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POLITICS
Thank the Wealthy for Your Unhealthy Air
Low taxes for them, crappy everything for you
I woke up this morning to an air quality alert on my iPhone. We had opened some windows late last night in hopes of cooling down the house; I closed those and cranked up all three of our air purifiers. We are lucky to have bought those purifiers a few years ago — I imagine they might be hard to find now.
I assume that because the alert mentioned PM2.5 (particulate matter under 2.5 um), this must be from the Canadian wildfires, which our little bit of MA had not been badly affected by so far. Because our air purifiers had already been running on low, I hadn’t noticed any problem while sleeping, but my chest was tight now and my wife will feel worse.
Yet another unnecessary health hazard
Fires are inevitable. Giant, uncontrollable fires are not inevitable because they usually come from our idiotic refusal to thin forests and clear out the underbrush that causes small burns to get out of control.
We don’t do much of this because it costs money. Money means taxes and rich people hate taxes. Rich people control our policies and laws for obvious reasons, so when they are greedy, we all suffer. But the wealthy suffer less because they can fly…
