Here's Mud In Your I

I hadn't planned on beating this drum two days in a row, but I'm a drummer -- it's what I do best. Fast on the heels of yesterday's AP story about pharmaceuticals in the water supply, we have this not-so-new development about poisoned and mutated populations of fish. It would be remiss of me not to throw this story in as well since it goes hand in hand.

In short, there is a growing body of irrefutable evidence that the various toxins present in our environment -- specifically in this case, the water supply -- are causing severe reproductive problems in many kinds of fish, genetic mutations, skewed sex ratios, as well as impaired reproduction in mussels, inhibited growth in algae, kidney failure in vultures, and mass die-offs of entire species of amphibians. The list, tragically, goes on and on and on.

Is there anybody out there? The sad thing is that there are a lot of people who are and will remain ignorant of this -- for a number of reasons. This isn't a "breaking" story, which means it won't garner any ratings and therefore unlikely to be featured on either local or network news. It may be the subject of a Discovery or Science channel special, but those programs are usually watched by the learned who already know there's a problem.

Additionally, "They" (whoever "They" happen to be) don't want to alarm the general populace and would prefer to keep under wraps as much of this information as possible -- as if there would be panic in the streets. Please...the majority of people who might stumble across this story may, at best, shake their collective heads, mutter under their breath, "*tsk, tsk*...what a shame...sure hope someone does something about this..." and then move on to the really interesting stories -- like the latest dirt on how screwed up Britney Spears is.

If I'm not mistaken, it's at this point that governments are supposed to step in and work to resolve the big issues that individuals can't do on their own. I say governments -- plural -- because although the United States reigns supreme in the wait-and-see, but don't-do-anything-to-piss-off-big-business department, we're not the sole offenders. We are the mightiest, however.

Doubtless many people could rattle off multiple examples of how much we do for the environment and the world at large. So what? The bottom line is that it's not enough -- not by a long shot. We certainly spring into action when our oil interests are threatened, spending trillions of dollars in a seemingly endless quagmire in the cradle of civilization.

But to even consider investing that kind of money, resources and manpower to ween ourselves off of fossil fuels, clean up our air and water, and help to provide food and healthcare to the world? Nope. Some bean counter probably did a cost-benefit analysis and decided there just wasn't enough in it for US. That goes right along with corporate lobbyists who make damn sure that their interests are grandfathered out of any potentially "costly" legislation that might compel them -- for lack of a better term -- to clean up their act.

That's the ticket. As long as the right person or entity gets their palm greased, the worst offenders get to continue to offend the worst. It's nothing short of criminal. It's also now officially a sin according to the Vatican, which recently listed ecological offenses among today's evils. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that the threat of excommunication will spur anyone into action.

So this is how the world dies, not with a bang, but a whimper -- resigned to its fate, its cries for help gone unheeded like those of Kitty Genovese, a young Queens woman who in 1964 was attacked in the street three times over the course of a half an hour and ultimately stabbed to death while thirty-eight of her neighbors watched from their windows and did nothing.

At least in this voyeuristic, information age that we live in, we'll all have front row seats.