Stop Buying Stuff—a reminder

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BY FRAN FORSTADT

7/2/07

Over the years I have become more and more discouraged and angry at this nation’s refusal to acknowledge, at a national level and in a consistent way, the harm we do our planet and its life forms. Our Environmental Protection Agency is so lame that I have to ask whose interests it serves. Profit, not health, is the prime motivator in all business. Industrial processes which poison the air, water, and soil have been developed and left in place for decades because to change them will reduce profits. Of course, NOT changing them continues to poison the planet and sicken its organic populations, but for so long now that consideration has been pushed aside.

The “sickness industry,” interconnected through pharmaceuticals, insurance, and the grossly expensive medical establishment, then makes money “curing” the conditions that industry has caused. This whole cycle is so blatantly interwoven that I wonder why more people don’t perceive it.

There was a time, perhaps, when we truly did not understand the long-term effects of poisoning our air, water, and soil. But we do understand now. We understand; we know enough. I am wondering if at some point we will go from ignorance-to-knowledge-to-wisdom, or if we will continue on our path of ignorance-knowledge-stupidity. It is sheer stupidity to continue poisoning ourselves, when we KNOW that we are creating the poisons that make us sick. At the most hopeless extreme, it is possible, I suppose, that the human race is just totally suicidal, but there are also some healthy clear thinkers around who understand that, to prevent that suicide, things have to CHANGE, now rather than later. We’ve known about the effects of industrial poisoning of the earth for a long time. ....

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