Paper, plastic or cloth

Lots of suggestions online today on how individuals can do their part to preserve our planet.

Reduce/eliminate consumption of plastic bags. Take shorter showers and don't leave the water running while brushing teeth. Turn the old thermostat down during the winter and up during the summer.

These suggestions are not bad ideas. None of them seem to apply to what our institutions could/should be doing.

Stop mountaintop removal and the conversion of pure mountain springs into gobs of poisonous slurry.

Apply conscientious safety precautions to avoid turning vast swathes of the Gulf of Mexico into a tar pit.

Stop industrial agriculture's poisoning of waterways and acceleration of soil erosion.

Stop polluting the air we breath with toxic emissions.

Beef up enforcement against the slip shod maintenance of aging nuclear power plants.

Apply effective disciplinary measures, including charter suspension or removal, against corporate bad actors.

Abandon corporate welfare for big energy companies and initiate substantive support for the development of green power industries.

Admittedly just a beginning. But hey, we have to start somewhere.

Campaign Finance: When you cannot follow the money... .

When you cannot follow the money behind hundreds of millions of dollars paid for election campaign ads on TV, radio, in the newspapers and the daily mail, you know the following:

• There are people and institutions that are willing to spend a great deal of money to get their candidates elected.
• These contributors do not want the public to know who they are.
• Even the shareholders of public companies cannot learn to whom and how much their companies are contributing.

Some concerns arise:

• Are the institutions using their funds in an attempt to "buy" the government?
• Do these anonymous donors have a secret agenda of which even the recipients of their largess are unaware?
• Since the donors are anonymous, is it possible foreign institutions, even foreign governments are trying to influence the U. S. elections?
• Many of the ads contain inaccuracies and out and out lies that only the well informed can discern.

When I, as an individual, contribute over $100 to a candidate's campaign, it always seems to become public. When these huge contributors, hiding behind so called charitable institutions, contribute millions, they appear able to do so without public fanfare.

This does not feel like American voters are engaged on an even playing field.

Hungary's Red Sludge: More Corporate Devastation of the Environment

According to The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/world/europe/12hungary.html?_r=1&hp

Hungary has arrested the managing director of the company responsible for polluting waterways with a poisonous red sludge that has killed eight, injured hundreds, devastated plant and animal life and destroyed millions of dollars in private property.

The government also retook control of the formerly state-owned MAL Zrt. In the meantime the officials are racing to construct a concrete barrier and emergency dam to contain the sludge before three huge gaps in the remaining wall fail.

Critics accuse the government of overreacting for political gain. Supporters claim it had no choice if it were to protect the public interest.

According to a report in the October 10 Bloomberg/Business Week (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-10-06/hungary-red-sludge-threatens-danube-commission-says.html, the release of the red sludge could reach the Danube River and threaten water supplies in neighboring countries. Hungary is engaged in heroic efforts to prevent the spill from spreading that far. The highly toxic sludge is a byproduct of alumina production and spilled from the Magyar Aluminum Zrt. Reservoir.

Are we helpless to prevent these constant attacks on our life support systems by the institutions that control our lives? Are we trying to commit species suicide? And if so, why oh why do we have to take so many other species with us?