“What goes around comes around.”
– American adage
Because local news is often most relevant to readers, I had planned to write a column focused on environmental issues close to home.
But just as I was pondering an appropriate topic, I read about ocean-borne radiation from the 2011 Fukushima, Japan, nuclear disaster reaching the west coasts of Canada and the U.S. this April. Because of the vastness of the ocean, the concentration of the radioactive particles arriving stateside is expected to be very low, and public safety is probably not an issue – this time.
A salient fact about the Fukushima disaster is that the nuclear plant was designed and built as a joint project of various Japanese entities and the U.S. General Electric Corp. (GE). Despite numerous warnings by nuclear experts about the plant’s design flaws and the vulnerability of GE’s reactors to an accident just like the one that eventually (inevitably?) occurred, nothing was done to head off the disaster. And we now see the consequences of our flawed technology exports arriving at our shores.
Meanwhile, there is a large push for the U.S. and Canada to export their growing surpluses of fossil fuels. Canada hopes to export its heavy tar-sands oil to international markets through U.S. ports and refineries in the Gulf of Mexico via the controversial “Keystone” pipeline and other conduits.
Currently, U.S. fossil-fuel companies are mostly targeting markets in eastern Asia, where they can get the best price for their products. These include oil from the North Dakota region, coal from Wyoming and natural gas from several areas. The master plan is to ship these products through the Pacific Northwest, along the Columbia River corridor – a process that’s already underway on a relatively small scale.
Unless this plan is realized, the U.S. fossil-fuel industry could stagnate economically. So the industry is spending millions of dollars on public-relations campaigns and lobbyists to promote fossil-fuel exportation, claiming it will create more domestic jobs and so on.
There are local environmental consequences of this energy extraction, of course. Areas of Wyoming are being strip-mined for coal. North Dakota and other areas are increasingly subjected to fracking, which permanently pollutes huge quantities of water.
But the most pervasive consequences are global. When those fossil fuels reach their destination, they will be burned, creating various wind-borne pollutants and adding to global carbon dioxide emissions. We already have surpassed the safe limit of emissions, and we are reaping the consequences in the U.S. in terms of ongoing droughts, severe, unpredictable weather and so on.
Our energy exports will come back to us, but not only in the form of value-added manufactured goods: The pollution of our atmosphere will lead to value-destroying health consequences and exacerbated climate change.
Everything is connected on our small planet: There are no strictly local environmental issues. Heed your actions and those of others that you may support or resist because the chickens inevitably come home to roost at your ecological house.
Philip S. Wenz, who grew up in Durango and Boulder, now lives in Corvallis, Ore., where he teaches and writes about environmental issues. Reach him via email through his website, www.your-ecological-house.com.