Convenience - At what Cost? 2-20-10

Anderson, South Carolina

In the distant past when involved in environmental activism, I was asked to make a survey of a 6,000 acre tract of land in central Alabama. Like many other southern states, a huge percentage of forest land is owned by corporate interests conducting monoculture of fast growing species of softwood, used as feedstock to make packaging for consumer goods. For example, International Paper is one of the largest land owners in North America, having title to almost seven million acres, mostly in the south east. Diverse forests have been transformed into bleak tree farms. Only four percent of the original 60 million acres of original longleaf pine forests remain. Vast tracts of once diverse forests have been eaten alive by giant chip mills, converting everything in their wake into oriented strand board (OSB), a splintery replacement for plywood that does not require high quality feedstock.

An archived 1952 document bragged on a single pulp mill in Louisiana that consumed the feedstock from the surrounding 68,000 acres. It states the company ”also seeks to make as large a profit as possible by cutting the mature trees into the most valuable products they are capable of yielding.” Today a significant portion of framing timber is imported from southwestern Canada and South America because many mature and old growth forests in the United States have long since been cut over and converted to mono-culture for paper products. If one looks closely at SKU tags, it becomes evident that much of so-called ‘white wood’ product in gray box retailers is often harvested in South America, even the Scandinavian countries. Nearly half of the trees felled in North America are converted into paper products. Forty percent of landfill waste consists of paper products.

Heavy goods industrial processes are equally demanding of resources, resulting in the liberation of toxic minerals such as arsenic and radon. Leachates from mining operations and atmospheric pollution from smelting and refining processes are vast. Occupational exposure to toxins during the production of consumer goods has produced legendary outbreaks of cancer. Entire towns have become contaminated, ultimately declared to be super-fund sites, and abandoned.

While wandering around on those 6,000 acres in Alabama on a sunny day, I noticed two young boys playing, both wearing Camp Sunshine T-shirts. Inquiry revealed these two boys to have been recent participants in this magnificent camp for children with cancer. As I watched, incredulous, they romped through a field littered with hundreds of containers filled with assorted industrial chemicals. Further questioning revealed these drums, barrels, bottles, and cans to contain poisons use to kill hardwood trees ‘contaminating’ the 6,000 acres. In a mono-culture ecology with low ambient timber prices, a magnificent two hundred year old oak tree is viewed as a contaminant. The contaminants used to remove old growth contaminants had contaminated the blood of these children, rendering them victims of rare forms of leukemia, but their abundant toys came in pretty packaging. The father of these children, who had a leasehold on this timber wasteland, could not see the connection between the dire health of his children and the clear cut chemical wilderness in which they romped. When I tried to connect the dots for him, I was quickly invited to leave his land. He did not want to be implicated.

While packing hot meals at Meals on Wheels recently, I was spooning up green beans next to a mother of four serving up helpings of Brunswick stew. Conversation wandered onto recent job creation incentives that will incite consumers to discard perfectly good ‘durable goods’ such as refrigerators, stoves, washer and dryers, and air conditioning systems and buy new ones. Like the cash for clunkers program that destroyed 700,000 serviceable cars, one can expect hundreds of thousands, even millions, of perfectly useable products to be destroyed and land-filled. This mother of four was fantasizing about getting a new washer and dryer under this incentive program.

Believing that all cancer will eventually be proven to be an environmental disease, either from industrial toxins or even viral mutations that damage genetic material, I wondered out loud if it was such a good idea for us to continue to use up our natural world and to keep replacing everything because some financial gimmick was making it enticing. Did this mother really need to replace two large appliances she admitted were still working. Did she have any concern that our consuming ways might just cause cancer in her children and grand children?

“I don’t care. At least they will have clean clothes.” I asked again. Same answer. How I wish I had a tape recorder to capture the vehemence of this mother’s declaration. Have we become so devoted to the religion of secular materialism and consumption that we are willing to practice human sacrifice to the neoplastic monsters of cancer and other occult neurologic nightmares? Are we that different than the ancient Aztecs and Mayans who regular conducted ritual sacrifice?

The United States has the highest annual incidence rates of breast cancer in the world; 128.6 per 100,000 in whites and 112.6 per 100,000 among African Americans. Rates in the US are as much as 700% higher than other regions of the world. If you have had six surgical mitigations for cancer and have had virtually everything cut off or cut out that makes you woman and each day wonder when you are going to get hammered again, statistics become insipid, meaningless. For the astounding number of my female friends who have been through this neoplastic nightmare, I just don’t remember any of them talking about their new appliances. I have heard them talk about their new prosthetics, but those are not being covered under these jobs creation incentives. I do hear employment in the medical field continues rather robust. Perhaps additional incentives are not really needed there.

Do cancer surgery patients sitting in chemo drip rooms really think “Life is really good, after all I have clean clothes from my new washer to wear here while I get infused with these poisons that will make me bald, exhausted, ancient, and miserable?.” Do you really want to send your kids to Camp Sunshine? Perhaps not? Are pretty packages, the newest conveniences worth it? Just ask my girlfriend? She’s been there, done that.