All My Sons

My brief acting career began (and ended) at thirteen, when I played the character of a boy in Arthur Miller's drama "All My Sons." The play concerns the boy's father, Joe Keller, who engages in war profiteering on shoddy airplane parts during World War II, and whose oldest son crashes his own plane in remorse over his father's deeds. At the play's climax, the father shoots himself in shame.

Miller's play feels very dated now -- not because we no longer see that kind of profiteering, but because the profiteers in today's America have lost the sense of shame that led to Joe Keller's suicide.

Look at Halliburton. Already widely derided for shoddy work in Iraq, Halliburton and its subsidiaries were highlighted in a recent report for spending more than half of the money they received on overhead. Halliburton also provided contaminated water to U.S. bases in Iraq. But is the company being prosecuted, as Joe Keller was in WWII? Nope. Instead they are getting so many contracts as a result of the Bush Administration's oil and gas leasing giveaways in the Rocky Mountains that I was told in Denver a few days ago that in Pinedale, Wyoming, there are "Halliburton traffic jams."

Then there's BP. We now know that during the period when the company was pretending it didn't know that corrosion threatened the integrity of its pipeline system in Alaska, it created a "chilling atmosphere" to stop workers from reporting the problem -- in one case threatening to fire an employee for making a formal complaint. And this all occurred after BP had been placed on felony probation for previous cover-ups and reprisals against workers.

A year ago, in the wake of Katrina, lots of promises were made by the President standing under the (specially trucked in) klieg lights illuminating St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans' Jackson Square. This week the Army Corps of Engineers quietly revealed what those promises really meant. Instead of restoring the wetlands that would protect the city from future storms, the federal government is going to allow developers to destroy them without even the formality of asking for a permit. "It's unethical, illegal, immoral, unsustainable and they're simply doing it to make the fat cats richer faster," said Derrick Evans, executive director of a Gulfport, Miss., community group that plans to fight the proposal by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

And reports are trickling out that displaced refugees are now being hit for utility bills, sometimes for thousands of dollars, for periods when they were not even in their homes and in some cases where no power was even available, forcing these people to endure expensive legal appeals, pay fraudulent bills, or see their power shut off.

There is a creeping culture of corruption -- it's not confined to Washington, DC -- but it is empowered by the message, which originated with Ronald Reagan, that "greed is good."

A note to my readers: This is my last post before I hit the road for a final campaign swing -- Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland -- four days of it in the company of Leo Gerard, President of the United Steelworkers. And I'm not alone. Many of the Sierra Club's staff and volunteers have left their usual postings to help with these elections. Field Director Bob Bingaman is in New Mexico, Deputy Conservation Director Greg Haegele is in Cincinnati, Deputy Field Director Bill Arthur is in Washington state, NE Regional Field Director Mark Bettinger is in Pennsylvania, and Appalachian Regional Director Glen Besa is in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Overall the Club is engaged in a major way in seven Senate races, five gubernatorial contests, and 19 House races with staff and resources. That's more than double the number of races we expected to be able to influence only a year ago.

Since I'm on the road and away from my usual information flow, I won't be updating you on what's happening with the climate and with solutions to global warming -- and queries to our offices might not get answered promptly. This year's elections are the thing we can all do, right now, for the next week, about global warming and other environmental concerns. Please, as you did in 2004, call your second cousin in Florida, your college roommate in Indiana, your business partner in Idaho (yes, Idaho has a close congressional race this year), and all your local friends and relations. Tell them that their vote matters to you, even if they don't think the politicians are listening.

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This Is What the Scientists Told Us Global Warming Would Be Like

NASA reports that the vast sheet of ice that covers Greenland is shrinking fast -- an annual loss equal to six years of average water flow in the entire Colorado River!

And This Is What We Can Do About It

Instead of building a new coal plant, Associated Electric Cooperatives in Missouri built a 27-turbine wind farm in Gentry County, to meet the needs Columbia, MO and the rural co-ops. AECI was encouraged in this decision by four Sierra Club volunteers, Claus Wawrzinek, Ron McLinden, Susan Brown, and Antonio Cutolo-Ring. The wind farm has a total capacity of 57 megawatts and is very popular in Gentry County because it will bring about a dozen permanent jobs and about $4,000 per turbine to the farmer whose land is leased.