PARTS PER BILLION

I am glad Resident Bush accomplished so much in his first 100 daze! Sorry, days. I feared he was going to be some sort of perverse combination of his Dad and Dan Quayle and nothing at all positive would ever issue from the Executive Mansion for four years. Boy, was I wrong! He's done a lot of things to make our lives better, even after this short period. His spin people have assured me this is so and I am expecting their official list of his accomplishments from them any moment.

(Tick, tick, tick.)

Hell, I'm on deadline here, I can't wait. I'd better think of something he's accomplished to write about right away. Something besides throwing a party for our heroic air-spooks back from China. Or repeating, "It's an honor to be here in the Oval Office," to every news camera he sees, or making speeches about tax cuts and missile defense. I already had a long harangue about missile defense last month anyway. We all know he's going to pay lots of money for Star Wars even though it doesn't pass any tests. Funny, on schools he's doing the reverse. If a school doesn't pass its tests, then he wants to its cut money off. Go figure.

Well gee, I guess he's started a few things but there's not much that he's actually accomplished. At least he hasn't tried to make executions like Tim McVeigh's the national sport! Oh wait, sports, that's it! George has already accomplished one thing no President has ever done before. He set up a baseball field on the south lawn of the White House. Little League; how appropriate! Anyway, that'll show the folks who say he hasn't done anything except put arsenic in our drinking water.

I hate to say this, but he didn't change anything at all; it was already there. The arsenic, not the Little League field. As Michael Moore pointed out, the regulation that Dubya rescinded was another one of those Clinton Eleventh-Hour-Legacy items. After eight years of doing nothing about arsenic levels, Bill authorized a new tougher standard. That was what Bush reversed. It was never put into effect, so nothing's changed from the previous administration. Except that Bush could have let the new reg stand! But no, we wouldn't want to cut into his friends' profits, now would we?

Who knew arsenic was such a problem? I'm no expert, but exactly when was the last time you heard of somebody dying from arsenic in the water? Most cities' tap water is pretty damn safe, if you're taking a bath. Drinking it is obviously different. There are lots of cities that need better water, but would Christy Whitman's EPA enforce any regulations about it, new or old? Count on George to cut funding for research, cleanup and enforcement regardless. On the other hand, at some small level arsenic does go off the radar scope as a threat. We put toxins like chlorine in into our water on purpose to kill bacteria. Is the arsenic a bigger threat than all that chlorine?

Get real. Just because scientists can measure things in parts per billion does not mean there is always a danger involved. For example, I have had the same keychain maybe eight years. There's one snap fitting on it that's chrome-plated brass. Only there's no chrome on it anymore. Over the last 2500 days or so it's all been rubbed away by clanking on the keys and yes, by my own fingers. I'm certainly contaminated with some microscopic level of chromium just because I've handled the keychain. Now before you go calling Erin Brokovich, do you know how small "parts per billion" really is? It's like taking one packet of salt - oh, let's be dangerous.. one packet of Sweet & Low - and distributing it evenly over an entire football field. No wait, the south lawn baseball field! Would even one ant die from that? You'd kill more walking on the field sprinkling it. On the other hand, if it was PLUTONIUM, then you'd have a problem even at parts per billion. Hell, I wouldn't want that on the south lawn or on my keychain, to be sure, but arsenic and ammonia and a lot of other poisons OCCUR NATURALLY in the world and your body is pretty good about filtering them out. Past a certain level you just have to accept them. I live in LA: can you say SMOG? At least I live by the water and miss most of it, I pity the folks in Riverside. I pity the folks in Long Beach who were under the plume of that refinery fire last month! I guess I'm trying to say that there is always some risk in life and you'll never be 100% safe.

Don't get me wrong, lowering arsenic in our drinking water is probably a good idea because that's a chronic source and it probably does slightly increase the risk of heart attacks across an entire population. So don't wait for Dubya to clean this up; what you need to do to is invest in a water filter. You know the Resident must have some really good ones at the White House. Install the damn thing and then concentrate on the bigger environmental threats he'll create.

Like drilling for oil in the Alaska Wilderness.

I know, I know, a couple months back I said we should go and get the oil in spite of the environmental consequences. I stand by that, in my own strange way. I still say the sooner we run out of oil, or at least when it gets too expensive to burn, the sooner we'll develop energy from the sun. However, our Oval Office Oilmen have been selling this as a solution to our energy crisis. They've got another thing coming if they think Alaskan oil will do that. America has a fair amount of oil, but nothing like the quantities found in the Middle East. We'll always import and they certainly know it. Dubya and the boys aren't really trying to solve the energy crunch; they just see that oil as a chance to hand some big contracts out to their friends.

So all that said, my first reason for supporting drilling seems pretty flimsy. True, but I never mentioned the second reason before. I'd love to see them do this because it will be their downfall.

You see, I expect them to make a very photogenic mess of it. No one will have to go down to parts per billion to measure that pollution! There will be lots of oil-soaked birds and caribou on the nightly news, maybe some dead whales from a tanker spill, all finally awakening the pro-environment forces out of their slumber. The Green Party will become bigger than ever as these graphic images teach a new generation how important it is to protect the environment. Maybe even Democrats will realize that not everything is the economy, stupid. And speaking of money, I also expect scandals over the good ole boy contracts. This is a good thing. Why? The Bush Boys will be doing lots of things that are far worse than this drilling in the background, but they will get away with all those because they are too complicated to report in a 90 second news item. But the coming Alaskagate will be easy for the public to understand. Their church-going veneer will be ripped away, exposing them for the venal greed-heads that they are.

Pretty Machiavellian scenario, huh? Sorry, I'd really rather not trash the tundra or anywhere else, I just think that's how it might go down. Anyway, our society is addicted to oil and wherever it is, we WILL suck it up sooner or later. And as ugly as it will be on the news, they can't possibly do as much environmental damage as the average volcano eruption causes. After we use it up and leave, the wilderness will heal.

One day Mother Earth may even decide she needs to make more oil. She'll wobble on her orbit a tad and the oceans will slosh out, like a full bowl of soup carried by a child. Only the spill will be hundreds of feet high, sweeping away our civilization like so many anthills, depositing us and the Chevy we rode in on under millions of tons of dirt and debris. Then the cooking of new oil can begin from our fossils, just as it did before with the dinosaurs.

Now THAT is a real environmental disaster. Like I say, Life is never 100% safe. Alaskan oil and arsenic can be problems, but there are a few classes of calamity that dwarf anything Dubya can cause. Let's be thankful that our planet's orbit is nice and steady.

Steady enough to play baseball on the south lawn for years to come, I'm sure. You know, I bet the Bush League field is the one idea that Dubya's authored himself so far. Actually I think it's great. I hope teams of kids from every state get to play there. I really hope it will be a fixture there at the White House for generations, that the foul lines will never be made with Sweet & Low and that the Secret Service will step on as few ants as possible. Wow, 100 days in and Bush already has his legacy!

It may be the one benign thing he does. Everything else about Resident Bush is pretty dangerous, even though he's is present in American society at a level of only four parts per billion. Enough to cause allergic reactions and maybe even toxic shock in quite a few. Or at least shocking pictures of what toxins can do.

And speaking of pictures, right now I've got to go back into the closet to get ready to go out to see a new movie with some friends. It's something about a baker who leaves his pastry out all the time. At least that's what it sounded like, they said the title was "A Night Stale." Sounds pretty boring to me, really, I hope where not wasting our money on some pretentious art film! Anyway, thanks for reading and until next month the Closet is closed.



(C) 2001 - Rusty Pipes


Official Disclaimer: I like dinosaurs. I think I do, anyway. Never met one. Feel kinda guilty driving around because they're all dead and stuff. Do you like shiny things? I like shiny things. Gotta get back to the oval office now, 'fore they miss me. Buh bye.