The New Emerald City

By Siggy Raible

On August 10, I was sitting outside my favorite coffee shop on LaGuardia Place in Greenwich Village when I read an opinion piece in The New York Times entitled The World is Now Unavoidably Toxic by David Wallace-Welles. He is also the author of The Uninhabitable Earth.

I can’t for the life of me understand what is happening in the world today. The oil/gas/coal companies create an awful amount of pollution by extracting these minerals from the earth, polluting both the air and land in the process. Why don’t we hold those who extract the oil/gas/coal responsible for the cleanup needed to render the planet livable? These multinational conglomerates have the wherewithal to clean up the mess they produce. If they make a mess, shouldn’t they be made to clean it up? Isn’t that what we tell our children to do when they mess up the place?

And, another bugaboo about fossil fuels … plastics are derived from oil. Plastic pollution is fast poisoning the planet we call home. In Wallace-Welles’s essay he states that “when, in 2019, an explorer reached the ocean’s greatest depths in the otherworldly Mariana Trench, he found that plastics had beaten him there, miles past the reach of natural light.” So not only do fossil fuels contribute to the pollution of the air we breathe through the processes used to extract coal, natural gas and refine oil, but they also pollute the land from which we secure our food. Plastics are also are burned for energy, releasing more toxic pollutants in the air.

Plastics found in the sea or buried in landfills have half-lives from hundreds to thousands of years. Even if they fragment over time they remain as “microplastics.” These find their way into our environment and into the fish, birds and other animals who mistake them for food, and thus find their way into our bodies when we consume them. Yum!

And why do we have so many plastics designated as recyclable, numbered 1 through 7 in those green/clear triangles we use to determine whether a particular plastic is recyclable? Numbers 2, 4 and 5 are apparently the least polluting/dangerous for our health (see the Farmer’s Almanac to find out about the different chemicals in plastics.) How many of these products are recycled anyway? And why even permit 1, 3, 6 and 7 to be produced? Why do we want those plastics to be recycled if they are bad for our health?!

In a July 6, 2025 New York Times piece entitled After the Fires, Invisible Hazards Pose Health Risks in Spared Homes, Blacki Migloiozzi, Rukmini Callimachi and K.K. Rebecca Lai state that after the Los Angeles fire those homes which were left standing “may have been damaged in ways that are invisible.” The flames and smoke unleashed toxic chemicals into those houses. (Homes “as far as 1.5 miles from the nearest burned structure” may also have been contaminated.) “Now, as wildfires become more frequent, researchers are looking harder at what happens when smoke infiltrates a home.”

Let’s consider that these homes contained the usual suspects, fire retardant furniture, polyester clothing, household cleaning products, plastic toys, etc. Then think about what this burning chemical soup is doing to the air and the soil! And, all those cars that contain plastic, metal, oil, electronics and God knows what else. I can only shout “burned plastics, metal, and electronics, oh my!” (A macabre twist on the mantra sung by the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow and Dorothy on their way to the Emerald City. Only we’re singing our way not to Emerald City but to Garbage Central!)

I know from what I speak. I live in Greenwich Village. In 2001 the office where I worked was located one block away from the World Trade Center. After the towers came down there was a great deal of concern about what was in the air. Our government denied there were any contaminants. This proved false when first responders years later came down with cancers and other health problems related to the exposure of the chemical soup that once made up the World Trade Center. Twenty years later I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. Is my condition a result of my exposure to those contaminants? Who knows, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I guess we’ll have to wait another 20 years to see what happens to the firefighters, first responders and survivors who lived or worked near the Lahaina and Los Angeles fires.

Who will be held responsible for the contaminants released by these fires? The multinational corporations who manufactured the products? What do you think?

Who will pay the bill for the cleanup? The corporations who played a role in their manufacture, the insurers or the homeowners who couldn’t afford homeowners insurance or who were denied coverage by the insurers? I have a feeling that we the people will pick up the bill leaving the multi-corporations free to continue polluting the planet.

I’ll end with the phrase, beware: “you’re not in Kansas anymore.”