[Mb-civic] The Reality-Based Environment

Fri Dec 17 18:43:42 PST 2004

The Reality-Based Environment

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet
 Posted on December 16, 2004, Printed on December 17, 2004
 http://www.alternet.org/story/20772/

"The aide (a senior adviser to President Bush) said that guys like me were
'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people
who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible
reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and
empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works
anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our
own reality. And while you're studying that reality  judiciously, as you
will  we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study
too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and
you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."  Ron Suskind, New
York Times Magazine, Oct. 17, 2004.

This is the quote that now has some noted bloggers identifying themselves
as, "Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community."

Of all the problems that arise from having an administration that chooses
not to believe in reality, the ones most likely to have irretrievably
disastrous consequences are environmental.

The Bush solution to global warming is to declare it does not exist. While
this solves the problem for him in the short term, global warming is highly
unlikely to be impressed by the news that we are now an empire and can
change history.

Just lately, "history's actors" have made a couple of singular contributions
to our future that we in the reality-based community will doubtless be
studying for some time to come.

The first allows sewer operators to dump inadequately treated sewage into
the nation's waterways. The Environmental Protection Agency (a name that
becomes more ironic daily) currently requires sewer operators to fully treat
their waste in all but the most extreme circumstances, like during a
hurricane. The new plan will allow operators to dump sewage routinely any
time it rains.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council: "For the last 50 years,
standard sewage treatment has involved a two-step process: solids removal,
and biological treatment to kill bacteria, viruses and parasites. The new
policy allows facilities to routinely bypass the second step and to 'blend'
partially treated sewage with fully treated wastewater before discharging it
into the waterways."

NRDC predicts more Americans  especially the elderly, very young and those
with weakened immune systems  will get sick and die. That's on account of
the fact that bacteria, viruses and parasites are also part of the
reality-based community and have no respect for history's actors or empires.

Next, in one of those under-the-radar moments so beloved of the Bushies, the
Pentagon has simply exempted itself from environmental law. A new Department
of Defense directive changes a Clinton-era order on "Environmental Security"
by eliminating the following policies:

    €     Reducing risk to human health and the environment by identifying,
evaluating and, where necessary, remediating contamination resulting from
past DoD activities.

    €     Protecting, preserving and, when required, restoring and enhancing
the quality of the environment.

    €     Conserving and restoring, where necessary, the natural and
cultural heritage represented on DoD installations within the United States.

There has been no public debate or congressional review of the new policy.
The policy was written by the man who watched the looting of Baghdad and
said, "Stuff happens."

To add to the global warming festivities now comes a new novel by Michael
Crichton, who has made a fortune by scaring us about nonexistent threats 
the Japanese taking over the world, rampant sexual harassment by predatory
females and dinosaurs recreated by insane scientists. This time, Crichton
claims to be working against the fear-mongers, because the premise of his
new novel is that global warming is much overrated and actually the product
of a sinister group of villains  the environmentalists. Enviros, by and
large a pacific bunch of vegetarians and birders, must make unsatisfactory
villains (I haven't read the book).

But in fact, the "villains" in global warming are not environmentalists, but
scientists. They are the ones trying to "scare" us by making us aware of the
problem, which is reality-based. Yet another study  by 300 scientists with
the International Arctic Science Committee  finds:

    €     Average winter temperatures in the Arctic are up by 4 to 7 degrees
over the past 50 years and now projected to rise by 7 to 14 degrees over the
next 100 years.

    €     Polar ice during the summer is projected to decline by 50 percent
by the end of this century.

    €     Warming over Greenland will lead to substantial melting of the
Greenland Ice Sheet, contributing to global sea level rise at an increasing
rate. Greenland's ice sheets contain enough water to raise the sea level by
about 23 feet.

Scientists, a reality-based bunch of empiricists if ever there was one, are
in no doubt about global warming. The only question is about how fast it's
happening. And many of the small minority who argue it is coming slowly are
themselves in the pay of oil companies and industry groups.

As Upton Sinclair observed, "It is difficult to get a man to understand
something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." And that
is not conspiracy-mongering. That is reality.