WEEK 12 March 6th to 12th

   CURRENT IMPRESSIONS FROM PLANET EARTH (II)

   In a an interview survey on subjects randomly selected from around the world, concerning the changes in climate and the environment in general, unemployed former executive John Allan Prescott currently residing in the city of Mexico, west of St. Louis, Missouri, USA, has this to say:
   He’s sick, angry, sick to the bone.
   - We’re sick all the time these days. I can very faint recall a time when we were not. When we were not nauseous and didn’t have cramps and didn’t cough and everything... We, the wife and kids and me, moved away from a factory in California where we knew positively there had been a spill. But now we’ve finally been able to confirm that there has been one here, too, that there has been several, that the local industrial production facility is routinely releasing industrial waste. It’s been kept secret for many years, but now it’s all out in the open. There has always been rumors, as it is most places, but we have to live somewhere, right...
   Prescott is currently hospitalized and have trouble getting the insurance company to admit to his claim to aid him and the family economically and otherwise, in their restitution and recovery. Hospital bills and cost of living are skyrocketing, and without full compensation and repatriation, the family is facing a bleak future indeed.
   Other people, in the area, lacking health insurance, are facing an even darker future, and have, barring government intervention, no hope at all. A spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency says in a comment that «unfortunately this situation is presently repeated in quite a few areas in the entire US. Barring a major flux in funding, we can offer no major help to the victims or be very effective of keeping this situation from arising in the future».