Bhopal

December 3, 2014 forum topics
30 years ago my high school global politics class stopped. For days we watched and discussed a developing story from Bhopal India.

A cloud of low hanging gas from a Union Carbide pesticide plant suffocated thousands. A child in a top bunk could survive until a panicked parent would help them down to flee, placing them into the toxic mist.

Anniversary coverage today shows the progeny of Globalization’s early spasms. Those the gas didn’t take remain poisoned for generations.

Eight thousand people died right away. Mostly kids and people who were asleep on the floors of their shanties built to support the plant. Within two weeks that had doubled as the toxin exacted a horrific chocking price. Half a million people have lived, died or been born in the direct shade of that cloud.

Farther back than Chernobyl, Bhopal, is for most a forgotten footnote, like the canaries in coal mines.