Doug Dowd

The

two cities are Bologna and Venice. The environmental problems threatening both,

despite well-publicized "remedies," have not improved but worsened in

recent decades; the cities, their problems, and their failure to deal with them

exemplify all too well what is happening all over the world. For purposes of

"qualification," I begin with a note on my experience in Italy.

I

first went there, for a year, in the late 1960s, to study the economic history

of certain Italian cities, and to teach in Bologna. There were many return

visits in the ’70s and ’80s. In the mid-’80s I married a Bolognese; subsequently

I have lived in Bologna about half of every year. Over those several decades I

have of course visited much of the rest of Italy; most often, Venice. What has

been happening this year prompted this essay.

Both

physically and culturally, Bologna and Venice are beautiful, Venice exquisitely

so. What are now major problems for both had just begun to emerge in the 1960s;

in the all too foreseeable future, disaster awaits. Their troubles are seemingly

quite different — Bologna gasping for air, Venice near to drowning — but their

origins are the same: the "triumph" of contemporary industrial

capitalism, led and shaped by the USA.

Bologna

was generally seen as the best-run city in Europe ten to fifteen years ago; now

it sits in the bottom half of that spectrum, shoved there by its foul air and

its foul politics — outdone in both, sadly, by Milan, Naples, Palermo and Rome.

The lethal air comes from under- or uncontrolled industrial pollutants mixed

with the CO2 from always more numerous motor vehicles. Linked with that, in

recent years Bologna’s politics have swerved from Left to Right, marching in

lockstep with an always more feverish consumerism. The latter (not, of course,

only in Bologna or Italy), in addition to creating what has become a fanaticism

for owning and using motor vehicles, has also substantially eroded a once

notable Italian sense of solidarity; its place has been taken by the successes

of the "consciousness industry" in leading people "to want what

they don’t need and not to want what they do." (as Paul Baran once put it).

If there is anything left of civic consciousness, its energies are dissipated in

rooting for the local soccer team — the Italian equivalent of the U.S. passions

for NY-Mets/Jets, SF-49ers/Giants, et al. (Except that, more’s the worse, we’ve

never had much civic consciousness, let alone solidarity, to erode.)

The

"acqua alta" that floods Venetian streets from high tides did not

begin recently, but what was once very rare is now very common: two to three

years ago it was occurring a stunning 100+ days a year; a few years from now

those will be remembered as the palmy days. Setting off for a weekend in Venice

recently, expected high water led us to postpone for a day. The day after was

dry, we went, and Venice was its usual marvelous self; but we left hurriedly the

next morning, as water was breaching the pavements.

To

describe Venice as "marvelous"is to refer not only to its

architecture, its canals, its museums, its food, etc.; it is marvelous — and

unique — also in that it is the only city in the world where there are NO motor

vehicles (on land); if present trends continue, one day there will be no people.

Venice is not "sinking," as the news misleadingly puts it; the sea is

rising.

In

the face of these severe problems, what have the two cities done? They have

adjusted; and in this they are representative of the world as a whole. Thus, in

Venice, in the middle of most streets there are now what are called "duckboards,"stacked

upside down. They are wooden "paths" to walk on, about two feet in

width and in height, easily placed rightside up when the waters rise. This year,

something new has been added: now, all over Venice, one may find shops that sell

pullover rubber boots (of the consistency of rubber gloves), just in case the

tidal forecast was overly optimistic. They cost little, are used just once, and

thrown away. Soon, they say, the duckboards will be made broader and higher (and

be left standing rightside up). Also soon, one hopes not too soon, Venice will

be under water more than half the year; some day…. Meanwhile: adjust.

The

regular flooding of Venice is caused by global warming, of course, not by the

activities of Venetians. Notwithstanding, the Venetian authorities have sought

to do something about the problem. Thus there have been several years of

squabbling over a multibillion ($$$, not lire) project to put down some kinds of

"gates" to hold off or divert the tides. The project has bogged down,

not because of its unworkability (according to experts), but because of

rivalrous factions who would profit more from some other (also unworkable)

project.

In

Bologna the authorities have for years dealt with the motor vehicle/air problem:

no personal car use inside the city (ha!), no cars at all on certain days (ha!),

and, two years ago, unleaded gasoline and emission controls required (at last!).

The air stinks and tastes of car fumes always more: in November, 2000 the

official reports were for the worst air ever, in a rising trend. Also in

November, as much of Italy suffered from disastrous and unprecedented floods, an

Italian meteorological center reported that the rains this fall had, for the

first time, become like the monsoons of Asia; and that for five cities, among

them Venice, rainfall rates this year were the double of the annual average for

the preceding 30 years.

As

for the air, it is relevant — shocking would be the better word — to note that

the deadliness of the air mostly harms the very young and the very old, both

traditionally treasured in Bologna (as in all of Italy); wittingly or no,

Italians’ love affair with their automobiles (40 million for a population of 53

million, plus countless trucks and many millions of two-wheeled polluters) has

come into deadly competition with that familial love. Step by step with

restrictive measures to lower pollution by motor vehicles, their use has

heightened: the tightly and often double-parked streets have led increasingly to

the gradual and official transformation of once beautiful piazzas into parking

lots, and the horrific buzzing and gas emitting motorini and motocicli now park

in row after row under the once beautiful porticoed sidewalks: adjust!

So

much for the deteriorating lungs and hearts of numberless people over the globe;

then add this: is it not likely that, some day soon, there will be vehicle

gridlocks in Bologna — and in Milan, Rome, Florence…, Manhattan, London,

Mexico City, Beijing, Moscow, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg….?

The

only way for gridlocks to become unlocked is with cranes; so, just as there are

duckboards all over Venice, it is not joking to ask: Will there be cranes at all

major intersections in all major cities? And like the duckboards, would the

cranes — which of course cannot get through a gridlock — not come to be left

in place? And, as with the prison-industrial complex, mightn’t we expect the

crane industry to lobby against "cures" going beyond that

"adjustment"?

In

that dark future Venice will come to be known only through books and old

photographs; already by this time, Bologna, once known as "the buckle on

the red belt of Italy," has installed a rightwing mayor, and he and his

cronies are busily unadjusting what little was done by their relatively

enlightened predecessors.

………………… 

The

tides are rising and heavy rains fall all over the world, while the air is

already or is becoming lethal. Most of the damage from heat-trapping gases is

done by the top industrial countries, 25 percent of it by the USA alone: with

only 4 percent of the world’s people, we have three times the per capita

responsibility of any of the other rich countries, and, to boot, ours has the

largest population by far. After the USA, Russia and China lead that race to

hell.

Back

in 1997 the so-called Kyoto Protocol was enacted; it was aimed at cutting 1990

emissions levels of the leading countries by 5 percent by 2012. It remains

unsigned. It is universally agreed that the USA has effectively blocked that

agreement, by stalling and dealing — "dealing" to sign if and only if

it can meet the requirements by doing something other than cutting emissions: 1)

by counting as reducing emissions what our existing or new forests do (or could

do, many years after their planting) in absorbing them, and, 2) by using the

U.S. invention of buying and selling "rights to pollute" (call for

George Orwell!) absent any essential limiting/enforcing regulations.

These

U.S. proposals, opposed by the Europeans, have essentially made Kyoto a memory,

despite a last ditch attempt in November. At a special UN meeting of about 180

nations at The Hague, desperate attempts were made to frame an agreement that

would allow Kyoto — whose 5 percent aim was, in any case, about one-tenth of

what is a minimally safe goal — to become real. However. Under the headline

"Climate Talks Fail Amid Deadlock" (NYT, November 25, 2000) we read

"A bitter wrangle between the European Union and the United States over how

to curb greenhouse emissions brought a U.N. climate conference to an ignominious

end today."

Öh,

sure, a few big corporations (such as Ford, Sunoco, Du Pont and Texaco) have

recently announced that they think they can make profits by making

environmentally acceptable technologies; that was accompanied by a statement of

one of their leaders that "this has nothing to do with altruism."

Indeed it does not. And that’s the catch. "Altruism" in this context

would mean doing something to save the environment in order to save the

environment, and not because you can make a profit from it. And if you can’t? Do

these guys have some other planet to move to when this one can no longer support

life? Are they all childless, as well as heedless?

More

to the point: are there enough profitable ways to deal with global warming,

ozone depletion, water and soil contamination, the destruction of forests…,

and to do so in time and everywhere? To be sure a few big companies, even some

hundreds of big and small companies, can make money with new technologies, etc.;

but the fact remains that the numberless changes in technology and in behavior

required to save the planet entail also numberless efforts that will be helpful

but not be profitable; moreover, they will require much in the way of

coordination, subsidization, regulations and planning. And thank you very much,

we do not want the giant companies, who, seeking profits, created the problems,

to do our planning for us.

The

wrong things they know how to do very well, and continue to do. In the very

period since 1997 as Kyoto has been under debate, the auto industry in the USA

announced that it must and that it plans to increase its annual sales by three

percent; and the hoped-for markets (and new investments) are critically outside

the rich countries: item: in the past month, China has reported its expectation

to have 170 million automobiles running about before too long — although

Beijing and Shanghai are already among the worst polluted cities on the face of

the earth.

Brooding

in England in 1925, T. S. Eliot produced the famous dirge that begins

We

are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

…………….

Shape

without form, shade without colour

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion….

And that closes with the unforgettable

This

is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

There

will be whimpers to be sure, even more than Eliot expected, for we are always

more infantile as a people; but to those, add gasps and gurgles, gridlocks and

screaming — and, given the way the world now spins, probably a very big bang.

But all that is not likely to happen for many years.

Meanwhile…

Altogether now: adjust! And mourn, if it suits you.

Or

organize?