page 6

On Being a Polluter

by J.Orman

Some kings ones lost their heads over their rights. The diviner the right, the finer the constitutional points made all round. Until today; today when we have current rights which seem so ethereally divine, that at times our constitutional Implications seem weft to the ecosystem's warp.

But the aren't. We have no constitution. The ecosystem continues to ignore us as imperiously as it ignores our constitutional implications. But we still have constitutional points being made all around, we still have a faintly foreign Queen, and of course we all have our heads.

History aside, we, all of us, have today at least 1 common right - our right to pollute. And our right extends throughout our environment, and beside the ecosystem. (Historically, while our term ecosystem is a neologism, our notions behind it are as old as death). But though this right of ours to pollute is ubiquitous, you will never meet a soul who can distinguish pollutants in our environment, from pollutants beside the ecosystem. No-one can. Perhaps this, our inability, is a similar such right as well.

No matter, we all see ourselves, and see our right to pollute. Undoubtedly, pollutants, polluters and polluting are all catch-cries. And how our reactionaries and our radicals yell. Our radicals out-rave our reactionaries, for once. Yet our reactionaries are almost as dumb as our most teutonic ultra conservatives. While our conservatives ply our helm ever on beside the ecosystem.

But amidst our Sargasso Sea of pollutant watching and pollutant counting, no-one need flounder if some facts are kept frontally in mind. Here are three.

Because we pollute inevitably, we could term our polluting a divine right of ours And whether we pollute and produce industrial, municipal or agricultural residue that is our divine right.

Secondly: our technology of observing and measuring pollutants is refined and refining these days. This sophistication could be, so to speak, the chopping block for the heads of both our reaction aries and our radicals. Whatever, this area of technological innovation, does progress at pace.

And a third worthwhile point to bear in mind is that our technology of control has yet to be refined to a comparable degree with our technology of observing and measuring pollutants. This log, so to speak, could be the honed axe of our conservatives. No matter, our technology of control has yet to catch up.

And so head-high, we, foreigners and all, pollute and ignore as ever, the ecosystem: possibly even joyfully so, but certainly polluting divinely.