Angst and anxiety are getting a lot of media attention these days and, as with most current issues, the blame is pointed at the pandemic, global warming, or the war in Ukraine. Mental health is being discussed so much these days you would think it's always been as casual a topic as the common cold, not a shadow malady no one admitted to suffering from not so long ago. And this week we're hurtling into the mid-term election with early voting now upon us, providing angst aplenty for all sides.
Many local, state and national issues have some environmental elements to them, which should always be mentioned in news reporting, but rarely get top billing. The big stars nowadays are inflation and immigration. Leaving out the environmental roots of these problems shields humans from self-blame and prevents them from working on solutions.
Inflation is mostly associated with energy costs, which trigger other costs ranging from food to housing. As long as we-the-people allow our government to subsidize oil giants, who do whatever they want to the environment and damn the human consequences, we-the-people will continue heating the planet with fossil fuels.
As long as climate heat burns up forests and floods crops, we-the-people will see immigrants and refugees, who can no longer grow their own food, running for their lives from countries collapsing physically, politically and economically. The flood of humanity is increasing and no administrations have figured out yet how to handle it, much less grasp what will happen when it doubles.
Separating families, building walls and pulling in-your-face stunts -- like Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis' sending immigrants to other states -- turns humans into political pawns. Strutting around with tail feathers spread to display macho toughness at the expense of human lives on the pretext of teaching other states a lesson should be a criminal offense. Yes, I agree the entire country should indeed share the burdens of immigration, but this kind of treatment is disgracefully racist cruel, and pompous and throws the Golden Rule completely out the window. "There but for the grace of God go I," should be our mantra in this supposedly Christian nation whenever we bring ourselves to think about immigrants and refugees.
Overpopulation, a driving environmental pressure, weakens countries with too many mouths to feed. Countries then become ripe for exploitive, environmentally destructive extraction of their natural resources by powerful countries, ours included, which impoverishes populations.
Then there are wars. The war in Ukraine educated the world about the dependency countries globally have on each other, when we learned that their grain feeds millions who will starve without it. Wars are increasingly being fought because of environmental conditions, something our military has been studying for some time.
These vicious cycles are spinning anxiety throughout our country's shaky democratic system. When election outcomes are denied without any proof of fraud, when the reality of climate change is denied in the face of horrific catastrophes and refugees are denied basic human dignity, we are in deep trouble. What we do not need is to elect those who utilize these denials in order to hold onto power.
In our corner of the state, Rep. Steve Womack, Sen. John Boozman and Rep. Bruce Westerman have all participated in a variety of these denials by maintaining a united front of party power. It's that unity of party votes, no matter what these politicians' individual actions or opinions are, that has stagnated the drastic changes we must make now if we are to survive as a species. They have all three been in office a long time stifling environmental progress by putting party over people.
And then there's Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who's in the race for Lt. Governor. Rutledge has probably never met an EPA rule she didn't try to wrestle to the floor, all the while claiming to want clean air and water (as all these players claim). Now she and some other state attorneys general are arguing that Congress hasn't granted the Department of Transportation the authority to regulate highway greenhouse gas to a zero emissions goal by 2050. Like with abortion, this has become a states rights vs. federal regulations battle while we're choking out here. There's a blind spot in the thinking of those like Rutledge, who prioritize industry's freedom to continue dumping their pollutants at the expense of human and environmental health.
Considering the consequences of these elections, no wonder we are all stressed to the max. At least so far we aren't refugees.