Three weeks after a chemical bomb, East Palestine is an environmental and political hot zone.
One look at the turbid cloud boiling above East Palestine, Ohio, and you knew this was bad. Really bad. Railway cars were on fire, burning thousands of gallons of vinyl chloride. That, in turn, created a choking gas, phosgene, so potent it was a weapon of mass destruction on the battlefields of World War I.
Death by gas
The short-term effect of breathing burning vinyl chloride causes pulmonary edema, emphysema, and often a horribly painful death as you drown from the fluid building up in your lungs. There are also chronic effects of exposure, reproductive and developmental effects, and of course, liver cancer, brain and lung cancers, lymphoma, and leukemia.
It only takes a minute to Google the effects of burning vinyl chloride, which seems about the amount of time it took Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine and officials from the derailed train’s owner, Norfolk Southern Railroad, to agree to this “controlled chemical release,” a euphemism for this vinyl bonfire that resulted in a mushroom cloud almost as big as the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
This death cloud also triggered the first conservative environmental rebellion of the climate age. Three weeks after the derailment of this fetid, pustulating toxic stew, East Palestine had become both an ecological and political hot zone.
This time God cannot be blamed
Blazing anger has erupted deep in one of the reddest of red political regions in America, Northeast Ohio. Here, Donald Trump won 70 percent of the electorate in the last presidential election.
This death cloud also triggered the first conservative environmental rebellion of the climate age. Three weeks after the derailment of this fetid, pustulating toxic stew, East Palestine had become both an ecological and political hot zone.
What is surprising is the anger is over an environmental issue. This time it is the hand of man, not God, who is to blame. The decision to burn the chemicals cannot, like a hurricane or tornado, be dismissed as “weather.”
Tucker Carlson channels Greenpeace
The new environmental awareness, some may say cynical awareness, has even infected Fox News, a primary source of news in East Palestine. With the environmental fervor and rhetoric generally associated with a young Greenpeace campaigner, Tucker Carlson, the conservative broadcasting superstar on Fox, now openly calls East Palestine an environmental disaster.
However, Carlson explicitly says this is not a climate-related disaster. (No one, even Democrats, likes to use that word outside of Washington, D.C., New York, or San Francisco). But call it what you want — environmental or climate disaster, it is the same thing – an unexpected human-manufactured environmental shock that has rattled the lives and politics of a profoundly conservative, climate change-denying electorate in the heart of America.
It may also be a harbinger of reshaping the American political landscape as America’s most conservative voters gain new environmental awareness. This matters because it means that environmental issues could have a meaningful impact on the looming 2024 Presidential election.
The new environmental awareness, some may say cynical awareness, has even infected Fox News, a primary source of news in East Palestine.
Toxic shock in East Palestine
The fight is on for the hearts and minds of these new conservatives in toxic shock. Both Republicans and Democrats are rushing to outdo themselves as champions of the “marginalized people” of East Palestine.
This, of course, is done at the expense of the other. Republicans are accusing the Democrats of ignoring the plight of forgotten flyover conservatives. President Biden could find time to fly to war-torn Ukraine, but not Ohio. Can you imagine, Carlson said last week, “if there had been mushroom clouds like this over Georgetown?”
The Democrats are blaming the Republicans for supporting ‘pay to play’ regulations that lead to 1,000 train derailments a year,’ says the New Republic magazine.
He’s back!
The big early winner is Donald Trump. The ever-populist savvy Trump instantly sniffed an opportunity and descended on the shell-shocked community. Trump is tapping into the deep anger, helplessness, and frustration in a community that, once again, feels exploited by outside forces. In the past weeks, they have been forced from their homes, their streams polluted with an oily sheen, and their pets are dying. Parents are freaking out about how all this will affect their kids. “This looks like a nuclear winter,” one guest told Fox’s Carlson. “We nuked this town for chemicals, and this is what they are getting.”
Tracks to destruction
There is one thing both Democrats and Republicans can agree deserve most of the blame, Norfolk Southern and their toxic enabler, Gov. DeWine. Just days before the accident, the railroad announced record profits and promised to “return” tens of billions of dollars to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends. Last week, at a Barclay investor conference, Norfolk Southern CFO Mark George thought it was all kind of funny, starting his presentation with a chuckle about the “topic du jour,” before getting serious and reassuring analysts it would not impact the long-term profitability of the company.
Bipartisan blame
The ugly reality is both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for this mess and for most of the climate-related business issues. After years of spending close to a billion dollars on lobbying Congress, the railway industry has achieved exactly what it wanted — bipartisan support for an efficient, highly profitable business that has succeeded in cutting regulatory corners, perpetuating nasty labor conditions, and avoiding unnecessary costs like investing in brakes that could have prevented the accident.
The big early winner is Donald Trump. The ever-populist savvy Trump instantly sniffed an opportunity and descended on the shell-shocked community.
Until East Palestine, the consolidated rail industry was on a shareholder roll. Investors cheered as America’s seven freight railroads succeeded in moving increasing amounts of toxic chemicals while decreasing its labor force by 28 percent, increasing the length of trains, and reporting record profits.
America’s seven railroad barons were so confident that last December, they threatened to force a Christmas labor strike on America’s still fragile post-Covid economy because its train conductors dared to demand sick days. That forced Biden to ban the strike. Ironically, Norfolk Southern quietly backtracked on the issue last week and accepted labor demands for the additional sick days.
Now what?
The great question now is whether the aftermath of this toxic Armageddon will end up more like a school mass shooting or BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, where it was back to business as usual after a bit of sound and fury. Or will it be more like the near-nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island and toxic spills at Love Canal in Buffalo, New York? Both events forever changed the course of the nuclear industry and environmental regulation.
This depends on the depth of anger and new environmental awareness in the Red states. Will voters finally wake up to the ecological, social, and governance hellscape they are now in?
Conservative Ohio Senator JD Vance thinks so. The disaster, he says, is a “failure of both big business — the train operator — and the federal government.” A new generation of conservatives, he says, are “very skeptical of each.” Are climate-aware Democrats ready to embrace their newfound environmental cousins in the Midwest?
