Greed Like An Illness

Public Service Announcement: You cannot, as an individual, do enough self-care to deal with greed-caused disasters assaulting your health and wellness. Self-care is necessary and important but is not a substitute for community care.

The environmental tragedy unfolding right now in East Palestine, Ohio, is precisely the type of situation I’m referring to when I say we must (must, must, must!) course correct toward community care. The memes I made below for this note are not making fun of the people in that community. They are pointing out the absurdity of the self-care message when we, as a society, face challenges like this one.

What lever can any individual in the East Palestine community pull that will meaningfully address what Norfolk Southern (with help from the federal government) has exposed them to? The only one I can think of is to move away as quickly as possible. And they’ll need to go far because a disaster like this one isn’t easily contained. But guess what? That option is likely out of reach for most people there. The median individual income in East Palestine is under $28k/year, and moving is not cheap.

Essential question: How would this situation be handled differently if it had occurred in Montecito, CA, the wealthiest suburb in the US?

Original photo by Gene Puskar/AP

Jesus Hubert Humphrey Christ! (Here’s a non-satirical Wikipedia entry about the H in Jesus H. Christ, if you need a little break.)

We are not out here struggling to stay healthy and well, because we weren’t disciplined enough in our yoga practices. We’re not struggling to stay healthy and well because we forgot to take our probiotics last Wednesday or had two teaspoons of sugar in our tea yesterday instead of one. We need community care to address (and hopefully prevent) the multiple crises harming us all.

Now that I have that off my chest let’s back up and talk about what happened in East Palestine. There’s something you should know about me first, though. In my 20s, I had a Department of Transportation hazmat certification. I worked for two companies helping coordinate the shipping, both nationally and internationally, of hazardous materials for use in various industries. That was almost 20 years ago, and I am by no means a hazmat expert and certainly not a chemist, but I am familiar with the regulations required for transport (including via rail).

What Happened?

On February 3^rd, a Norfolk Southern train derailed close to East Palestine, OH. The train was carrying 150 cars, and 20 had hazardous materials. When the event occurred, 38 cars came off the tracks, and of the 38, 11 were those with hazardous materials. The main hazardous material in those cars was something called vinyl chloride. Vinyl chloride is a colorless gas with a boiling point of 7°F and is used to make PVC pipe, among other things. It is a known carcinogen, and according to the Environmental Protection Agency, “ . . . there is no safe level of exposure.”

On February 6^th, residents were evacuated from the area because officials were concerned about the rising temperatures inside the derailed cars, which could lead to a massive explosion. They decided to release 1.1 million pounds of vinyl chloride into burn pits that had been dug and then start a controlled burn. The burn created a black smoke plum that reached high into the atmosphere.

When vinyl chloride is burned, it produces hydrogen chloride and phosgene when burned. Hydrogen chloride dissolves in water and becomes hydrochloric acid, which can become a component of acid rain. Phosgene was used in WWI as a chemical warfare agent. All of this is very bad for humans, wildlife, and the environment. There were also other, at first unknown hazardous materials on the train, all with their own negative impacts. The EPA published a full list of them here.  

On February 8^th, residents were told they could return home. Many found dead pets, are reporting seeing a film on their water supply, and some report headaches, nausea, and other symptoms. They are also experiencing the mental toll of the whole disaster, including long-term health concerns. Environmental clean-up and monitoring are ongoing.

Original photo by Gene Puskar/AP

What caused it?

Many decisions caused this train derailment, but I want to focus on the underlying issue that led to those decisions. Greed.

I don’t mean greed like a character flaw. I mean greed like an illness. I think greed on this level causes cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are inaccurate thought patterns that put one out of touch with reality.

• Greed as an illness might, for instance, lead executives at a company worth $52 billion (I’m writing this on 2/17, as of today, Norfolk Southern has lost about $3 billion in stock market value, meaning at the time of the derailment, they were worth $55 billion) to spend more money on stock buy-backs, than on needed infrastructure improvements. The craving for more money distorts the reality that train axles or braking systems need maintenance.

• Or, greed as an illness might lead an executive team, directed by a CEO with a net worth of $11 million, to haul trains that are overly long and heavy, causing complications with braking. The craving for more money distorts the reality of inertia and mass, a basic physics lesson most adults understand.

• In both these instances, a company might decide to give, along with other rail industry donors, $6 million to GOP campaigns in 2017, helping “convince” the Trump administration to rescind regulations on maintenance, especially on braking systems and size/weight of a train. And since that worked so well, that company might keep allocating resources to political campaigns or lobbying, like the $1.8 million they spent last year. After all, greed leads to short-term thinking and makes spending a few million on avoiding regulation seem worthwhile.

• Greed might also lead a company that made a record $12.7 billion in 2022 (up 14% from 2021), to go with a "logic-defying" interpretation of the law rather than a commonsense interpretation and not properly label the hazardous materials on their train and adequately inform the communities that the train was passing through. There’s that distortion of reality. (This one particularly bothers me because it’s what I used to be responsible for, ensuring hazmat was labeled appropriately for transport.)

• And sometimes greed might lead a company and political leaders into thinking the safety of rail workers and communities pales compared to keeping the money-making machine going. Despite obvious issues, as pointed out here by Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, “The massive reduction in the workforce, attendance policies that encourage people to come to work when they’re sick or exhausted, lack of access to [paid] leave, the stress that is constantly put on workers because of how lean the workforce has become, it creates a negative culture in terms of safety,” Biden and Congress joined forces with rail companies last November to end a rail worker strike over such issues.

Notably, Norfolk Southern donated to more Democrats than Republicans in 2022.  

Original photo Screengrab/Twitter/@ lauren_linder

Shifting The Conversation Upriver

At the end of January, I wrote a note to you all, arguing that shame is an uncomfortable but appropriate emotion for some circumstances. A few weeks later,

Robert Reich

also wrote here on Substack about the power shame has in helping us enforce protective social norms and how we’ve arrived at a moment in our country where those inflicting the most harm have absolutely no sense of shame and plenty of people actually celebrating them for it.

This railroad disaster, which will have long-term impacts we can’t even begin to predict, is the culmination of greed completely unchecked by shame. The ultra-wealthy are not experiencing the same reality that the rest of us are; they’re insulated from experiencing shame about their actions. (Not to mention shielded from experiencing consequences for their actions. All of us can expect to go to prison for endangering a whole community, but what we deem a “crime” means the leaders of this company will face no such consequence.)

When I spoke to a friend about this the other day, he said (pun intended), “Totally agree. I wish there were something we could do to stop this runaway train . . .” I think one act of community care is shifting how we discuss it. (Remember when I said I want to help move the conversation “upriver.”) Lots of us agree that greed in our country is problematic, but we need all of us willing to point to it as the root cause of an illness that distorts reality, leaving people willing to destroy our air, water, soil, and communities to feed their craving.

I’m so sorry for the people most immediately impacted, the community of East Palestine, but another act of community care is shifting our understanding of who is harmed by this level of greed and get fucking enraged. It’s absurd to think the individual citizens of East Palestine should navigate this independently. They need us to feel how we would if our children were breathing toxic air. The truth is that we’re all affected, sooner or later. As Bayard Rustin, a civil rights leader and advisor to MLK, said, “We are all one – and if we don’t know it, we will learn it the hard way.”

One Small Thing

One Small Thing is our call to a manageable community care step. In the spirit of the “slow, small, simple” approach that I am advocating for as we build this internet neighborhood, with each Monday note, I’ll share a simple action you can take to help (including sometimes helping yourself).

One Small Thing (for 2/20/23): There are several fundraisers I found helping the people of East Palestine, but The Brightside Project has a history in the community and was started specifically to address the poverty and other challenges of the children there. Take five minutes and donate $5 here.

If you are among the most immediately impacted, this Instagram post from my friend, Lara Adler, an environmental toxins expert, has some thoughts on supporting your health.

Let’s keep each other accountable! Leave a heart emoji in the comments after you do the One Small Thing. And let me know your thoughts on greed. Do you think it’s helpful for us to shift how we understand and discuss it?