Before the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1969, we were treated with interesting spots on the evening news. In 1969 the Cuyahoga River, in beautiful downtown Cleveland, burned. When one approached Gary on I-65, the sky was orange from the effluents of the steel mills.

    Yesterday, in response to my blog about the environment, Mr. Wheeler claimed "you posit an extreme example from your childhood days as that somehow Santorum would like to usher back to relive those days when few controls existed." This inaccurately summarizes the facts and my blog. I gave an example of pollution that I witnessed in the 1960s (and 1970s and 1980s, for that matter). Continental Steel’s pollution later merited its treatment by the EPA Superfund. The pollution Continental spewed into the air, water, and ground was extensive and real. Taxpayers footed the bill for the cleanup. The shareholders of the corporate entity enjoyed profits from Continental cutting costs on pollution control. (Those shareholders could have avoided the eventual bankruptcy into which the corporation finally descended. One could argue it is a "free" market, after all. A minority shareholder action was brought, but about the unfairness of the original purchase of Continental. See, Schlick v. Penn-Dixie Cement Corp., 507 F.2d 374 (2d Cir. 1974).) Once Continental closed, the shareholders were not, and could not be, tagged personally with any wrongdoing. They were protected by the corporate veil. Only the workers suffered setbacks. Pensions funds had been raided. 

   I did not argue a causal link between the pollution that I saw outside Continental and Santorum’s position on the environment. What I saw years ago was addressed by Federal statutes and Federal authorities acting under legislation first passed in 1969.

   I addressed Santorum’s remarks concerning the environment. Santorum criticized President Obama as believing in a phony theology. Santorum said The President holds a world view in which he elevates the Earth above man. Santorum said the Earth is here for "man’s" use.

   Santorum has favored rollbacks of environmental regulations. His point that the Earth exists for human use is ill-considered. The Earth exists. We live here. My example of disease during the Civil War was to make the point tat if we screw up our environment, we are the ones who suffer. This is not "worship" of the Earth. It is recognition of survival.

   As to specifics about Santorum believing it is okay to lay waste to our lands and our waters, I would refer you to Santorum speeches in Ohio where he favors aggressively drilling for oil and natural gas and discusses "radical enviromentalism." Others? Bachmann said the EPA would be "padlocked" if she were elected president. Ron Paul advocates using tort law to reign in polluters. This last from the same party that decries trial lawyers and over-zealous courts. So, if the final days arrive, I think Santorum would have accelerated them. There would be rivers of a lot of bad things---mercury, PCBs, oil by-products, maybe even medical waste, like blood. The rivers of blood would be here, though, not in Egypt.

   Finally, I am neither intellectually dishonest nor are you brutally honest (much less "too brutally honest"). A belief in the "end days" is a belief that a deity has willed the end of the Earth.

   And one more point, really quickly—I never have "masked" my "atheism."

   If one embraces tat view of the way we all go, then it makes sense to "drill, baby, drill" and let the corporations that fund a lot of the candidates—from both sides of the aisle—happy.

   I will save my comments on Dominionism for another column as that will be rather expansive.

Paul (Ogden, as distinguished from Wheeler),

   Richard Nixon signed into law the chief statutes by which we attempt to keep clean and regulate our environment. He was a crook (bad), given to drinking martinis (why? I never got that, why people like martinis), and drinking those martinis (sometimes) while watching "Patton." Cambodia was, according to some White House aides, the invasion aunched by martinis. But he also was the man who acted to protect the environment. He was a Republican. Aren’t you going to stand by your man?

   As for the rest of your points, we shall discuss those this Saturday, March 10, 2012, at 11 am at Big Hat Books, 6510 Cornell Avenue. We shall discuss global climate change.