through greek eyes

In September 2011, “Truthout” published an essay in which I summarized US environmental history in the 20th century.

I wrote a piece for thuthout about the corrupting power of nuclear weapons on science.

roadside fission by flickr user photoDu.de

I wrote a piece for truth-out.org on the merger of government and industry. Based on my work in EPA and the  current dominance of military contractors, banks, dirty energy companies and other corporations, I discuss how  “The government of the United States is … largely rented to corporations.”

photo by flickr user epSos.de

After traveling in Greece during May and June 2011, I wrote an opinion piece for truthout.org called The Greek Volcano. It’s based on my observations of the building economic and social crisis in my country of birth.

protests in Athens, photo by flickr user odysseasgr

I wrote an article for Truthout about agribusiness and farm workers in the Coachella Valley.

farm workers

One of the benefits of ‘Alexandrian globalization’ was a flourishing of science in the Hellenistic world. I wrote an article for the Australian journal On line opinion about the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient computer discovered by sponge divers in 1900. Over the course of the past hundred years, researchers have unlocked some of the secrets of the mechanism and are rewriting (or rediscovering) the legacy of the Greek science.

the mechanism at the archeological museum, Athens (photo by flickr user aleksandr zykov)

At a time when global linkages for good or bad are a crucial part of our economy, environment, politics, and culture – and when the eyes of the world are on Egypt – I thought it worth considering an earlier model of globalization centered on Alexandria during the Hellenistic era. I contrast the rapacity of corporate globalization and the dogmatism of monotheistic religious expansion with the knowledge and culture based cosmopolitanism of Hellenism.

Alexander the Great (photo by flickr user nick in exsilio

Truthout recently published my thoughts on honeybees and the threats of industrial agriculture.

Here’s an excerpt:

Honeybees have been in terrible straits. A little history explains this tragedy. For millennia, honeybees lived in symbiotic relationship with societies all over the world.

The Greeks loved them. In the eighth century BCE, the epic poet Hesiod considered them gifts of the gods to just farmers. And in the fourth century of our era, the Greek mathematician Pappos admired their hexagonal cells, crediting them with “geometrical forethought.”

However, industrialized agriculture is not friendly to honeybees. In 1974, the US Environmental Protection Agency licensed the nerve gas parathion trapped into nylon bubbles the size of pollen particles. What makes this microencapsulated formulation more dangerous to bees than the technical material is the very technology of the “time release” microcapsule.

This acutely toxic insecticide, born of chemical warfare, would be on the surface of the flower for several days. The foraging bee, if alive after its visit to the beautiful white flowers of almonds, for example, laden with invisible spheres of asphyxiating gas, would be bringing back to its home pollen and nectar mixed with parathion.

photo by Martin LaBar

After working for EPA for 25 years, here’s a glimpse of what I saw:

The EPA came into being in December 1970. President Richard Nixon created this new agency because of the massive failure of the government to protect nature and humans from the unkind touch of toxic chemicals and radiation. But Nixon’s first priority was fighting the war in Vietnam, not environmental protection. So the EPA was put together in a hurry from the failed pieces of larger government organizations, especially the pesticides office of the discredited U.S. Department of Agriculture, which made agribusiness and its lubricants, pesticides, possible.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer just published an opinion piece I wrote on EPA’s flaws and future.

It references the agency’s corporate-captured regulatory approach and  my experience trying to get the pesticide toxaphene banned in the 1980s {that’s the chemical structure above} as well as alternative approaches to safeguarding health and the environment.

It should not take whistle-blowing or congressional intervention to eliminate toxic substances, especially those causing cancer. EPA should adopt a pollution prevention approach that focuses on phasing out carcinogens and polluting technologies.

An early opportunity for the agency in this field is to phase out dry cleaning that uses perchloroethylene, a toxic solvent. California has already adopted a phase-out of perc, citing nontoxic alternative technologies such as commercial wet cleaning.

Mandates to eliminate pollution rather than limit emissions can save lives. This approach can also help transform moribund industries through the application of green chemistry and closed-loop manufacturing. In the case of farming, sustainable agriculture would give us wholesome food while revitalizing rural America.

My son mark helped write the piece.