In case you haven’t heard, bottled water is not regulated and, in many cases, it is merely tap water or worse (one example pointed out in the documentary was one in which a small company drilled a hole for water next to a Superfund site for hazardous waste removal). Bottled water in this country is already a $10 billion business and worldwide the sales are more than $ 100 billion. The United Nations has estimated that for $30 billion, the entire population of the world could be provided with sufficient water for their daily  human needs. In the credit section of the documentary, they urge viewers join in signing a petition and contribute to a movement within the U.N. to provide safe, fresh water for all human inhabitants of the world, as an innate right of global  citizenship (that should extend to animals as well, but that’s getting a little ahead of the game). Doesn’t that sound simple and right?

The full wording of UN Article 31 is  “Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstance.” You can sign the petition by going here. This pursuit of privatized water is a growing multinational corporate menace created by the sinister for-profit drive by the amoral free market economy, the force that is increasingly impoverishing the globe, with no major obstacles yet standing in its way. The economic crash we are still enjoying, given to us by corporate greed, is being used to accelerate the move towards complete privatization of our water supply. Our public water supply is under a threat that extends to all corners of the globe.

I previously commented on how Bolivia managed to drive out Bechtel, a corporate giant, who had privatized the local water supply of Cochabamba (as one condition for receiving a World Bank loan), but had to leave one step ahead of the hangman when their enterprise went sour because of rapid increases in local water charges. Then too, I raised the issue a while ago about why bottled water is an unnecessary ripoff and serves to remove pressure to keep our drinking water supply safe and continuously evaluated.
This documentary on water is an easy, but disturbing introduction to the vast scope of our water supply future.  The impact of trapping water by damning rivers goes far deeper than we might think. By creating huge numbers of ever larger damns, we massively reduce the normal flow of nutrients that eventually find their way to the ocean and help sustain both river and ocean sea life.  Creating damns not only reduces the capacity of our oceans to support life, but the nutrients that are trapped by the damn sink and rot and contribute methane gas to our environment, one of the greenhouse gases that we have to worry about. The High Aswan damn built on the Nile in the 1960s, has reduced the flow of nutrients to farmers, such that some of the electricity generated by the damn has gone into the production of fertilizer to replace what was lost when the damn became operational. But the replacement fertilizer is very rich in phosphates, which in turn generate large algae blooms. While the high Aswan damn provides a large fraction of electricity to the region, many who have studied the impact of the damn over its 40 plus year history,  have concluded that its net effect for the population has been negative.

Global climate change, combined with poor distribution and conservation of our water supply (more golf courses in Arizona?) are creating a crisis of water distribution, that, like global climate change, many of us will increasingly experience as one component of our future life on this shrinking planet during the advancing decades of this century. It seems that nature picked this century to test our wisdom in managing natural resources and, in response to this dilemma, we selected GW Bush as the first leader of this potentially dangerous new century. Good choice America! You probably thought I would not be able to squeeze in a reference to GWB in this short article, but there you have it! You may recall that GWB has purchased a huge piece of property in Paraguay, near one of the largest aquifers (the Guarani aquifer) in South America. What do you think a free marketeer like GWB is planning for his property development? It has the added feature that it is protected by a nearby secret U.S. military base.

RFM

BP has denied there are any health hazards to which cleanup workers get exposed and claims to have taken measurements of the air quality to prove it. But, but those measurements have yet to appear in public. Mr Guidry, knowledgeable about air quality issues, brought respirators to the commercial fisherman who were employed by BP for the cleanup, but they were all informed that BP would fire anyone caught using a respirator. Guidry claims that this experience goes all the way back to the Exxon Valdez oil spill, when respirators were not allowed to be used so that the company limited its liability; the use of respirators is an indication that the oil company believes there is an environmental problem with air quality and, as such, exposes them to the liability for respiratory ailments, a situation that could lead to long-term legal problems for the company. BP has stated that nothing is wrong with the air quality in the cleanup areas. If so, what made the workers ill a few weeks ago? Guidry claims it was exposure to toxins in the air. As it turns out, EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), the Federal agency responsible for monitoring air quality has no jurisdiction for air quality over the water, but would have jurisdiction once the air moves onto land. It appears that the Coast Guard and MMS have jurisdiction over air quality issues in the water and so far these organizations have not made any decisions about air quality or cleanup worker safety. Measurements of air quality seem to be limited to those provided by BP. Mr Guidry reported that when he did work in cleaning up oil refineries, all workers had protective clothing and boots, as well as respirators as part of the normal routine worker protection. He has claimed that the lack of such protection exists solely so that BP limits its liability.

It would seem that The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a regulatory branch of our Federal Government, should have jurisdiction over environmental standards facing Gulf workers, since one could extrapolate work on the Gulf oil spill as as constituting a “workplace.” And, OSHA has standards for worker protection, which includes the need for respirators when adequate air quality conditions are not met. Under OSHA rules, respirators are supposed to be provided by the company. But, so far the respirators that have been showing up, though banned for use by BP, have all been provided by individuals, or in one case by the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council).

Beginning today, the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, is sponsoring a two-day workshop in New Orleans, LA, to discuss environmental health issues that face workers and residents in the region, related to the oil spill and the cleanup operation. You can watch a webcast of the meeting and even submit questions by going here. To view this properly, you will need Microsoft’s Silverlight which you can get here. The government of the United States needs to step in and take control of the environmental issues that are now apparent in many locations of this oil spill. Everyone in the region smells “oil.” Those workers closest to the source where the oil comes to the surface of the ocean must experience the most serious air quality problems. Why isn’t BP releasing measurements from these regions? Already we see in BP a company with a long history of safety violations, with little interest in responding to them, followed by subsequent disasters, followed in turn by minor fines which they treat as the cost of doing business. And, all of this takes place in a country that doesn’t matter to them, because corporate headquarters are in Great Britain. So far, our government has basically rewarded BP for their unresponsive attitude towards our safety regulations, and, their behavior in the Gulf oil spill is simply an example of continuity with their long-established corporate traditions, going as far back as when the company was Anglo-Persian, then Anglo-Iranian, at which time every drop of oil that fed the entire British economy, including fuel for ships, cars and lawnmowers, came from Iran, while the people in Iran got little in return and were treated as impoverished workers. BP would like to treat the people of America as they did the people of Iran and will continue to do so unless the people of America finally grasp the deficiencies in this arrangement.

There is straight line continuity in the BP we see operating in the Gulf today and the BP that felt it had exclusive rights to all Iranian oil, without adequate compensation to the Iranian people some seventy years ago. BP as a company should only survive so that its resources can be used to fund the study and cleanup of the Gulf oil spill, followed by company profits that will be funneled into the development of alternative energy sources. In other words, forcing the company to live up to their ads which talk about bp meaning “beyond petroleum.” What is yet to be established is whether BP will stand for “beyond prosecution.” We have plenty of safety standards that we could impose tomorrow should we choose to do so. Wouldn’t this be a great opportunity for Obama and his administration to finally take the wheel of this out of control vehicle we call BP?

RFM

Climatologists used to think that changes in the weather would only take place over hundreds if not thousands of years, because the atmosphere was perceived to be a large, gigantic carbon sink. But that has all changed and the contemporary view favors the potential for dramatic changes in climate that can take place  over decades or even in less time.  The delicate balance that we have taken for granted throughout the centuries of human history, has been significantly altered by our behavior, which has cumulatively started to change our environment, beginning with the industrial revolution. But those early, seemingly innocuous beginnings, are projected to reach peak levels of greenhouse gases during this century and eventually these new levels are projected to have a far more dramatic impact on our weather, even compared to the trends we have witnessed over the last few decades. Climatologists are confident that dramatic changes will begin to accelerate as the planet continues to warm and carbon dioxide levels continue to rise.   One must keep in mind that if our planet Earth had no means of losing heat from the Sun, but only absorbing it, like a perfect black body, the Earth would eventually, perhaps over millions of years or longer, become as hot as the Sun. In contrast however the Earth without an atmosphere loses sufficient heat through infrared radiation that, if that were the only thermal factor operating, would leave our planet at temperatures well below freezing. It is the atmosphere that keeps absorbing and reflecting infrared radiation that is responsible for keeping our planet warm and, atmospheric carbon dioxide, though a small constituent of our atmosphere, has always played a major role in regulating our global climate.  Thus, the mean planetary temperature is created through the process of losing some heat through the atmosphere, while retaining some through heat capture and reflection; this dual process has served as the delicate balance by which we have faded into and out of warming and cooling cycles, including several ice-ages in our long geological history. While the causes of these past temperature fluctuations are still a matter of investigation and debate, scientists are in strong agreement that the carbon dioxide problem we face will dramatically change our weather, especially if we do nothing to control our carbon emissions.

The only way we can project our climate future is through computer models and base those models as rigorously as we can on data that we acquire through geological and other scientific disciplines. Today’s computer models are fairly sophisticated and have been gaining in precision and predictability as computer capabilities and measurement constraints have been slowly added to the modeling strategy. There is no other way. We are building these “General Circulation Models” and improving on them to make better predictions about our planetary future.  Initially, models and early studies tried to focus on why the Earth went through the dramatic temperature fluctuations that included several ice-age periods. Was this a normal cycling of the atmosphere and if so, why and how did our  weather change so drastically? But as the measurements and models got more sophisticated, climatologists, in collaboration with many other branches of science, including the biological and oceanic sciences, began to focus on a new problem, one that was increasingly created by man. This problem turned out to be not just an issue of greenhouse gases warming the Earth and the oceans, but also rising sea water levels that, in the near future, could threaten coastal cities and generate other, more dangerous possibilities created by alterations in the ocean currents that provide significant warm weather to Europe for example. In the latter case, models have demonstrated that that the Atlantic current that warms Europe, in which warm water travels north on the surface, as cold Arctic water travels in the opposite direction at deeper levels, could disappear in a relative heartbeat if the salinity of Arctic water goes down, as it might if significant melting in the region occurred. In an age of global warming, it seems counter-intuitive that Europe could get much colder, especially in the winter. But, not everyone is opposed to global climate change. Many Russians for example feel they would welcome a few degrees added to their winter. Then too excessive carbon dioxide can help support additional plant growth, but even this effect can turn negative if accompanied by excessive plant decay.

It was in 1938  that Stewart Callendar, standing in front of the Royal Meteorological Society in London,  first suggested that the planet was gradually warming and that the principal culprit was humans burning fossil fuels and adding tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Few other scientists accepted Callendar’s idea at the time, simply because it seemed irrational that the atmosphere was so delicate and limited that it couldn’t absorb the results of burning fossil fuels without a blip on the radar screen. Was planet Earth really that small? Earlier work by British scientist John Tyndall had determined that the main gases in the atmosphere, including nitrogen and oxygen, are transparent to infrared radiation, but “coal gas” was opaque to infrared rays, caused mostly by its high carbon dioxide content. In this way, atmospheric carbon dioxide became known as a “greenhouse gas.”

No teaching tool is quite like history for learning about the sea changes that shape politics and attitudes and the evolution of ideas, both scientific and otherwise. An excellent book that traces the history of global climate change is Spencer R. Weart’s “The Discovery of Global Warming“ Harvard Press, 2008. Weart has also created a site where a hypertext presentation and a summary of global climate change history and facts can be sorted out as a kind of short cut for reading the book.

From my perspective, the salient features of this story begin with the realization that scientists studying the global climate in the late 1970s had started to converge on the idea that Callendar was right: we faced a serious problem in the future with man-made greenhouse gases, the most important of which was carbon dioxide. But scientists alone cannot force changes in public policy and without some divine interference, scientists generally have a hard time getting attention to their concerns, unless there is a major catastrophe that requires their input for understanding (we can see the public beginning to turn to scientists for explanations as an aid in understanding the impact of the on-going BP Gulf oil spill).

In 1979, the influential National Academy of Sciences issued a report that gave increased visibility to the global warming concept by suggesting that doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide would bring an increase in global temperature of 1.5-4.5 degrees Centigrade (2.7-8.1 degrees Fahrenheit), an alarming increase that could raise serious concerns about the safety of our planetary future. Unfortunately, in the U.S., just as scientific studies of the global climate were gaining momentum, the election of Ronald Reagan brought about a backlash and helped generate the Republican skepticism on global warming that is still with us (or them) today. About the time that Reagan was elected President, Greenland ice core studies revealed that drastic temperature changes had taken place in our history within the span of a century, suggesting that our climate is not an ultrastable, unmodifiable system at all, but may have a tendency to favor rapid shifts in average global temperature, depending on multiple kinds of feedback systems, not all of which were then identified (and still aren’t). Other alarming studies showed that carbon dioxide was not the only greenhouse gas we had to worry about, as methane and other trace gases might also make a significant contribution, and had to be included in the models to avoid their predictive failure. Antarctic ice cores also revealed that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels went up and down together through past ice ages, which led scientists to conclude that our global atmosphere is highly dynamic and very modifiable–sort of like some  synapses in our brains.

1988 was an important year in the history of global climate study. It was an unusually hot year for the United States.  I remember that summer very well, as it was the year we moved from St. Louis to Minneapolis during heat spells that were uncharacteristic for the region and caused many well-established, older trees to die out. That was also the year in which U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was assembled, which, for the first time, formed a union between scientists and government representatives, whose function was to integrate scientific knowledge and help formulate public policy development to reduce greenhouse gases. The IPCC is the committee that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. The first report of the IPCC was made in 1990, in which the committee concluded that the planet had been warming in the recent past and future warming seemed likely. By 1995, the second report issued by the IPCC warned that serious warming would be likely in the coming century. Given that it was organized under the auspices of the United Nations, it is axiomatic that the Republican Party would be opposed to any information coming out of that committee. Fortunately, Al Gore formed an important relationship with the committee and helped to amplify their concerns with his popular documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

The hottest year on record, that of  1998, was associated with a “Super El Nino” which caused weather disasters and unrelenting heat. By the end of the 20th century, sophisticated computer models had been able to simulate global ice age climate changes and gain substantial credibility for their future climate projections. The third IPCC report in 2001 indicated that future global warming would bring the hottest period of the planet since the last ice age and may be attended with “severe surprises.” By then, the entire scientific community had agreed that greenhouse gases would likely be a serious problem and that the global reach of human societies needed to get busy to correct the excessive use of fossil fuels. A serious response was required of the major industrialized countries, but the U.S. has balked from entering into serious agreements, such as the Kyoto protocol.  This was followed by numerous observations on collapsing ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland that might cause sea levels to rise faster with far less predictably than previously thought. In many ways, it was beginning to look like we were facing a climate emergency.

The fourth IPCC report was issued in 2007 and argued that the cost of reducing emissions from fossil fuels would be offset by the benefits and savings of doing nothing to curb the further accumulation of greenhouse gases. In that year the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 382 ppm and the mean global temperature for a five year average was 14.5 degrees Centigrade (58 degrees Fahrenheit), the warmest in hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Some have argued that we are in a relative cooling period since 1998 because of reduced sunspot activity, but it’s unclear whether such activity  unambiguously affects our climate: if it does, then we are in for a sudden increase in global heating when sunspot activity resumes.

Global Climate Parameters vs IPCC projections

The main problem with the IPCC reports is that they take the arguments and data from scientists and water them down, for more palatable public consumption, hoping the issue appears less alarmist by making the issue less stressful, which in turn makes the issue seem less significant. Some scientists who serve on the IPCC have published papers challenging the overly conservative nature of the IPCC reports; the political arm of the IPCC gets the last word on the tone of the warnings and the details of the projections. One such objection to the IPCC reports was published by Rahmstorf et al, in Science, 2007 (volume 316, p 709–available to the public without a subscription to Science). The graph on the left was taken from the Rahmstorf et al paper (published on line); in the top section, the monthly carbon dioxide data measured from Mauna Loa Hawaii (blue) is compared to the IPCC projection (dashed line; note that the yearly levels of carbon dioxide fluctuate because of the annual change in vegetation and hence carbon dioxide absorption, largely in the northern hemisphere). The middle portion shows annual global mean land and ocean surface temperatures combined from two different sources (red and blue) together with their trends. The bottom panel shows the most discrepancy in the sea-level measurements based on tide gauges (annual, red) and from satellite altimeter (blue) data. When compared to the dashed line and gray range representing IPCC projections, it is primarily the sea-levels that show the greatest discrepancies between measurements and projections. That in short is the main worry.

At the present time, most of the expansion of the oceans has been attributed to thermal expansion, since the ocean is warmer, with an added dash of mountain glacier melting. To date, melting ice from the Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland ice masses have added little to sea-level changes, but that picture could change dramatically in the coming decades. It is the sea-level discrepancy between measurements and the more conservative IPCC projections that stimulated Rahmstorf et al to publish a brief note in Science that brought more attention and focus on the politics of global climate projections within a body that is supposedly dedicated to a more complete and objective analysis.

We are now at a point in our understanding of the threat to global climate change, imposed by burning fossil fuels, that more science is not required. Yes, we will continue to refine our models, but by being forewarned, we should be forearmed and, as a global society, we should be sufficiently knowledgeable to act with a little long-term planning, as if we are facing a global emergency. We must recognize that our small blue planet, its oceans AND ITS CLIMATE are linked inseparably at the hip and that all three are being degraded by human activities. Ocean levels will rise and threaten coastal cities. The decrease in ocean salinity and pH could wipe out coral reefs, change the food chain in ways we cannot possibly comprehend and alter ocean currents which can dramatically change our weather.  Water resources will become more scarce in some regions and more abundant in others. If one removes natural vegetation, it will have an impact on the regional weather. Remove the trees in a region and you will have less rain; remove the plants and expose the soil and you invite desertification in some areas through more moisture evaporation imposed by the elevated temperatures. Additional moisture in the air will bring more floods and storms, but not in all regions. Some regions of the world may simply become unlivable, especially those where the climate is already dry and hot.  The Southwest region of the United States faces additional constraints on water and annual rainfall and regions of Africa are likely to become increasingly dry and more inhospitable. The global society in which we live, now numbering about 6 billion people are far more than the planet can tolerate if each society aspires to be like the us, as we continue to go about our business with an unlimited appetite for fossil fuels and forest depletion.   If anything, the rate of ice melting from the polar ice caps has been underestimated and modelers are madly revising their computer simulations to account for more dramatic events, such as entire ice shelves dropping into the ocean. It is probably asking too much for a model to accurately tell us where and when giant fluctuations in ocean levels are likely to originate.

I think that Obama’s nation-wide address this past week was about right, despite its downplay in the press. We need to interpret the catastrophic Gulf oil spill to 1) recognize that giant oil companies are completely indifferent to the environment and are acting solely through a profit motive (no surprise here and let’s give Obama credit for establishing the $20 billion BP compensation fund and the elimination of the annual BP dividend to stockholders–this was using the bully pulpit with great aplomb and a sensible outcome) and 2) if we had started on a more conservative use of fossil fuels, with an objective of reducing levels of carbon dioxide emissions just ten years ago, when GW Bush came into office, at a time when the need felt more acute, we would not need the oil that is gushing out of a giant hole a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf.  So, if we start immediately on the same quest, the next ocean oil gusher, whether in the Gulf of Mexico or the Arctic seas, will never occur, because that oil will not be required. Surely, with the Gulf oil spill, we are witnessing a source of oil that might be better left under the ocean floor. We should work towards the end of leaving some oil in the ground.

As Obama has pleaded with us to change our orientation about the use of fossil fuels, its an open question whether we will view this catastrophic Gulf oil spill to finally act and reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. There are several things we could do to give ourselves a dramatic boost in reducing our fossil fuel habit. Energy conservation and the development of fossil fuel alternatives is currently at a very primitive stage of development and needs dramatic new funding to alter its present course. One thing we must do is learn how to tax oil usage, eliminate subsidies to oil companies and come up with accurate accounts of what the true cost of oil is today, when you consider that a good part of our military is devoted to protecting our sources of oil, and in the process our military uses huge quantities of oil to run our ships and planes.  So, Mr. Obama, help us arrive at a figure for the cost of gasoline at the pump, computed by adding up the cost of subsidies, correction for the cheap bargain-basement oil leases, add the cost of military protection of the sea lanes and our occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the then give us the future cost of gasoline, imposed by the expense of relocating major coastal cities to higher ground as a result of sea changes that are at present unknowable, but certainly on the way. Add to that the cost of this single Gulf oil spill and then try to calculate the financial impact it has had on the entire Gulf economy and the availability of Gulf seafood for the entire nation.  I don’t myself have this number at the moment, but it should not be difficult to estimate with ballpark numbers and would have been a powerful additive to Obama’s national speech on energy, especially if approached honestly and with full and complete disclosure.  We should all be concerned about this number and have a national discussion on what it means and how it should be used to motivate changes in our future.

The barn door has closed on avoiding global climate warming–it’s here today. But, there is still time to alter the slope or the rate of these changes and that should be a matter of concern for all of humanity, rich and poor,  but most critically, it should deeply concern the citizens of the United States of America, as we are the biggest offender and historically the most insensitive nation in facing what should be a moral imperative. If we do not act with intelligence and dedication to this task, we can be certain that the rest of the world will go along with our own indifference on the subject. Never before has a single issue of global significance rested so squarely on the shoulders of the worst offender in the history of humanity. We are not only in a position to act, but we need to change our habits and consumption of fossil fuel so that we discourage the rest of the world from trying to emulate our fossil fuel gluttony. The globe cannot afford to have China grow up to look just as modern and fuel-consuming as the United States, but that is just where we are headed. Beijing adds 1000 cars a day to an already heavily congested street and highway layout. In 2030, not so far away, China will need and use the equivalent of Europe’s entire energy consumption. They will achieve this by investing $3.7trillion in energy over the next twenty-five years. The Global energy supply has never looked as small as it does today. Should the condition of global “peak” oil confront us, as it has in several countries, including the United States, then expansion of the kind that China is planning will be virtually impossible.

RFM

Today the Justice Department has initiated a criminal investigation against BP, but one has to wonder whether this isn’t more of a defensive operation than an offensive plan  of action. Is this legal investigation really based on something that can be criminally prosecuted, or is this, as BP contends, an industrial “accident?” Meanwhile, the gushing of oil into the Gulf could go on all summer. BP’s  intention was to cap the current well and move the drilling rig so that new sites could be drilled, some of which were intended to begin far deeper than the current problematic drilling site. I just watched the Jim Lehrer News Hour on PBS and noticed that a reporter went to a shoreline region in Prince William Sound, where the Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred. While the surface looked as if it was clean, the reporter dug down into the rocky shoreline and came up with oil-drenched rocks that smelled like “roofing tar.” Once it comes, it never goes away unless perhaps you think more in terms of geological time.

RFM

The New York Times also has a multimedia site that is worth checking out; among other sources of information,  it has a history of major oil spills beginning with the oil well leak in 1969 off the coast of Santa Barbara. In that instance, prisoners were used as a major source of labor for the cleanup which employed tons of straw. But, how desperate are we for oil such that some wells in the gulf have been granted permits to drill beginning at more than 9,000 feet below the surface? Is this oil-drilling chutzpa or are we pursuing true needs? Oil companies fear that if they don’t feed the never ending growth of the expanding  global thirst for oil, consumers will turn to alternative fuels and sources of energy, dropping the price of oil and making these more risky oil adventures less cost-effective. But is that really true? How desperate are we for oil and how scarce are the sources, if we are now drilling at such deep sites, without having a more foolproof method for handling accidents.  This is an issue, in which the biggest oil-consuming country on the planet, namely us, can have a huge impact on our economy, the environment and the need for ever increasing oil supplies by adopting more sensible restraints on oil usage: the new federal standards for improved fuel economy will help, but other measures are needed to meet the demands in front of us for global climate change. The Copenhagen agreement seems too little too late, even though it’s better than nothing.
So far bp has been reluctant to have scientists make more definitive calculations of the magnitude of the oil spill, because this measurement will have a direct impact on the financial liability of the company.  A government report on the spill magnitude, compiled by several different agencies,  is due out this week. In the meantime bp is sticking to 5,000 barrels a day, but other estimates, based on seeing the films of the oil leak, go as high as 70,000 barrels/day. Bp refers to these higher estimates as alarmist!

RFM

The impact of these giant underwater oil slicks is impossible to gauge, but measurements taken so far have demonstrated that these undersea oil slicks are reducing the oxygen content of the surrounding water, raising serious questions about the impact that these conditions might have on marine life at every level. At the moment, no one seems to understand why these oil slicks are suspended at mid-depths, rather than coalescing at the surface, where the specific gravity of oil would normally dictate its position. Speculation is that these undersea oil slicks represent oil droplets that have been created by the chemical detergents that have been sprayed near the leak, breaking the oil up into droplets rather than a single congealed mass. The loss of oxygen near the slicks may reflect the actions of oil-consuming bacteria that are also part of the cleanup operation. How much more destructive is it to the ecosystem when a confused, hypoxic sea creature swims for safety only to find itself in a new layer of a multilayer toxic spill? Replenishing oxygen into the deeper parts of the ocean takes time, as surface water needs to replace oxygen deprived water in deeper layers. This is part of the delicate nature and stability of a complex ecosystem such as an ocean and all the life it contains. Undoubtedly bp executives know little about marine biology, though it should be a requirement for them before they can apply for a permit to exploit what lies beneath. Ignorance thrives within our global economy, as does exploitation of our natural resources.

According to Tyson Slocum, the Director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, who was interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now , bp has one of the worst safety records of any oil company operating in America. In addition to the eleven lives that were lost in the recent Gulf explosion, bp pleaded guilty in 2005 to a criminal felony violation of the Clean Air Act, related to their negligence in a refinery explosion in Texas that killed fifteen workers and injured more than 170 others. The fine for this violation was over $ 150 million and bp was placed on probation where they were expected to address hundreds of workplace safety violations. When the Obama administration reviewed their compliance, they determined that bp had not adequately dealt with the problem and fined the company an additional $87 million. But these fines are peanuts compared to bp profits and clearly designed to satisfy the environmentalists, rather than impact in a serious way on the company’s safety performance.

A few years ago, as a result of the pipeline oil spill at Prudhoe Bay Alaska,  the Department of Justice found that bp willfully under-invested in routine maintenance that allowed the pipes to corrode, resulting in 200,000 gallons of crude oil released directly into the tundra. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined the company $300 million for single-handedly manipulating the entire U.S. propane market. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission fined bp $21 million for its role in price gouging California electricity consumers during the California electricity crisis (which ultimately led to Schwarzenegger’s election as governor). Bp has committed other acts of note, including violations of the Clean Air Act at its Indiana refinery and workplace violations at its Toledo, Ohio refinery. So even when put on probation for violation of safety/environmental protection rules, bp does not feel the need to conform and instead, driven by its huge profits of $ 6 billion per quarter, can afford to slough off these fines and probationary costs as just another expense of doing business. Until the Gulf oil spill, which may take the issue far beyond safety issues into the domain of environmental toxicology and devastation, bp has absorbed the fines, neglected the probationary conditions and carried on with business as usual. We must think about permanent, costly  sanctions against companies like bp that seem to have a complete disregard for safety and the environment.  Obviously the logic which produces this behavior on the part of bp will continue to reinforce their pattern of neglect until bp executives face fines or even criminal neglect charges, perhaps including the possibility of dissolution of their company (bp Louisiana?) or prison sentences if negligence can be traced to executive decisions that cost workers’ lives. The recent Sixty Minutes piece seemed to provide evidence for corporate neglect, but whether company executives were guilty of mismanagement that cost lives remains to be established.

The initially low oil spill levels, estimated at 5,000 barrels per day, are almost surely underestimated, but bp officials have refused to allow technicians access to the site, where they could use special equipment to more accurately assess the magnitude of this spill. Certainly, the large underwater oil plumes seem to confirm that the original estimate is much lower that the actual oil leaking from this site.

In 1989, British Petroleum tried to redo is logo and image and changed it to BP and in 2000 BP Amoco changed its name to bp, meaning “beyond petroleum.” Their adds suggest they are investing heavily in advancing the cause of green technologies, but their behavior suggests otherwise. According to writer Sharon Beder “BP’s existing and proposed activities in Alaska have worried indigenous people and environmental groups. Between January 1997 and March 1998, BP Amoco was responsible for 104 oil spills in America’s Arctic,” according to US research. In 1999 BP admitted illegally dumping hazardous waste at its “environmentally friendly” oil field in Alaska and was fined $500,000 for failing to report it. It paid $6.5 million more in civil penalties to settle claims associated with the waste’s disposal.” Beder claims that the new bp logo is more about the use of green paint or “green washing” than changed behavior on the part of an oil company. The new logo may have been generated to help minimize their soiled reputation in Columbia, where they were accused of using armed guards for suppressing citizen protests.

Bp is a also major polluter in terms of the energy it uses to conduct its operations. Again from Beder’s article, “By 1999 BP’s emissions were greater than those of Central America, Canada or Britain, according to Corporate Watch. And bp’s recent acquisitions mean the company is now thought to be responsible for about 3 percent of worldwide greenhouse emissions! Hows that for the greening of the environment.

The Union of Concerned Scientists stated, “The volume of the bp Gulf of Mexico spill is still unknown, but the Coast Guard originally estimated it at 1.6 million gallons, or 0.04 million barrels. To put that number in perspective, raising fuel economy standards for passenger cars and light trucks to 42 miles per gallon (mpg; about what the Prius gets)  by 2020 would save 40 times more oil per day, according to UCS. With gas at $4 a gallon, those standards would save drivers more than $60 billion in 2020, after factoring in the extra cost drivers would pay for clean car technology when they buy new vehicles. At $3 a gallon, they would save $40 billion.”

Will this be the oil catastrophe that  finally provides the sobriety test for gas-guzzling America? Is this the nadir of our romance with fossil fuels? Probably not, but something like this had to happen and in all likelihood will happen again and again, as we continue to expand rather than shrink the world’s demand for oil and increase our permissive behavior for getting it out of the ground, no matter how deep it may be located and no matter how sensitive the surrounding environment is: we are hooked. The public seems unaware that all ocean dwelling oil rigs leak oil to some degree and major oil leaks have occurred in recent years, but are never reported in our own news media. Except for the discovery of the subsurface oil plumes, there has been virtually no science applied to this oil spill and we probably will never know the true extent of the environmental damage. After all, there are many species in the Gulf that have never been discovered, so the loss of those you don’t know about feels like no loss at all.

We must also remember that the oil companies are among the leading corporations that fund anti-global climate change “studies,” those that don’t typically get reported in peer-reviewed articles, but make it into the mainstream media reports.  They also fund one of the largest lobbying groups whose function is to put pressure on Congress to limit company liability and reduce regulatory control, despite the fact that they already have nearly unfettered access to their  “drill baby drill” philosophy, as evidenced by Obama’s recent expansion of off-shore oil leases. You can bet that those oil leases off sensitive costal areas will never come to auction. The oil companies are used to getting their way, especially in America where we view oil drilling as more of an adventure, like the space program, rather than an effort that seriously challenges the integrity of our environment. Recent off-shore oil leases, which always give unparalleled profit margins to oil companies, in exchange for relatively small leasing fees, promise more oil spills in the future, unless we begin to phase out off-shore drilling, as we ramp up energy conservation and alternative energy sources to reduce risks to an already imbalanced sea world. Bp and the other oil companies will try to minimize the impact of this spill and probably try hard to reduce the amount of scientific information we gain (it costs money to send out research vessels).  Bp will further try to limit its liability by having Gulf residents who might be affected by the spill, sign off future liability claims, in exchange for a small cash payment. This is what happened with the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound in 1989. These signatures from individuals were later used in court to deny any further damages,  despite proof of long-term job loss and permanent unemployment. Can we afford to have companies like bp running off-shore oil rigs? Can we even afford to have these companies exist, as they bring forward in time, the exploitative behavior they invented right after WW I by helping to divide up the Middle East and control its oil?  How many more spills of this magnitude will it take before we finally admit to our lack of sobriety over oil? If you add up all the oil spillage that comes, on a near daily basis from each off-shore oil rig, does the sum total amount come to something like we are seeing now in the present Gulf spill? Those involved in the cleanup are also at risk, as fumes from oil pose respiratory distress hazards. All workers involved in this cleanup should be wearing appropriate breathing masks to limit their exposure and protect their eyes. Is bp providing this equipment for cleanup workers? What have you seen? I haven’t seen a single mask used by cleanup workers, though my sample is small. It is clear that bp has generated a giant public disaster for themselves with this oil spill. But will the public respond by saying, “it’s not the PR stupid,” it’s the environment.

RFM

The President’s Cancer panel was setup in 1971, with three panel members who generate reports on the subject. At the release time of the report, only two panel members were in place, including Dr. LaSalle Leffall Jr., an oncologist and professor of surgery at Howard University, and Dr. Margaret Kripke, an immunologist at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, both of whom were appointed by GW Bush. You can get a copy of the report here. If you load the pdf of the cancer report, use your pdf search engine and put in the words “drinking water” without the quotes. Then click on each found and read the many areas in which our drinking water has been compromised by man-made chemical additives. While that little exercise should shock you, the next question to ask is what are we doing about it? And the answer sadly, is not much, but there is some legislative movement now, where before there wasn’t anything being done about it, as discussion of the issue was among the many of our verbal social taboos.

The work of the panel focused on industrial, occupational and agricultural exposures as well as exposures related to medical practice, military activities, modern lifestyles and natural sources. In the controversial report (conclusions were immediately challenged by the American Cancer Society), one of the major points raised by the study related to the newborn, for whom the risk for cancer genesis is always greater. In our defenseless newborns, 300 chemical contaminants have been detected in cord blood; Some 41% of our population will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives and the question is unavoidable as to whether we have initiated a ticking time bomb in our newborns which sets them up for a date in later life with one type of cancer or another. The panel argues that this is the time to become proactive about the chemicals we are adding to the environment, most of which have not been evaluated for public safety. One ubiquitous chemical, bisphenol A (BPA) is still found in many consumer products, despite evidence (still unsettled) that BPA has been linked to several diseases, including cancer. Europe has banned BPA and is far advanced over America in their attitudes and cautions about chemicals in the environment. Yet, while BPA may be getting the lion’s share of public attention at the moment, some naturally occurring substances such as radon have been associated with lung cancer (remember your basement radon detector?) and manufacturing byproducts, including formaldehyde and benzene are also carcinogens.

Perchlorethylene (PCE) is one of the solvents used in dry cleaning. Many incidents have occurred in which drinking water has been contaminated with high levels of PCE, which has been associated with an elevated breast cancer risk. Animals exposed to high levels of PCE develop kidney and liver tumors. Accidental release of tons of PCE into our atmosphere has occurred, with new uncertainties presented to us about safety in this industry. There are presently 28,000 dry cleaning establishments in the country that use these chemical solvents. Trichlorethylene (TCE), once used in dry cleaning, has found use in a variety of chemical industries and is listed as a probable carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (a division of the WHO).  TCE is now the most frequently detected organic solvent in groundwater and is present in as much as 34 percent of the nation’s drinking water. Why aren’t we more alarmed?

The “Safe Chemicals Act” sponsored by Senator Frank Lautenberg, would give the EPA enhanced authority to regulate chemicals in our environment. As Lautenberg remarked, “America’s system for regulating industrial chemicals is broken. Parents are afraid because hundreds of untested chemicals are found in their children’s bodies.” The bill, while far short of a badly needed overhaul and new attitude about chemicals in our environment, would require manufacturers to provide a minimum of information for each chemical they produce, and EPA would have the authority to request any additional data it deems necessary to make a safety determination. At the same time, the bill seeks to avoid unnecessary or duplicative testing requirements.

The panel report argues that it is much better for us as a nation to be proactive in our skepticism about environmental contaminants and basically reverse our thinking. Right now, it seems that if there is no evidence pointing to acute harm by the chemical, it’s OK to use it. This is the time to reverse that thinking and demand rigorous safety testing, followed by an evaluation about whether the gains from adding the substance to our chemical environment are important enough to outweigh public risk if there is any chance that the substance might lead to short or long-term consequences. “Green chemistry” needs to be added to our list of green options. The problem with this strategy is that animal testing has limitations for judging acute effects and is of very limited value for judging long-term consequences, one of which includes a risk for cancer. So, what we truly need is a set of marching orders that begin to decrease the number of chemicals we add to the environment and eliminate as many of them as we can, either searching for better, more proven alternatives, or changing the industry in such a way that only harmless products are part of the business and manufacturing process.

Ever since Reaganism began in the 1980s, we have been sliding backwards in our attitude and vigilance concerning environmental regulation, product testing and the quality of our air and water. Agencies exist to protect our environment, but they have been emasculated by leadership from pro-business, Republican heads and employees. What feature of free market capitalism is it that protects us from environmental risks? I guess it must be the loss of customers as they die off prematurely from carcinogens and other toxic chemicals in the environment. The medical diagnostic industry is also facing a new level of scrutiny. Ionizing radiation exposure from radon and other occupational sources have been constant over the past 30 years, but Americans are now estimated to receive half of their total radiation exposure from medical imaging and other medical sources, compared with 15% in the early 1980s. With the trend towards specialization in medicine, doctors and radiologists are often unaware of the total radiation received in the past for any single patient.

The military is an especially egregious source of environmental contamination. Issues of secrecy and security shield us from knowing the true range and level of contaminants associated with military sites, but the report claims that 900 ongoing Superfund cleanups are found in abandoned military facilities. Cleaning up these sites represents one of the many hidden costs of our militarism. The report also points to drinking water contamination from military sites as an ever present danger. And, deniability is always a military option.

The major focus of this cancer report is not to identify and impugn a large number of environmental contaminants, but rather to emphasize that we are far too lax and far too permissive in allowing unfettered environmental access to the chemical and manufacturing industries. The panel raised five major problems that must be overcome if we are going to gain confidence that we have some control over our chemical environment, including 1) improved funding and staffing of agencies whose responsibility it is to monitor and test our chemical environment; 2) streamline the Federal and State regulatory agencies and improve enforcement of existing laws; 3) reduce excessive regulatory complexity; 4) strengthen laws regulating environmental contamination and, as always; 5) reduce the undue influence from industry that prevents more expansive public safety measures from being created and enforced. You can just about forget the first four of those objectives and by focusing  on the fifth, put your finger on the center piece of the problem–too much corporate influence over issues that are vital to Americans of all political parties. But of course, this issue will not be painted that way in the mainstream media, but will be portrayed as another dividing line within our political spectrum–proponents of more control are facilitating the march towards socialism. But, whether it’s coal mines in West Virginia, oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico or E. Coli infestations in our produce and meat supply, we know what poor enforcement of regulations and disregard for public safety looks like–what we have today defines the problem.

One expects that the report will be (and already is) under attack from several different directions. The two panel members are not toxicologists, though the staff members who wrote this report have obvious expertise in these areas. The cancer scare not only comes from the chemical agents directly, but, particularly in the case of breast-feeding women, through the indirect influence of chemicals that are passed on to the newborn through cord blood, as many of them get through the placental barrier and are also found in  high levels in breast milk. The report cites evidence that women carry more foreign chemicals in their bodies than do men and often show higher levels of hormone-disrupting substances compared to those found in men. Since childhood occupies an important phase of human brain development, does the chemical contamination of our environment alter brain development mechanisms, either in utero or in the critical postnatal period that is so essential for normal brain patterns of connectivity and function? What other aspects of our lives are being altered by the chemicals that surround us? Developmental brain disorders? Are they too part of the chemical environment spectrum of influence? Not only does cancer need to be explored, but the environmental impact on childhood development, particularly brain development, must be better understood. We need to strike while the iron is hot! It is quite conceivable, that if food and drug safety is improved, Obama’s greatest legacy to our culture could be in helping us face and improve the wild cowboy climate that presently occupies the decision-making about introducing more chemicals into the environment. Three hundred different chemicals found in the umbilical cord blood is not reassuring that we have control over our chemicals in our environment. Let’s face it–right now, we have no control and no policies that are reassuring.
RFM

On the front section of Times Science, an article by Tara Parker-Pope, describes “What you need to know in the first year” in which she points out that for starters 32 million, presently uninsured Americans, will eventually be covered under this law, such that 94% of legal residents not covered by Medicare will get insurance, up from what has been estimated at 83%. While only a gain of 11%, there are lots of people that will have to be brought in under this new plan. The extended coverage will not kick in until 2014. This bill cannot help but have an enormous social impact on our country, as we have been the harbingers of nothing less that a disastrous healthcare system–a true nightmare for far too many of our citizens. Shouldn’t that issue be part of our national security?  Some of the most important changes for individuals will kick in this June, while others will be delayed until the end of this year. Look for the nuts and bolts of these changes to be elaborated by the Health and Human Services at a website devoted to healthcare, but the Parker-Pope Q&A section handles some specific issues. In June of this year, denial of coverage by pre-existing conditions should be eliminated. If you currently lack insurance, there will be several different options, depending on your age, financial status and the duration during which you have not been insured.
The Times has gotten pretty slick at providing multimedia graphics to explain and help clarify the issue and with a healthcare bill that has more than 2000 pages, everyone will need a period of accommodation before the impact of the bill can be truly appreciated. If you go to the Times Science Website and click on the Multimedia section in the middle column, it will take you to a brief summary of the options available if you are currently  insured or uninsured. The site also explains what you can expect to pay in taxes, given your income level, when the plan is fully implemented.
One of the horror stories during the build-up to the healthcare legislation was that of a woman who had a previous Cesarean section for child delivery; she was subsequently told that C-section was a prior condition and that she couldn’t be insured unless she was “sterilized.” When she went public with her story, the use of the word “sterilized” served as a key motivating factor for rallying against the gender inequity rules of health insurance companies and some of you may be surprised about the extent of gender prejudice in our healthcare system. Denise Grady describes how the new healthcare bill will “lower the cost of being a woman.” Here, here!
I remember attending a meeting in Boston about a decade ago when I was invited to tell the sad story of the University of Minnesota Medical School under the banner of “How Not to Reform a Medical School, held under the auspices of the AAUP (American Association of University Professors). It was there that I listened to a physician in the Boston area describe an interaction with one of  his patients who had a headache and insisted on having an MRI exam. The physician suggested that she should have some other procedures done first and the patient retorted that he (the doctor) knew that she needed an MRI, but he wouldn’t give her what she needed because he worked for the insurance company and the money for the procedure would come out of his pocket.  It was at that moment that the physician realized his profession had been drafted into the wrong side of the healthcare war: the doctor, who sounded like a well-intentioned, selfless physician was now viewed by at least one of his patients as a corporate shill.

Historically, physicians made it hard on themselves by aligning their position on healthcare largely through the policies of the AMA, who repeatedly fought against the attempts to bring a unified system of healthcare to American citizens. Physicians tend to be Republican, whereas you would have thought intuitively, they should all be Democrats and believe in public policies that make us, all of us, healthier with better access to doctors.  Of course, there are some good, radical physicians who have helped push the issue of a single payer plan and we must be grateful for their voice, just as we should  be grateful to the California Nurses Association for pushing the same agenda. Perhaps someday we will get there–health insurance without health insurance companies. But we have to get through the current bill first before launching the better healthcare system that remains within our sights. The trouble is, we have a history of finding a fix, and no matter how imperfect, sticking with it until the mud flaps come off.

There continues to be something of a sham within medical schools, which have “ethics” programs that you might think should consider our present system of healthcare to fall within their purview. But most “ethics” programs at medical schools deserve to be expressed in quotes because they were really put their to deal with issues like “animal rights activism,” “organ transplant” and  “organ donor” issues and “death and dying” procedures. Only recently have I heard a few ethics members speak out against our disastrous healthcare system and even then it seemed like they were coming late to the healthcare party. So, almost any description of change in our healthcare system would be incomplete without comments on whether this new bill can help heal the badly fractured relationship between a doctor and his/her patient. In that regard, physician Pauline Chen describes an experience she went through with an uninsured patient and how she herself hopes that the new healthcare bill will offer at least the possibility of repairing what has become “a crippled, even broken, relationship between patients and doctors.” I would say to Dr. Chen, don’t hold your breath. As long as we have insurance companies dictating the treatments and drugs that will be given to a patient under their insurance plan and as long as a profit margin must be squeezed out of patient service denial, the doctor will still appear to be the insurance company shill who is denying service and appearing to do so while enhancing his own profit margin. At one time, doctors were in a position of control over the course that a unified healthcare plan might take. But they turned down the opportunity to be the master and instead became the slave of the healthcare industry. Now they are lightly regarded as a source of unbiased expertise on the healthcare debate. Nurses are a much better source of information. After all, they have been underpaid from the get-go.

Yet, we all have hope. Many of us have good physicians, whose passion for medicine is admirably high. My doctor for example donated an extensive period of his time to go to Haiti and treat patients and organizations such as “Doctors Without Borders,” continue to inspire hope that medicine and humanity are really one and the same. But such a unified concept cannot exist when corporate forces are in the way and the money-mad CEO is making the decisions. Many physicians have found their journey hopeless. I have noted in the past,  that for many months, AMWAY, the sales company, had a converted MD as their “employee of the month.” A more decent healthcare delivery system might  slow the rate of such defections, but we must recognize that part of the gigantic profit levels of the for-profit insurance companies, come off the backs of doctors, some of whom labor with huge debts and modest incomes.

Finally, in the same section of the Times, Abigail Zuber, MD reviews a book written by Lionel Shriver entitled “So Much for That.” It’s a story about a middle-class family, whose bread-winner comes down with the dreaded malignant mesothelioma–the asbestos-related cancer of the lining of the lungs. The symptoms of the cancer are generally very subtle, so by the time the diagnosis can be made, treatment is almost entirely palliative. Ms. Shriver details how the treatment causes other symptoms and during the course of therapy, retirement dreams are shattered and financial resources are drained. Shep, the husband-father with the disease is forced to keep working despite his decaying health, to keep his insurance active. Other health-related entanglements in the story reveal what a disastrous health care system we have imposed on our citizens, all for the sake of corporate profit and the unfettered free market system whose chief objective is to create disastrous levels of poverty that society then has to worry about. How about a Superfund from corporate profits to compensate for the widespread poverty the system has created?

RFM

After the Massachusetts election, it looked like the Democrats might fold their tent, but even in that state,  the polls showed, on the eve of Brown’s election, that the voters  favored the public option. More savvy politicians realized that the Massachusetts disaster for the Democrats was created because Congress was doing too little, not too much. If there was a revolt, it was against the Democrats for being too soft with their legislation, too poky in getting things done and giving away too much to corporate interests and Republican opposition. Obama was not getting high marks either, as he seemed to be aloof from the debate and one could only wonder if he truly had a passion for one outcome over another. No one knew if he really stood for something.  Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff, was advising that perhaps they had aimed too high and should lower their sights a bit and  simplify the bill.

But the dynamic for the legislation began to change once talk of a Senate reconciliation process surfaced and, more importantly perhaps, when Obama held his health care summit on February 25th. For me, that was the day that the lion stepped out of his den. It was the game changer.  If you missed it, you can see the whole thing on C-Span, though you probably need to be some kind of wonk lover to sit through the entire day’s event (yes, I stayed home and caught most of it). You will learn something about the bill and you will see how inept the Republican response was and inescapably conclude that their mission was to destroy, not replace (for example does anyone believe that our entire healthcare nightmare will disappear if we impose tort reform?)  It was that one-day summit, very inadequately covered by the press (who completely missed conveying Obama’s grasp of the strategy and the details of the bill and his mastery of the debate), in which Obama embarrassed the Republicans who tried to stand up to him, as he skillfully co-opted any seemingly meritorious suggestions they had (like tort reform, and medicare fraud, which were advanced by some Republicans as the entire reason for runaway healthcare costs; Senator Dick Durbin promptly refuted the idea on tort reform, though it seemed to surface again, because Republicans don’t have any new ideas (tort costs represent less than 1% of the healthcare budget). Republicans were caught flat-footed because they cannot think on their feet, since their ideology and dialogue come from consulting firms, with the talking points for healthcare agreed upon before any healthcare bill was proposed last year. The Republicans will now have to check in for a rhetoric and narrative overhaul at their nearest consulting station. This should be a banner year for consulting firms who cater to the needs of the Republican Party. As a result of the summit meeting, Republican opposition to the bill was much harder to justify, having been smashed during the long meeting, and it also meant that Republicans might have a much harder time explaining their opposition to the bill when confronted by their constituents in the voting booths this fall, especially when the opposing candidate can talk about removing some of the fear out of healthcare risks.   Obama brought out his passion and frustration with Republicans all on the same day. As a policy wonk, he outmaneuvered and flummoxed the Republican opposition. At the end of the summit, it was clear (at least to me) that a bill was going to pass and did so about a month later. It was also clear that day, that Obama had changed everybody’s score card.

After the summit meeting,  focus quickly switched to the House, which passed the historic bill, while the Senate anticlimactically passed the reconciliation bill  a few days later. In retrospect, it all took place with the snap of Obama’s fingers. One can only hope that Obama himself has learned that when he leads, many follow and perhaps he has learned that he’s been too conservative and cautious about having “bipartisan” agreements. Such agreements only weaken the legislation, needlessly prolong the debate and fall into the hands of the Republican opposition, whose objective is to delay, obstruct and kill the Obama Presidency. Many Republicans thought that they had a good chance of killing the healthcare bill as of just a few weeks ago, but now at least one Senator who voted against the bill (Charles Grassley) is claiming he was one of its sponsors. Like the Healthcare bill of March 23, 2010, the Social Security Act was signed by Franklin Roosevelt on August 14, 1935. Although Howard Dean reported that Social Security was passed without Republican Support, more detailed analysis indicates that some Republicans did vote for Social Security (there weren’t too many around then). The two threats against Social Security were mounted by Newt Gingrich with his contract with America and GW Bush with his privatization plan, both of which failed. It appears that of the great momentous social programs enacted into law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Car Act of 2010 is the only one which passed without a single Republican vote.

In many ways the healthcare summit was Obama’s first day as President in the sun. He lived up to expectations and, though hardly a progressive, he stared down the Republican opposition and made them seem like policy wimps–they seemed to complain about the size of the bill because they didn’t want to read it and apparently most of them didn’t. Not a single Republican brought up any issue of substance, outside of the often incorrect talking points they have been using for the past year and all complained about cost, while at the same time being forced to acknowledge that the standard for evaluating the expense of the program was the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) which cited net savings for the plan– it’s their organization. Of equal importance is the fact that within the new healthcare bill, a “Comparative Effectiveness Research” group has been established as a non-profit study group to analyze comparisons for therapy and diagnosis with an eye towards beneficial outcomes. For example, right now there are two different treatments available for the wet form of Age-Related Macular Degeneration, each of which seems to offer equivalent, beneficial outcomes, but for very different costs to the patient.  This group will be responsible for determining the most cost-effective approach based on outcomes. If the two drugs give equivalent outcomes, then strong recommendation will favor the less expensive procedure. This objective strategy offers great reform possibilities, especially as we are beginning to see a whole new host of therapies becoming available and it will take sound judgment to decide which among them is best and most cost-effective. This is a force we have never had before in medicine. It will hopefully lead us into a new era in health care cost controls. We are finally entering the dawn of “molecular medicine.” By the way, the Republicans are complaining about the cuts in Medicare, but that will only happen to those on the “Medicare Advantage” plan, which is the privatized form of Medicare, whose costs are at least 14% higher (many experts have suggested the increase in costs by Medicare Advantage have been much higher than 14%)  than traditional Medicare, with no evidence for improved outcomes. That’s the only part of Medicare that will be scaled back, but of course it’s the one that lots of Republicans prefer.

If you are interested in watching a summary of the new healthcare bill, I suggest you view Judy Feder’s excellent presentation on C-Span or go to the Kaiser Family Foundation site which has numerous explanatory sections describing features of the healthcare bill and an excellent pdf available that summarizes the main changes.

For me personally, the healthcare bill was a major disappointment. I have always felt that we must have a nationalized form of  health insurance that is separated from our jobs. That will enhance our personal security about healthcare and eliminate the employer costs which make our manufactured good more expensive and less competitive abroad. The single payer plan was not given any play because of the high level of  corporate money in politics. Before we can truly address the kinds of reforms we need to right our listing ship, we will need campaign finance reform, which right now is facing problems with the Supreme Court, the balance of which has turned to a Civil War era “state’s rights” mentality.

But, despite my disappointment with the healthcare bill, it does fix many things that were not just wrong, but perfectly odious; our healthcare system had become a sinister corporate operation. Some of that will change immediately. I am in hopes that the insurance exchange system, when put into place, will eventually give individuals better insurance options, though it’s unlikely to compete with the more perfect, single payer system that was never seriously under consideration. Nevertheless, perhaps it could serve as the Trojan Horse for eventually bringing in a national healthcare system or “Medicare for All.”

Now the Democrats can run this fall by talking about the ~44,000 lives their bill will save each year when fully implemented and they can hold their heads a little higher by talking about the first major progressive legislation to come along in more than forty years! What I hope we have witnessed is more than the passage of a single piece of legislation, no matter how historic. I hope and believe we have seen the emergence of a new party climate, one in which Democrats of many different stripes can formulate sensible legislation, present it coherently to the public and, with Obama as a President (who hopefully has discovered the power of his leadership), learn to focus more clearly on the next important task that must be immediately addressed–that of building a new economy. Perhaps we have seen the birth of a new source of national energy for the kind of change that got Obama elected in the first place. We have not seen anything like this healthcare bill in Washington for many decades. Maybe we are learning that government can work. One thing is certain: the Republicans were rightfully scared out of their wits about this bill, because they understand from historic behavior that legislation which brings benefits and a sense of social justice are prized by the public and become part of the national mantra of our expectations. It worked all during the New Deal and we can make it work more effectively again by drawing on our successes, buttressed by the fact that the young millennial generation behind us is one of the most liberal-minded and pragmatic generations in our history. We are witnessing the cultural wars beginning to come to an end, even though tea baggers may keep the issues alive for many years. How utterly boring were they and how much did they degrade the fabric of our country? These wars of abortion, gay rights, the drug war and “zero tolerance”  may not be over immediately, but the odds for a better outcome have been dramatically improved. The groups that support these button issues are diminishing in size and influence. So the best thing about the healthcare was perhaps, just maybe the Democrats got their groove back.

My enthusiasm for the future of this country has been stirred by the events of the last two years in which forces that serve the common public good seem to be emerging from a long Rip Van Winkle sleep under a tree that started to rot. And my enthusiasm has surged further by the behavior of our government since the healthcare summit less than two months ago. Yet, there have been highs and lows over the past year and one might have hoped for better outcomes in almost every endeavor we have witnessed on the political landscape. But fear of Republicans is waning and we should all try to accelerate the growth of the absurd tea baggers, who, together with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, have placed the Republican Party on a calm sea without rudder or compass. Hopefully, they will finally see the ice flows. What these people represent is nothing less than the re-awakening of Jim Crow, without the realization of what he has historically represented or who in fact he really was. Glenn Beck might try to look him up in the phone book. In the meantime, sweet dreams America–you have to wake up tomorrow with a new vision. That’s the pace of modern life, especially when you also have the future health of the planet to worry about.

RFM

I viewed Obama’s healthcare summit last Thursday as a huge success for him, his Presidency and the Democrats.  With the exception of Bill Clinton, no President in memory, certainly not the last three Republican presidents (Bush I, Bush II and Reagan),  could ever have managed to directly challenge the best of the opposition, face to face, without avoiding the appearance of detachment bordering on idiocy. Obama was at home in the confrontational environment of the summit, where he came across as nothing less than an admirable policy wonk. He was more knowledgeable about the bill and issues than any Republican and was unassailable in argument if slightly grim in demeanor. More than anything else, his grim demeanor signaled the end of hope for any support from  Republicans. The summit meeting helped to reinforce the idea, hardly original, that Republican presidents are figure-heads, not seriously interested in pursuing the common good, but solely committed to protecting the interests of big business, and, in the case of GWB, even more narrowly committed to the financial centers of the new world. Obama is both committed to some form of healthcare reform and displayed deep knowledge of the options and data that drive the legislative process. The mainstream media seemed to completely miss this important feature of the debate, where Obama won lots of support. As much as any event imaginable, the healthcare summit clearly demonstrated that Democrats care about healthcare reform and Republicans could care less.

Although he is late in coming to the front of the healthcare debate, his entire Presidency could be decided by whether his political strength and strategy can get meaningful legislation passed. I hope all Democrats read the poll numbers after the Massachusetts Senate election, in which Kennedy’s prized progressive seat was won by a fairly conservative Republican. Those polls showed that the majority of voters favored a public option component in the healthcare bill. The anger with many voters, including those Democrats that didn’t vote, reflected the timid, cautious nature of the Democrats, including the past behavior of our President. Hopefully, the summit meeting with Republicans helped Obama to press the “reset” button.

I happened to be watching a lot of the healthcare summit on C-span, which entertained  intermittent call-ins. I noted the Republican line, whenever it was not occupied by a crazy or a tea-bagger (perhaps the most common callers), had a few thoughtful callers, presumed Republicans, who had no trouble identifying the hidden deceit of the Republicans, who simply want to preserve the autonomy of the private insurance companies and in doing so, throw out random roadblocks as if they were the free-floating electrons dashing about with all the uncertainty that Heisenberg described for atomic particles. But, for the Republicans, the uncertainty is only in the form of the deceit tactic they decide to use for the moment. When Social Security passed in the 1930s, it did so without a single Republican vote. The Republicans knew then, just as they know now, that any healthcare reform, particularly one of sweeping change, will further erode the stature of their party by surrendering the high ground on an issue which everyone agrees must be addressed as if it was an acute national emergency–just like emergency surgery. While I admired Obama’s performance at the summit last week, I wish that he had been a little more forceful and combative with Republicans when they cited polls and suggested that the American healthcare system was the best in the world. If that is true, why are we ranked 37th overall in the 2000 WHO report and why does the best healthcare system in the world  reside in a country that ranks 50th in the world for life expectancy, according to a CIA report (a summary of reports can be found here).

The easiest healthcare bill to sell, that of a single payer plan, is the most difficult one to pass in either house of congress. The single payer option can be sold on the basis of two very different but powerful  principles. The first is to simplify and make virtually automatic healthcare coverage for all (“Medicare for All”). By putting everyone under a single plan, any rationing of healthcare, which may be required down the road, will be much more transparent as such changes should effect everyone in the same way.  The second great advantage of the single payer plan is that of removing healthcare coverage from our employment. The unification of healthcare with our jobs was an aberration of history, when employers were trying to outbid one another during the acute labor shortages after WW II.  By freeing healthcare from employment, businesses can prosper with greater certainty and profit and the competitive pricing of our manufactured products will be more visible and affordable in the international market, particularly when we stop our current Cold War trade policies and start enforcing trade on the basis of improving the economic lives of all Americans, but especially the middle class and poor. Poverty in America is the other disaster that has been partially created by our disgraceful healthcare system that comes close to barbaric in nature for far too many of our citizens. Selling healthcare as a new way of supporting business in America would, for the Republicans, be the most damaging of the two forks of a national, single payer healthcare plan, because this robs them of votes taken out of their own nests. So, why not do it now? Why not convert every decent Republican into a Democrat and leave the remainder as permanent tea-baggers?

RFM