Whose Side Am I On?

I am writing from a country far, far away.

Because I can't give you the name of this nation, I will tell you a little bit about it.

It is a poor country. By that, I mean it has a GDP of roughly $17 billion (US, PPP) and since the 1960s, has been accumulating exorbitant amounts of debt to fund infrastructure development, poverty relief programs, etc. It is, as they say, "underdeveloped" or "developing". Some people think that the latter is a more polite, more encouraging choice of nomenclature. Because I am of the opinion that the terms mean the same thing, and because I don't like the implication of that thing – namely, that Aristotle's Great Chain of Being is still a vital force in our language and our minds – I will use the term "Third World". If you read to the end of this essay, you will understand why I choose this title, despite the fact that it has fallen out of favor with the academic establishment.

I am in a Third World country. Objectively, that means that it is debt-ridden; its creditors include the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and bilateral donors like USAID and DFID. In exchange for the forgiveness of said debt (or, some would argue, to continue being eligible for loans), it is implementing structural adjustment programs (privatizing and deregulating industry, opening borders to international investment, "tightening the national belt" through cuts to social programs). It has a booming population that is rapidly urbanizing. Roughly eighty percent of the swelling population is engaged in the informal sector (economic activities that are not taxed, like subsistence agriculture or selling second-hand clothes in the street). Despite being overwhelmingly agrarian, it is trying to attract industry (or perhaps, 'reluctantly submitting to industry') by participating in the "Race to the Bottom": allowing foreign companies to enjoy the cheap labor force and vast mineral resources with as few pesky regulations as possible so that I, the ever-loyal consumer, can buy my jeans for $29.99 at the Fayette Mall.

Open to debate is whether or not this country's Third World status is also a function of its citizens' non-European heritage or if that is purely coincidental. It is also a former colony, another characteristic that is shared by a suspicious number of Third World countries.

What do these things mean? They mean that four-fifths of the population live on the equivalent of $2 a day or less. To address two common responses to this statistic: indeed, one should remember that this is a country where many people grow their own food and build their own shelters, tempering the need for paper currency. However, to reiterate, the country is urbanizing with a speed that decries its reputation for a leisurely pace. And granted, the purchasing power of $2 is greater here – best case scenario, the exchange rate is 1:1700(national currency), meaning that the average citizen makes ends meet on 102,000 NC per month. By way of comparison, I just rented a modest studio apartment for 130,000 NC a month in the capital, a deal that by every one's account is impossibly ideal; a deal that was secured only because of personal connections I had established due to my privileged status as a white foreigner. One hundred and thirty thousand NC for housing alone for one month. I have, in addition, over 500,000 NC for food and pleasure for the month of April.

What I'm trying to say is that you should pay very little heed to people who insist that the statistics are a bunch of rain-on-our-markets'-parade baloney. Things are unequivocally hard for the vast majority of people here, and increasingly so as they flock to metropolitan centers, seeking the gold promised them at the end of the proverbial rainbow.

They find it, alright. Problem is, it's inside of well-guarded family compounds, like the one in which I live; it's tied up on the lithe mannequins in the windows of boutiques which they aren't allowed to enter. Its baked into the pastries that are temptingly arranged behind glass counters according to impeccable Western aesthetic standards.

They find the gold: its just locked up, in a crystal safe. The transparency mocks them. Because they are wholly unequipped to crack the combination -- they do not speak the languages of power -- they remain on the periphery, faces pressed against the Swarovski, becoming increasingly despondent and desperate. But for some, despondency and desperation evolve into a lock-jawed bitterness at having been duped by the siren song of modernity. They become increasingly angry as I emerge, refreshed, from a popular spa, or from the hotel that still bears the name of a notorious colonial plantation lord, after my afternoon coffee and chocolate, or from the "green zone" (by which my roommates and I affectionately refer to our lodgings), freshly showered, en route to a meeting, certainly an important meeting, at the Carlton.

They are angry, the children who demand money, even those who cannot identify the emotion. They are angry and they are strong; they have grown up under conditions that have hardened their soles and sharpened their senses. They are strong because they have nothing to loose. By contrast, I am contemptibly weak, in body and heart, with my arch supports, miniature pharmacy, and fear of pain.

The only thing that is not weak is my mind, which is quick to point out the shameful inconsistencies in my behavior.

I have digressed.

This essay is not about my lack of moral fitness, or even this country, necessarily.

It's about Kentucky, my home. It's about the fact that this Third World country and Kentucky have more in common than one might suspect, good and bad: the wild disparity between rich and poor and the desire of the urban citizens to distance themselves in the eyes of outsiders from their rural brethren; the rowdy music and the fierce pride; the absentee landownership and the bids for industry, natural resource stripteases; the puzzling phenomenon of folks with means staying, purely out of something as antiquated as love of the land and community (do I need to point out that that is a joke?); the phenomenal creativity and energy of youthful resistance; the very histories themselves. All these things are shared, but I will focus on the first similarity to catch my attention: the mining industry.

There are certainly rays of sunshine in this godforsaken place. After a comprehensive revision of the 'outdated' national mining code (outdated because it smacked of socialism and nationalism, making exploitation difficult for international firms) between 1999 and 2005 under the expert guidance of a D.C.-based law firm, this country's mining sector was declared "open for business". The Heritage Foundation raved -- the chastity belt had been unlocked. This country's investment freedom score soared from 30 to 70 in this period -- largely because of the fact that "most sectors of the economy are open to 100 percent foreign ownership" (that's polite speak for absentee landownership). Since the completion of this "mining law modernization" process, all but 15% of subterranean exploration rights have been claimed by foreign conglomerates. The possibilities are endless. Just think -- in only a few brief years, this wretched, impoverished country will be making enough money, thanks to its shrewd utilization of la richesse de la terre and the invisible hand, to crack the crystal safe.

Just like Kentucky.

Just like Kentucky. With its poverty, unemployment, and illiteracy rates that are some of the bleakest in the nation. With upwards of 50% of children living below the poverty line in some counties and average income levels in others that are nearly half that of the national average. With it's hopeful reception of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, and his declaration of a "War on Poverty," and its subsequent realization, forty years later, that nothing has changed. With its uncertain hope that Massey is telling the truth this time with its assurances of wealth on the horizon and its reluctant acceptance of prevailing wisdom, which insists that there are no economic alternatives to coal for the backwards lot of Appalachia; with its Harlan Country insurgents of June, 1973; with its Martin County flood, 250 million gallons of coal slurry into our rivers and streams, 30 times the amount of oil spilled in the Exxon-Valdez disaster of 1989, declared by the EPA the worst environmental disaster in the recorded history of southeastern United States, and the media no where to be found; Kentucky, with its proud mothers who are intimidated by menacing coal trucks which circle their homes for days on end after they have been so presumptuous as to point out that the law exists to protect the consenting citizenry, not bloodless institutions that lack the faculties to make sound, ethical judgments, much less love or feel loyalty toward someone or something; Kentucky, with its achy, heart-breaky voices and mandolins and fiddles that I have failed to love enough, the sounds of obstinate joy in the face of impossible odds; sounds that explain my own life, perhaps better than I'll ever be able to understand.

This Third World country will arrive at wealth, influence, and most importantly, self-determination, just like Kentucky.

I promise.

What is the point of this? The point is that Kentucky might have more in common with the villagers, the naked pagans, of the country from which I write, than certain powers would like us to realize. The point is that the disempowerment of the Third World, which (news flash), with the globalization of markets, is no longer a respecter of national boundaries, relies on its incoherency and internal conflict. It relies on the dispossessed of southside Chicago and Southeast DC and Appalachia and Native American reservations and Tehran and Nairobi and Sarajevo and Beijing and Bangkok and Manila and Rabat and Baghdad and Beirut and Jerusalem all believing that they have nothing in common. It relies on the fortification of divisions and the stoking of hatred - cultural, ethnic, religious - between these groups.

The point is that in 2000, Massey Energy was spun off of Fluor Corporation, a publicly owned Fortune 500, engineering, construction, and procurement firm that operates, directly or indirectly, in well over 25 countries, one of which is the country from which I write.

I won't bore you with a laundry list of examples of the ways in which the global pillars of government, finance, and commerce are intertwined...chances are, you've heard it before, and if I'm not careful, folks will start calling me a conspiracy theorist.

But there's no question that solidarity exists within the modern, globalized First Estate, to the degree that "inbred" might be a more appropriate term. By contrast, hatred and violence reign within the modern, globalized Third Estate. We call the hatred and violence racism, sexism, tribalism, sectarianism; we call it the East versus the West, the clash of civilizations, Muslim extremism, Christian fundamentalism, ecoterrorism. With all of these frightening -isms and fancy phrases, is it any surprise that we feel ourselves pitted against basically everyone else in the world, and that the feeling is mutual? Is it coincidence?

I could carry my point further, but I myself am frightened of where it might lead, I am frightened of pain. I myself am unprepared for the full implications of my point. So, I will sit here in the crystal safe, sipping my cafe au lait, savoring ganache; I will readjust my black-rimmed reading glasses and bangle bracelets and "ethnic" raw silk wrap; I will return to my dog-eared Kafka and Thoreau and Sartre and repeat rituals that confirm my seat in the 21st century salons. I will let you draw your own conclusions.

But, as for me, even as I try to quiet my mind with these symbolic acts of "progressivism", I know that the arm of history is long, but bends toward justice. I know that President Nkrumah of Ghana was not only demonstrating non-alignment when he used the phrase "Third World" - he was also invoking the spirit of the French Third Estate. I know that the underdogs of history ultimately give up trying to figure out the combination, quit playing by the rules given them, and simply take a sledgehammer to the crystal safe. All that it takes is the realization that they have numbers and the mandate of history on their side and nothing more left to lose.

And just as those (of us?) on the inside for so long saw no distinction between the individual hungry bellies -- Appalachian or Colombian or Thai or Congolese, milk that skin-and-bones cow dry -- the hungry bellies will make no distinction between those who use solar panels and those who do not.

So, if you have read this wishing that I had been referring specifically to "Eastern Kentucky" in the description of our state - if you, even as a 'progressive', felt a desire to distinguish yourself from Appalachia - I would reconsider. As the song goes, "Whose side [of the safe] are you on?"

Whose side am I on?

Hundreds of Coal Ash Dumps Lack Regulation

By SHAILA DEWAN

Published: January 6, 2009

The coal ash pond that ruptured and sent a billion gallons of toxic sludge across 300 acres of East Tennessee last month was only one of more than 1,300 similar dumps across the United States — most of them unregulated and unmonitored — that contain billions more gallons of fly ash and other byproducts of burning coal.

Like the one in Tennessee, most of these dumps, which reach up to 1,500 acres, contain heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium, which are considered by the Environmental Projection Agency to be a threat to water supplies and human health. Yet they are not subject to any federal regulation, which experts say could have prevented the spill, and there is little monitoring of their effects on the surrounding environment.

In fact, coal ash is used throughout the country for construction fill, mine reclamation and other “beneficial uses.” In 2007, according to a coal industry estimate, 50 tons of fly ash even went to agricultural uses, like improving soil’s ability to hold water, despite a 1999 E.P.A. warning about high levels of arsenic. The industry has promoted the reuse of coal combustion products because of the growing amount of them being produced each year — 131 million tons in 2007, up from less than 90 million tons in 1990.

The amount of coal ash has ballooned in part because of increased demand for electricity, but more because air pollution controls have improved. Contaminants and waste products that once spewed through the coal plants’ smokestacks are increasingly captured in the form of solid waste, held in huge piles in 46 states, near cities like Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Tampa, Fla., and on the shores of Lake Erie, Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River.

Numerous studies have shown that the ash can leach toxic substances that can cause cancer, birth defects and other health problems in humans, and can decimate fish, bird and frog populations in and around ash dumps, causing developmental problems like tadpoles born without teeth, or fish with severe spinal deformities.

“Your household garbage is managed much more consistently” than coal combustion waste, said Dr. Thomas A. Burke, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who testified on the health effects of coal ash before a Congressional subcommittee last year. “It’s such a large volume of waste, and it’s so essential to the country’s energy supply; it’s basically been a loophole in the country’s waste management strategy.”

As the E.P.A. has studied whether to regulate coal ash waste, the cases of drinking wells and surface water contaminated by leaching from the dumps or the use of the ash has swelled. In 2007, an E.P.A. report identified 63 sites in 26 states where the water was contaminated by heavy metals from such dumps, including three other Tennessee Valley Authority dumps. Environmental advocacy groups have submitted at least 17 additional cases that they say should be added to that list.

Just last week, a judge approved a $54 million class-action settlement against Constellation Power Generation after it had dumped coal ash for more than a decade in a sand and gravel pit near Gambrills, Md., about 20 miles south of Baltimore, contaminating wells. And Town of Pines, Ind., a hamlet about 40 miles east of Chicago, was declared a Superfund site after wells there were found to be contaminated by ash dumped in a landfill and used to make roads starting in 1983.

Contamination can be swift. In Chesapeake, Va., high levels of lead, arsenic and other contaminants were found last year in the groundwater beneath a golf course sculptured with 1.5 million tons of fly ash, the same type of coal ash involved in the Tennessee spill. The golf course opened in 2007.

State requirements for the handling of coal ash vary widely. Some states, like Alabama, do not regulate it at all, except by means of federally required water discharge permits. In Texas, the vast majority of coal ash is not considered a solid waste, according to a review of state regulations by environmental groups. There are no groundwater monitoring or engineering requirements for utilities that dump the ash on site, as most utilities do, the analysis says.

The lack of uniform regulation stems from the E.P.A.’s inaction on the issue, which it has been studying for 28 years. In 2000, the agency came close to designating coal ash a hazardous waste, but backpedaled in the face of an industry campaign that argued that tighter controls would cost it $5 billion a year. (In 2007, the Department of Energy estimated that it would cost $11 billion a year.) At the time, the E.P.A. said it would issue national regulations governing the disposal of coal ash as a nonhazardous waste, but it has not done so.

“We’re still working on coming up with those standards,” said Matthew Hale, director of the office of solid waste at the E.P.A. “We don’t have a schedule at this point.”

Last year, the agency invited public comment on new data on coal combustion wastes, including a finding that the concentrations of arsenic to which people might be exposed through drinking water contaminated by fly ash could increase cancer risks several hundredfold.

If such regulations were issued, the agency could require that utilities dispose of dry ash in lined landfills, considered the most environmentally sound method of disposal, but also the most expensive. A 2006 federal report found that at least 45 percent of relatively new disposal sites did not use composite liners, the only kind that the E.P.A. says diminishes the leaching of cancer-causing metals to acceptable risk levels. The vast majority of older disposal sites are unlined.

Most coal ash is stored wet in ponds, like the one in Tennessee, almost always located on waterways because they need to take in and release water. But scientists say that the key to the safe disposal of coal ash is to keep it away from water, by putting dry ash into landfills with caps, linings and collection systems for contaminated water.

Environmentalists, scientists and other experts say that regulations could have prevented the Tennessee spill. Andrew Wittner, an economist who was working in the E.P.A.’s office of solid waste in 2000 when the issue of whether to designate coal ash as hazardous was being debated, said the agency came close to prohibiting ash ponds like the one at Kingston. “We were going to suggest that these materials not be wet-handled, and that existing surface impoundments should be drained,” Mr. Wittner said.

If storing coal ash were more expensive, environmental advocates say, utilities might be pushed to find more ways to recycle it safely. Experts say that some “beneficial uses” of coal ash can be just that, like substituting ash for cement in concrete, which binds the heavy metals and prevents them from leaching, or as a base for roads, where the ash is covered by an impermeable material. But using the ash as backfill or to level abandoned mines requires intensive study and monitoring, which environmentalists say is rarely done right.

The industry takes the position that states can regulate the disposal of coal ash on their own, and it has come up with a voluntary plan to close some gaps, like in the monitoring of older disposal sites.

“There probably isn’t a need for a comprehensive regulatory approach to coal ash in light of what the states have and our action plan,” said Jim Roewer, the executive director of the Utility Solid Wastes Activity Group.

Mr. Roewer said there was a trend toward dry ash disposal in lined landfills, though that trend was not identified in the 2006 federal report on disposal methods.

Environmentalists are skeptical of the industry’s voluntary self-policing plan and the states’ ability to tighten controls.

“The states have proven that they can’t regulate this waste adequately, and that’s seen in the damage that is occurring all over the United States,” said Lisa Evans, a former E.P.A. lawyer who now works on hazardous-waste issues for the environmental advocacy group Earthjustice. “If the states could regulate the industry appropriately, they would have done so by now.”

Utility companies are often aware of problems with their disposal system, Ms. Evans said, but they put off improvements because of the cost.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, which owns the Kingston Fossil Plant, where the Tennessee spill occurred, tried for decades to fix leaks at its ash pond. In 2003, it considered switching to dry disposal, but balked at the estimated cost of $25 million, according to a report in The Knoxville News Sentinel. That is less than the cost of cleaning up an ash spill in Pennsylvania in 2005 that was a 10th of the size of the one in Tennessee.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 7, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.

I Think You Must Be Savage

“What have the Christians brought us? The concept of hell and the fear of death.”
-- Anosy elder

My family has a painting of an Anglo-Saxon Christ on their mantel. (Their conduit to salvation looks suspiciously colonial).

My little sisters love playing with my hair and my mother loves braiding it. They tell me it is beautiful and glisse (just like their poupees).

My mother plays me high church canons that she has saved on her cell phone. (Why are they un-translated and why are there no original Malagasy hymns to sing on Sunday?)

I was expected to make a contribution (a significant contribution) to my grandmother’s charity – the object of which is to build a new Lutheran church in a “poor, remote village”. At the charity luncheon, I was the only vazaha.

The good vazaha who is expected to nonchalantly present 10,000 ariary to the dear people of the poor, remote village to help them find God. Bring the babies to me, let me hold them and kiss them. The vazaha with the silky hair and the slender nose and the lacquered pout lips will bless the babies and good fortune will be upon them. Would you like a picture? I would like a picture to remember those I have pointed to salvation. I need it for my newsletter, which I write to inform the brethren of my Good Deeds in the Lands of the Lost, the Lands of the Possessed. Did you know you were possessed, sir? Possessed with deamons sent from the Devil to trap you in your loincloth and lice? You must be possessed, because you think that the earth gives you life, which is the creed of the Blinded Pagan. Don’t be a disciple of the Devil, good man. It will land you in hell! Be a disciple of Christ.

You don’t know what hell is? It is a place for the wicked; a place which cannot be described it is so frightful. Christ will keep you from the flames, if you cling to Him. How? Invite him into your heart. Repeat this prayer and be baptized. Hone your faith through memorization and practice of the Scriptures.

Well, some of them. The Old Testament is a little dusty, so we’ve made for you a list of the pertinent rules…pork is economically important and quite delicious (as are shellfish), so disregard rules concerning the avoidance thereof. We don’t have priests anymore (only the Catholics have those, and they worship Mary and the Saints – should be avoided), so don’t bother yourself with discussion of the sons of Aaron, et al. However, if the rule is in regard to sexual relations, you ought to pay attention. There is a small chapter on the subject we have chosen to respect in Leviticus – be careful you find the right one…it is hidden deep amongst other silly passages that are irrelevant to the modern man and you wouldn’t want to make a mistake. Additionally --

What have you heard? Ah, love for one’s neighbor. Loving your neighbor is important, you’re right, but saving his soul is paramount – that end cannot be compromised. Don’t be soft, man!

Speaking of which: sir, what do you do for a living? You grow manioc?

I think you must be poor, sir. Can you afford a dress comme ça for your wife and daughters? Can you buy shoes? What, sir? You wife makes your clothes? You share shoes? Tstststststs. That, sir, that is what we call poverty in the United States, my land which flows with milk and honey (mind you, it’s all privately owned, the milk and honey, not owned by me, necessarily).

You know, sir, I have shown you the One True God with my 10,000 ariary, but I can show you wealth as well. I can show you prosperity – for that is what the Lord desires for His Chosen Children. Thrift and industry! Efficiency and progress! Modernity and morality!

See that yonder mine?

That yonder mine, where the minerals are scraped out of the earth (Remember, the earth is inanimate. Cast off your Pagan sentimentalities!) – that mine is where you will find prosperity. Leave your paltry fields and turn toward the sun. You will make enough paper money to buy your manioc…and dresses and shoes and butter and televisions and taxi cab rides.

You don’t want to leave your paltry fields? That is what we call sloth in the United States, land of milk and honey. That is what we call a poor work ethic, lack of gumption, not appreciating Western technological benevolence. Do you want to be poor forever? Do you not want dresses, shoes, butter, televisions, taxi cab rides? No?

Then I think you must be a savage.

“Maintenant, tu peux voir que les gens de Madagascar sont trop pauvre, oui? Pas comme Washington. Nous sommes très pauvre ici. Tu dois être très content que tu es une Américaine, oui ?” my host mother asks me. Yes Neni, these people are poor – poor in spirit, in intelligence, in amenities – I am so glad that I am an American. I am so glad to have the truth.

“Poor wretches,” thinks the vazaha.