We Are All Downstream
I posted this on Absolute Michigan as well – recycle, right?
Eric Hansen is the author of “Hiking Michigan’s Upper Peninsula” and “Hiking Wisconsin”. In this morning’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, he has an editorial titled Headwaters are no place for toxic new mining that begins:
Take a moment to think about Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the nearby patches of Wisconsin, Lake Superior and Lake Michigan that border it. Picture the sparkling waterfalls, blueberries, brook trout and wave-washed shores there — the multitude of reasons so many think of this as God’s Country.
Thing is, change is in the air — and there’s a fair chance that it won’t be a good thing for the unspoiled waters of the U.P. — or for our water quality here, downstream, in Wisconsin.
New proposals for mining in the U.P. involve a method — metallic sulfide mining — known for its record of toxic water pollution.
These metallic sulfide mining projects are an alarming new threat to the Upper Great Lakes that has gone largely unnoticed in Wisconsin, or elsewhere in the region outside of Michigan.
Are we, as a state and region, prepared for a metallic sulfide mining district in the U.P.? Have we done a thorough assessment of the risks involved and the long-range impact this could have on our groundwater, streams and lakes?
With two proposed projects (Kennecott Eagle north of Marquette on Lake Superior and Aquila Resources Back40 project just a stone’s throw from the Menominee River and the Wisconsin border) and many, many more prospected sites (see map), the question “Are we ready?” is a darn good question to ask.
Through virtue of our work with an organization called Save the Wild UP, we’ve been following the story of sulfide mining in Michigan for years. It’s frankly stupefying that a mining technology that has killed fish and entire rivers, lain waste to lakes and as currently planned would actually spew tons of sulfide mining dust in the air as a kind of giant acid rain machine is still being considered at all.
Even more than the Lower Peninsula, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula depends on tourism and outdoor recreation for its livelihood and a couple hundred jobs would do nothing to offset the damage that news of mine accidents and poisoned rivers, lakes and air would generate. Once a mine opens in Michigan, so will the floodgates of a mineral rush that is virtually guaranteed to forever change the face of Michigan and our priceless waters. For it to happen without a public debate, behind closed doors is something we can’t allow to happen.
The photo above is Together. by Rick Spillers and it’s just one of many in the Downstream group on Flickr, where almost 100 people have added one photo each to be paired with the song A Letter from Downstream by Daisy May Erlewine. The result is a fascinating look at the meaning of water in all our lives. I think more than any photo in the Downstream group, this one for me says why we shouldn’t allow huge corporations to bet their profits against the future of the Great Lakes. These waters are all of ours, and those of generations to come.
Eric concludes:
This is our region’s spiritual homeland, the headwaters country of our planet’s finest collection of fresh water.
Let us think long and hard before risking that notable resource by allowing metallic sulfide mining to get its foot in the door at such a critical location.
Let us heed Gov. Milliken and join our voices to protect both a land and its pristine water that mean so much to so many of us. Our grandchildren will thank us.
Amen.
like a rat.
From The Real-Life ‘24’ of Summer 2008 by Frank Rich:
We know what a criminal White House looks like from “The Final Days,” Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s classic account of Richard Nixon’s unraveling. The cauldron of lies, paranoia and illegal surveillance boiled over, until it was finally every man for himself as desperate courtiers scrambled to save their reputations and, in a few patriotic instances, their country…
(dark comedy about Nixon’s confidantes waiting for him to be taken down but Bush’s going straight to press)
…Nixon parallels take us only so far, however. “The Dark Side” is scarier than “The Final Days” because these final days aren’t over yet and because the stakes are much higher. Watergate was all about a paranoid president’s narcissistic determination to cling to power at any cost. In Ms. Mayer’s portrayal of the Bush White House, the president is a secondary, even passive, figure, and the motives invoked by Mr. Cheney to restore Nixon-style executive powers are theoretically selfless. Possessed by the ticking-bomb scenarios of television’s “24,” all they want to do is protect America from further terrorist strikes.
So what if they cut corners, the administration’s last defenders argue. While prissy lawyers insist on habeas corpus and court-issued wiretap warrants, the rest of us are being kept safe by the Cheney posse.
(cue spooky music and exit to strains of torture, lies and the destruction of our nation’s moral compass)
The photo is Trapped by Lincolnian and is part of his Abstracts set. I liked the old postboxes too.
The future will be not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we CAN imagine
I think it’s pretty critical that the future have jellyfish airships.
You can also click to YouTube to watch in high quality.
Thanks Dr. Fong!
(and J.B.S. Haldane)
Shadows in the night
Through Wired I learned of Trevor Paglen and his photography of “black satellites”. Paglen has an exhibit at UC-Berkley, where they explain something about him:
Paglen’s nearly constant subject is the “black world” of the United States government, and through research and visualization he attempts to outline the edges and folds of this hidden world of military and intelligence activities. Whether photographing secret military bases from fifty miles away, or imaging spy satellites in the heavens from earth, Paglen’s photographs embody the limits of visibility, imposed both by the realities of physical distance and by informational obfuscation, that keep us as citizens from seeing and knowing these subjects on our own.
If you head over to paglen.com you can see all kinds of Things That Maybe Should Not Be Seen including code names, limit telephotography and his book I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Black World and an interview with Paglen from The Colbert Report. There’s also a link to a New York Times review of his book that includes a slideshow of the patches. Here’s a couple excerpts:
…The classified budget of the Defense Department, concealed from the public in all but outline, has nearly doubled in the Bush years, to $32 billion. That is more than the combined budgets of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
…“Oderint Dum Metuant,” reads a patch for an Air Force program that mines spy satellite images for battlefield intelligence, according to Mr. Paglen, who identifies the saying as from Caligula, the first-century Roman emperor famed for his depravity. It translates “Let them hate so long as they fear.”
…What sparked his interest, Mr. Paglen recalled, were Vice President Dick Cheney’s remarks as the Pentagon and World Trade Center smoldered. On “Meet the Press,” he said the nation would engage its “dark side” to find the attackers and justice. “We’ve got to spend time in the shadows,” Mr. Cheney said. “It’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”
Huge black budgets, US military units taking their mottos from one of the most terrifying figures in history and a growing shadow government … not the cheeriest things to contemplate.
