COMMENTARY ON THE ENVIRONMENT:

Moloch Smiles Again

In place of the deep reductions in mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants and garbage incineration planned by the Clinton administration, the second Bush administration will require much smaller reductions and permit polluters to buy and sell 'right to pollute' credits in a bizarre quasi-market. To delight the old horned deity even more, the reductions won't be achieved until 2018.

The problem with the mercury that leaves smokestacks is that it falls out of the sky through rain into soil and water. That's where microbes transform the deposited mercury into a fat-soluble poison, methylmercury, which then accumulates in ever greater concentrations in the tissues of fish, birds and mammals as it works its way up the food chain.

Eventually that methylmercury reaches the most vulnerable human populations: pregnant women and young children. Exposure to the powerful neurotoxin in the womb and in the first years of life may cause mental retardation, deafness, blindness, dysphasia, and cerebral palsy. According the Centers for Disease Control, one in 12 women of childbearing age have levels of mercury in their blood that exceed what the EPA recommends as safe for fetuses.

Fish consumption is the most easily-traced source of the contamination. In an example of the bureaucratic incoherence common to Republican administrations, the FDA is now considering warning women of childbearing age against eating tuna because of mercury contamination at the same time that the EPA is creating a permissive environment for mercury polluters. The FDA previously warned against eating shark, swordfish, and king mackerel because of mercury contamination.

State governments have also seen fit to take action, with 45 states issuing mercury advisories for bodies of water. Astonishingly, 17 states have issued advisories for every body of water within their borders.

In the face of this mounting public health and environmental crisis and the insistence of the federal courts that it implement the provisions of the revised 1990 Clean Air Act, the White House offered up yet another policy that seems reasonable in the corporate boardrooms of Big Energy but not to decent human beings. To be sure, Big Energy can anticipate that some utility rate-payers will endorse the morally repulsive trade-off between public health and profits if they are threatened with higher bills that might follow adoption of emission controls technology. (As Moloch's priesthood surely understood, every oppressive organization finds willing collaborators among its victims.)

If Big Energy sees the silver lining in this public health disaster, what about that absolutely essential junior partner in the Republican coalition, the Christian Right? Remember that the leaders of the Christian Right built their organizations not by talking about religion per se, but by talking about "the family." Only by exploiting anxieties about sex, reproduction, and child-rearing were they able to mobilize such a large, disciplined voting bloc of white Evangelical Protestants concentrated in the South. The result is a vast constituency wholly unresponsive to appeals to social equality, civil liberties, peace, or the environment. They can be moved to rage about abortion and gay marriage, but little else.

However, the threat of mercury contamination might be the environmental issue that penetrates all that carefully wrought ideological indoctrination. The typical Southern Baptist soccer mom is insulated from any guilt that the family wardrobe was manufactured in a Third World sweatshop or that the family SUV is responsible for global warming. But can she ignore the possibility that mercury emissions are poisoning fetuses and babies?

After all, she and her family are not directly implicated in the poisoning and are thus free to engage in moral condemnation, a favorite pastime in the Bible Belt. Libertarian blather about market efficiency ultimately cannot win against the simple insight that giving polluters the right to poison children is vile.

What this adds up to is a potential threat to Republican electoral chances in 2004. No Republican can win the White House without the massed votes of all those Southern Baptist soccer moms. Indeed, without those votes, the GOP would begin to collapse from Virginia to Oklahoma. Revulsion against permissive mercury emissions regulations clearly won't cause white Evangelical Protestants to vote Democratic in 2004, but it might cause enough of them to sit out the election that it tips the balance in favor of the Democrats.

Mercury contamination as a public health and environmental issue doesn't concern national Republicans--now. But a large section of their electoral base might become concerned. The image of innocents fed to the fires of corporate profit may be too compelling to resist.

For more information on mercury pollution, visit this page at Maryland Public Interest Research Group's site.