighted to welcome you to our community. We’re creating a movement for people who see air pollution as a straightforward, urgently important health issue.

Our goals are simple: educate people about why air pollution is still a big problem; raise awareness about what’s at stake politically; inspire people to take simple, fast action to send Washington a message.

We know moms are busy. But moms are also extraordinarily protective of their children’s health. We specialize in Naptime Activism.

Our bloggers take our message into their communities, reaching millions of readers. We network on Facebook and Twitter. Our growing community includes nurses, doctors, scientists, politicians, novelists, journalists, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, knitters and bakers–concerned moms, dads, sisters, brothers, daughters, and sons. Air pollution is harmful to everyone with a beating heart.

Air pollution contains toxins that harm people’s brains, lungs, and hearts. It is affecting our food and water. Children are especially vulnerable to toxic pollutants; Latino and African American babies suffer disproportionately from poisoned air. While there are lots of things we can do, as individuals, to keep our children safe at home, no one can control the air they breathe. We need regulations for that.

We’re all for respecting reasonable, efficient government budgets. But we don’t want our babies thrown out with the bathwater.

President Nixon’s Clean Air Act of 1970, and the agency he founded, the Environmental Protection Agency, have accomplished a great deal in cleaning American air and water. But the work isn’t done. The sky might be blue, but that doesn’t mean it is clean. In forty years, we’ve learned much more about invisible pollutants that wreak havoc on our health, causing neurological and developmental problems. Asthma rates among children are skyrocketing.

Air pollution isn’t just dirty. It is poisonous. Polluters are fighting for the right to pollute!

The Clean Air Act and the EPA are facing an unprecedented attack by some politicians and coal and oil industry lobbyists. That’s because emissions from coal-fired power plants are the single largest contributor to mercury toxins in our air.

Many responsible coal plant owners have done the right thing and cleaned up their toxic air emissions. It hasn’t hurt their bottom lines at all–they’re making record profits. The EPA has created thousands of jobs for Americans in the last forty years–in sectors from research to enforcement to engineering to new technology development.

Air pollution can be cleaned up. Please join Moms Clean Air Force to make our voices loud and clear. Send politicians a forceful message: Strengthen and enforce pollution regulations!

Polluters have power, money and political influence. But moms have love. And that’s the strongest force of all. Now we have to use it.

PLEASE JOIN MOMS CLEAN AIR FORCE

Freaked About Fracking

"Hey, how you doin' I just came by to say hello I work for the gas company I just happened to be in the neighborhood, you know but I was thinkin, you must be tired of workin' that rake and that hoe I could make you lots more money than those potatoes" ~ No Fracking Way, Marc Black

While traveling to visit my children in Boston a few weeks ago, I listened to a radio interview with Marc Black. He sang No Fracking Way, which tells the story of farmers who are approached by gas companies to drill on their land.

What Is Fracking?

Hydro-fracturing or fracking is a method of gas extraction where water, sand and highly toxic chemicals are injected deep into the earth at high pressure to fracture rock formations and release natural gas. Once the gas is liberated, it comes to the surface and can be used as a source of energy.

Fracking Comes Home

Fracking has been kicking up its dirty heels in the Northeast, particularly along the Marcellus Shale region of New York and Pennsylvania. I’ve been a New Yorker my whole life, so when I discovered New York ranks as the highest state in HAP (Hazardous Air Pollution), it was daunting to me to learn gas companies are using persuasive practices to pad their pocketbooks and advance an agenda to pollute the land, water and air…all in the name of “cleaner” energy.

This stuff drives me crazy if I don’t learn more. So I contacted singer Marc Black. When we met, he made it perfectly clear that while the problem of fracking is complicated, the premise is simple. He explains...

“There’s nothing political about a poisoned well and breathing polluted air. Energy companies with the backing of some politicians are clamoring to drill. They laud natural gas as a source of jobs and a “cleaner” solution to our dependence on foreign oil. What they neglect to tell people is that their wells, land and air become polluted”

To Frack Or Not To Frack?

Natural gas production has been linked to emissions of benzene, formaldehyde, carbon disulfide, ethane, toluene and xylene. Even short-term exposure to these compounds may produce nausea, dizziness, and respiratory problems, and long-term exposure may be linked to brain tumors, leukemia, and breast cancer. If that doesn't freak the fracking daylights out of you, maybe this will:

3 More Reasons Why Fracking Is A Problem:

1. Vast amounts of water are required. Since fracking disrupts fault lines, the process is feared to cause earthquakes.
2. Fracking has never gone through an independent federal environmental impact assessment and is not subject to federal regulations.
3. While the natural gas industry should be required to abide by the same regulations as any other energy producing industry, the fracking process is mostly unregulated due to numerous exemptions in federal laws.

3 Things We Can Do:

1. Ask for a full disclosure of chemicals used in the fracking process (some states already are beginning to require disclosure).
2. Tell the politicians that we do not support spending hundreds of millions of dollars to gut the Clean Air Act and weaken the EPA's ability to reduce dangerous pollution.
3. Advocate for “real” clean renewable energy, like solar and wind.

“So when the man comes up to you and he says I wanna give you all this money to poison your land What will you say, huh?” ~ Marc Black

Photo: Ben Scott for Bluerock Design