* * *
Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61"
--Bob Dylan, Highway
61 Revisited
This morning on KQED radio I heard a mother tell an interviewer that, although her child had asthma, she believes clean air is too expensive.
“We all want cleaner air,” she said. “My son has asthma, I
get it. We all want to work on policies that will improve the environment. But
the question is at what cost?”
When I heard the mother – Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen of
Modesto – say those words, I did a mental double-take. God asked Abraham to kill his
son, but a lesser god, the almighty dollar, only asks us to give our children
asthma.
When the time comes that there are more "Spare the Air" days than "clean air" days, will we still think it's worth it? Is making our children and ourselves sick in the pursuit of making a living a necessary evil?
On one side we have Ms. Olsen advocating for the status quo, for business as usual, even though it harms her own son. On the other side we have another politician, Senator Kevin de Leon of Los Angeles, saying, "We know that we can grow and prosper without poisoning our communities or the lungs of our children."
I know we don't look to our politicians to be heroes, anymore than we look to our business leaders to be heroes. But here's hoping that the heroes among them will find the ingenuity to one day make "Spare the Air" days a thing of the past, and healthy prosperity a thing of the present.
* * *
