Bulletin for the Emancipation of Labor: 3
Published by Pro-Labor Citizens, In Defense of the Rights of Workers
The Saga of Pigeon River
Al Gore Against the Environment
Al Gore's PR has always depicted him as a champion of environmental quality, and Gore now proclaims himself the defender of working families. The presidential campaign of 1988 revealed a very different candidate, whose choices that year voters need to take in account when evaluating the Vice President this election year.
In 1987, as Gore trailed Jesse Jackson in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, people in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina were reeling from the effects of decisions made by Champion International, a corporation whose paper mill on the Pigeon River in Canton, North Carolina
proved to be an environmental disaster for the region. The work of the mill in transforming thousands of tons of wood chips into paper products also converted the Pigeon River from an uncontaminated upland rivulet into a monument to industrial pollution. The Winston-Salem Journal once compared the smell of the Pigeon River, after Champion International had finished with it, to "rotten eggs crushed in a waterlogged sneaker." Elevated rates of cancer among Gore's constituents who lived near the river in Hartford, Tennessee, downstream from Champion, caused the town to become known as "Widowville."
In the mid-eighties, Senator Gore had presented himself as a partisan of his Tennessee constituents in opposition to Champion International's environmental malfeasance, describing the issue as "of the utmost importance to me," in a 1985 letter to the EPA. Gore's repeated interventions with the EPA from 1985 until October 31, 1987 may have led the federal environmental agency to take a strong line with the polluters at Champion.
By mid-November, however, everything had changed. Seeking political support from the North Carolina congressman who represented Champion International in Congress, presidential candidate Gore now tried to persuade the EPA to relax the environmental standards the agency had begun to enforce against the company. In place of the protection of the river through swift federal action, Gore's new concern was the achieving of a "balanced" solution, which would correspond to the "economic needs of the region." Concretely, this meant that Gore abandoned his earlier demand that the company attain to the goal of 50 color units (CUs) at its discharge pipe. The senator now felt that a standard of 80-85 CUs, i.e., more pollution than 50 CU’s, less environmental quality, would be sufficient.
After this change of heart, Senator Gore was able to count on the help of influential politicians from North Carolina in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. As Champion's congressman said,
"We've educated Senator Gore on the problem and told him we expect him to help us. It's my
experience in life, particularly in politics, that you scratch my back, I scratch yours." This same congressman, together with a North Carolina senator and a former governor were able to raise $110,000 for the Gore campaign. The money helped Gore to carry the state in the Democratic primary.
Candidate Gore went on to proclaim his concern for the environment in states outside the South. In the same month that Gore retreated from his earlier standard for the Pigeon River, he was telling a Boston audience that "the environment is under siege from industrial civilization." In Texas Gore claimed to be passionately concerned about the amelioration of the Rio Grande. Given all this, the opinion of one Tennessee resident that the Senator was "two-faced," seems quite apt.
From the Yiddish Press
How Colonel Petrov Saved Civilization
One of the joys of knowing a little Yiddish is that one gets to read the venerable weekly forverts, not for the politics, but for the history, culture and language. A summer issue (8/04/2000) related an incident in 1983 when the two superpowers came within a hairsbreadth of a nuclear exchange.
But first, some politics. In the eighties, when a Republican administration proposed a "Star Wars" defense against nuclear attack, there was abundant commentary about the unlikelihood of such a system’s doing what it was supposed to. Earlier this year, the Democratic administration proposed "a small system," to quote the forverts, a system described by The Boston Globe as "Stars Wars Lite" and "an illusory defense," with a price tag of "only" thirty billion dollars. The Globe went on to call "Star Wars" a "clear violation of the ABM Treaty." Fifty Nobel laureates appealed to the Democrats not to proceed, calling even a modified, diminished "Star Wars," "premature, wasteful, and dangerous."
Back to our story. On September 26, 1983, the Soviet satellite "Kosmos 1382" mistakenly detected a launch of five missiles from a U.S. base in Montana, and alarms began to sound at the Soviet Army unit near Moscow commanded by Colonel Stanislav Petrov. In an instant Colonel Petrov had to decide whether or not to report the "launch" to his superiors, who would then initiate the Third World War by ordering a counterstrike. To our great good fortune, Colonel Petrov did nothing, since he thought it would be simply insane to begin a war by launching only five missiles, as the Soviet satellite reported the U.S. had done.
A system like "Star Wars," whether big (Republican) or small (Democratic), would give the U.S. rulers a (temporary) first-strike capability, thus igniting a renewed arms race and increasing the possibility of computer errors like the situation Colonel Petrov faced. New and more terrible weapons developed to counter U.S. first-strike capability would make a nuclear exchange more likely. Which is what makes "Star Wars," once again, such a bad idea.
Email: royt@mailcity.com
