Mumia Abu-jamal's Radio Essays

Quite recently, I offered some thoughts on the startling warm winter weather we're having. While I talked about the probable impact of global warming (greenhouse gases), I didn't directly address the sources of much of it. Let's be clear. Much of it, perhaps most, is cars. Some folks may be thinking -- 'uh oh -- here he goes again with that back-to-nature, John Africa talk again. He actually wants us to give up our cars!' But how many of us know that in the good old days -- say, in the 19-teens, and the '20s, cars were electric cars -- run on batteries? In the early third of the 20th century, most American mass transit was an electrical affair -- relatively quiet, with far fewer pollutants being belched into the air. What happened? Greed happened. Corporate crime happened. Then mass pollution happened. Writer and researcher Mark Zepezauer, in his brilliant 2004 book, Take the Rich Off Welfare (Cambridge, Ma.: South End Press) tells the story with brevity and clarity, as he writes: "Th