The profile this month, which I read Saturday morning, is “Fighting With Another Purpose: Veteran Paul Chappell on the Need to End War.” Great, I thought, something soldiery. Then, as is often the case when I’m reading The Sun, I was totally surprised. I can rail on the idiocy of warfare with the best of them, but not with anywhere near the gusto of someone who graduated from West Point, has done time in Iraq and who believes, and adamantly so if the word count is any indication, that the difference between rage and fury is important. Paul Chappell didn’t come right out in the article and say that battle-mangled bodies should be hauled into the elementary schools and put on display for all the impressionable young ones to see, so I’ll say it for him: Battle-mangled bodies should be hauled into the elementary schools and put on display for all the impressionable young ones to see. I wonder what Republican-leaning mothers would have to say about that.
Here, though, is something that Paul Chappell did say. When asked about the role of violence in this country’s culture, one of his comments struck me. “Whenever you repress a natural part of life,” he said, “strange behaviors emerge.”
Speaking of strange behaviors, oil tanks are a problem in Portland. They’re buried in yards all over the town, and apparently, even though they have lingered there for decades (that’s the crux of the problem, so we’re told) they’re hard to find until you decide to sell your house. Having them removed is a right of passage among a certain crowd here, an Eagle Scout badge, if you will, for environmental stewardship. It’s something you can bizz-bazz about with your friends and neighbors in the organic produce section at New Seasons. It’s that awesome.
Although it is ultimately a tale of karma, my brother’s experience a couple of years ago tells the story nicely. He bought his house in 2002. In 2009, before putting the house on the market, the inspection revealed, lo and behold, an oil tank in the back yard. So, in accordance with a rule or a regulation or a law, the yard was torn to hell, a tree was cut down, a fence was removed, all sorts of energy-consuming equipment that’s exempt from emissions regulations was brought in, and $14,000 later the tank was removed. Removed to where nobody seems to know, but, according to local lore, it’s good for the environment. Unfortunately, I could not stop laughing at my brother long enough to ask the most obvious question: How was an oil tank missed seven years earlier when he bought the house? Given the toxicity of a buried – or decommissioned – oil tank, would missing one during an inspection jeopardize the inspector’s legal right to continue inspecting? And where – seriously, where – are these oil tanks, once removed, put to rest?
I am still taking a one-chapter-at-a-time approach to Howard Zinn’s history book. On Sunday, I read Chapter 14, War is the Health of the State, which covers, among other things, some of the rules and regulations that came about before, during and after World War I. While buried oil tanks in the city of Portland were not mentioned, many other alarming things were, and here’s one of them: “(The Espionage Act, thus approved by the Supreme Court, has remained on the books all these years since World War I, and although it is supposed to apply only in wartime, it has been constantly in force since 1950, because the United States has legally been in a ‘state of emergency’ since the Korean War …)”
That sure does explain the current panic, and the emergence of strange behavior, which seem to have eclipsed those oil tanks: carbon monoxide. Although I know a woman who killed herself with it in 1979, carbon monoxide, like many things, is a brand new threat here in Portland, where it constitutes – make no mistake about it – an emergency. HB 3450, otherwise known as the Lofgren and Zander Memorial Act, passed in 2009. The rules of the act, which I read on Monday afternoon, would have been entertaining had they not been so infuriating in terms of sheer vagueness, which makes me think that they were bought and paid for by someone anticipating a nice profit. The rules took effect on December 28, 2010.
So on Sunday afternoon, after reading that we’re in a state of emergency, legally speaking, I heard on a very mainstream radio station – not KBOO – a commercial about the dangers of carbon monoxide. And protecting yourself against it, said the studio-smooth voice, is now the law. Carbon monoxide is a silent killer. It’s deadly and you should be very afraid and make sure you’re safe. And don’t take our word for it, the commercial continued. Then, a woman, a mother who had lost two children. She doesn’t want anyone else to go through what she went through, so she’s sharing her painful story.
So I started to wonder. I’d like to know, for starters, how many people have died each year as a result of carbon monoxide in Oregon. Then I’d like to know how many reported deaths could have been prevented by using common sense. Does the list of the dead include those with furnaces and water heaters that cannot be easily turned on and off? Are those legal? Do those numbers include hoarders whose own shit traps them in their homes? Do the numbers include people who bring the barbecue pit inside during cold spells, fill them with charcoal and fire them up?
I wondered why protecting ourselves against carbon monoxide is now a priority. Is it more dangerous than it used to be? Are there more leaks? If so, why? I wondered – sorry for repeating myself here – how it’s possible that carbon monoxide issues could evade the eye of a professional inspector. I wondered how an individual or organization persuades the legislature to transform an issue of concern into a law. Under what pretext are those discussions initiated and by whom? Do “green” companies contribute to politicians? If so, to whom, and how much? I had a new water heater installed in December, just before the rules of HB 3450 took effect. Is it going to eventually poison me or has it been checked? I know better than to expect a reliable answer from the company from which I bought it. Should I just go ahead and buy a gas mask? It is pretty scary around here, after all.
I’d like to pursue all of those questions and then some. I’d like to write a book about it, actually. I believe our environment is in serious danger, and I think it is, in fact, an emergency. But I think letting the marketing team loose on it to drive profits by first scaring the shit out of people and then offering something that for reasons I’ll never understand loll the thoughtless masses into believing they’re doing something to delay the end of the world is more odious than convincing people that without the latest software they will forget their mother’s birthday. But for now, I took the easiest route possible and e-mailed the radio station’s sales team to find out who had paid for the carbon monoxide commercial. And the answer, prompt and polite, seems to me a great starting point: Home Depot for Kiddie Carbon Monoxide Alarms.
