Radioactive Rochester?

Hope Burwell's "Jeremiad for Belarus" (pages 78-90) reminded me about how little I really know about the world.

Chernobyl is in Ukraine; that I knew. But I didn't know that Belarus is the country that has paid the biggest price for the 1986 accident.

I didn't know that the area in Belarus effected by fall-out is equal to 2/3's the size of Iowa.

Belarus is a poor country, and apparently no one in the international community cares about its people. Burwell documented that thousands, if not millions, of people are continuing to be slowly killed by Chernobyl as the world turns a blind eye. These are people that still live in the contaminated zones because they don't have anywhere else to go.

This is a country dying, and no one seems to care.

The only way the author can make us care, it seems, is to suggest that the same thing could happen here, in the United States. If the Duane Arnold facility in Iowa went Chernobyl, for example, the fallout would reach good old Rochester, Minnesota.

Sleep easy tonight. :)

Conservation Refugees

Mark Dowie's "Conservation Refugees" (65-77) shows what happens when conservationists put their own interests and agendas ahead of people.

Does protecting a place mean that the people should be removed? Or, if not removed, what happens to the people that live in the areas we would like to see protected? Do they become somehow "indentured"? Good questions raised in this article.

I was very surprised to learn that there might be as many as 14 million conservation refugees world-wide. Dowie is careful to explain the difference between the terms "conservation refugee" and "environmental refugee," too. The former is a human-made problem, while the latter is simply has natural causes -- floods, fire, etc.

Overall, I'd have to say that I'm enjoying the articles in the "Refugee" section of the book much more than the "Action" section.

How about you? What articles have you read that you like? That you plan to include in your classes this Fall?

Being Human (in a Good Sense)

The interview with Van Jones -- "A Licence to Be Human" (page 53-61) -- was my favorite article from the Action section by far.

Jones talks about stepping back from the "us vs. them" duality. Yes, people get passionate about issues, but people also get blinded by anger, which he describes as "a messay fuel" (54).

Solving the world's problems requires looking in as well as looking out. How many people attack George W. Bush for his administration's policies? Well, at least half the country. But how many people take the time to see that Bush is a scapegoat for problems that we all are partially responsible for?

I loved Jones's message that we need "a wiser kind of warrior" (56) and that we're not always David against Goliath -- and that sometimes, we need to figure out a way to secure Goliath's help rather than fight him.

This is a brillant interview, full of insight...