Haze is not the morning fog we see over the Arkansas River.
It's poison gases (ozone) and tiny particles of carbon from the burning of oil, gas, and coal, making smog. Standing in our yards, we are breathing in these gases and invisible carbon particles, too tiny to cough out.
Remember when you learned to believe in the power of invisible germs to make you sick? It is hard to get worked up about something so small you can't see (the gases and particles that create the haze), but haze definitely makes large numbers of people sick. Also, haze in our parks and wildlife conservation areas defeats the point of tourism to those areas; the estimated loss of tourism revenue through 2020 is estimated at $18 million a year for Arkansas. One can stand on a high bluff of the Buffalo National River and, because of haze, barely see where the river disappears around a bend. The same is true in our Caney Creek Wilderness Area and in wilderness areas in Missouri.
By heating and cooling our homes with coal or gas, driving our cars, and using our electrical devices, we create haze. Haze particles and toxic gases travel from power plants into the air, through our noses to our lungs and bloodstreams, where they irritate and narrow blood vessels, causing asthma, heart attacks, strokes, and many breathing disorders including lung cancer.
Arkansas is No. 3 in the nation in asthma rates, and our leading causes of death are heart disease and lung cancer. This is what awaits smokers and non-smokers alike, because we live in a world full of haze.
Sadly and unnecessarily, about 90 Arkansans a year die from complications brought on by haze, and about 2,200 more are made chronically ill from it and will die eight years earlier than their life expectancy. These are our friends and family members. My uncle died of chronic obstructive lung disease: He never smoked, nor did he live with a smoker. I will never forget the terror on his face as he was dying and struggling for breath. My aunt lived under the plume of the Turk coal plant for five years and now has lung cancer. Will you or your loved ones be next?
Worldwide, about 9 million people die early from pollution each year, according to engineer and environmentalist Richard Fuller in the Lancet. In the U.S., about 200,000 of us die each year from haze, according to atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Texas Tech Center on Climate Change, and an evangelical Christian who speaks to many churches.
In a profit-promoting move, coal and gas utility executives have persuaded our Arkansas attorney general to sue the EPA to slow the pace of Arkansas' compliance with the carbon and the sulfurous and nitrogen oxide reductions in the regional haze rule of the Clean Air Act. The big problem with that is the haze rule and the national Clean Air Act, further implemented by the Clean Power Plan, are our only protection from pollution-caused diseases and disastrous warming of our planet.
Lawmakers talk about reducing the cost of health care, but they fail to deal with the root causes: polluted air and water. Instead, they have plans to kick 60,000 people off Medicaid. Regulation of polluters is the only way to make polluters stop polluting. Voluntary measures to reduce pollution have proven ineffective, and reducing those eligible for medical care is the wrong solution to the cost problem.
Instead of doubling down on freedoms for polluters and so-called "tort reform" which lets corporations off lightly for neglecting their duties to the public, we should be doubling down to limit carbon-based energy and funding more clean energy projects like solar and wind and storage systems.
Richard Mason, in his opinion piece three weeks ago in Perspective, got it right: the U.S. economy can afford to clean up the air and water, and we need to be doing it if we want a human habitat that is livable in 50 years. The EPA reports the direct cost-benefit ratio of cleaning up air to be 1:3, plus the economic well-being of U.S. families is better with post-1990s clean air programs than without them. In Miami, the lower-level streets are flooding at the rate of one inch every three years, and the city leaders are spending $4 billion to raise streets and build levees.
In addition to the flooding of homes, crops, and other businesses, climate change results in problems with growing reliable food supplies. Just look at the $200 billion the last two hurricanes (Harvey and Irma) have cost taxpayers, according to Fortune. Look at the serious droughts in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas which have cost farmers and taxpayers billions in the last few years, as the average ground temperature has risen to record levels.
Crops will have to change in many states as temperatures rise, and by 2050, about a third of our birds that depend on certain seeds will go hungry. The pests birds control won't be controlled. When average ground temperatures rise four to eight degrees, you won't recognize the place you live in, it will change so much!
We should be worried enough to voice our opinions to our president, members of Congress, and our state Legislature. The Republican agenda, headed by Scott Pruitt, is to take apart the Environmental Protection Agency, removing essential protections we have taken for granted since the 1970s so corporate pollution can run amok without having to act responsibly towards the public. This can be stopped, but not if everyone goes on with life as usual.
Other concrete steps we can take: Insist on a national price on carbon pollution through a carbon fee and dividend, a check mailed back to all working households with which we can improve our homes, choose renewable energy on our bills, or buy clean energy equipment. We can ask our U.S. representatives to join the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus. If Trump wants to unify his people, he could start by committing to cutting carbon in the U.S. and saving us from an uninhabitable planet in 50-100 years: Yes, this is soon! Ask the president to honor our commitment to the Paris Agreement.
Send an email to Becky Keo, director of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, asking for full cooperation with the air quality protections in the Haze Reduction rule of the Clean Air Act. If more people speak up, haze-related diseases and associated expenses for insurance, doctor bills, missed workdays, hospitalizations, and funerals will go down. Here's her address: www.adeq.state.ar.us/diroffice/forms/questions-intro.aspx.
Dina Nash, who lives in Maumelle, is a retired college teacher and social worker, advocating for the health benefits of clean air and clean water. Email her at DinaCNash2014@gmail.com.
Editorial on 03/04/2018