Doc never mentioned problems without mentioning solutions. He was precise but confusing in his English as a Second Language writing. He wrote the way other people shout. He was hard to understand on the phone.
And Dr. Luis Contreras owned this page in our paper since March 2016.
We first met him during the proposed SWEPCO takeover of Carroll County’s land and air. SWEPCO wanted to use eminent domain in a land grab to build 150 ft. tall towers to provide electricity for Tennessee.
It wasn’t just the snatching of private property. It was the microwave radiation emitted from the towers and the violation of undisturbed land we found so appalling.
Doc was an environmentalist, statistician, and researcher who sometimes had trouble communicating with others, but always knew exactly what he meant to say.
He was the first to open my eyes to today’s environmental condition being the perfect storm for Covid. Our planet is loaded with inversion cities (Los Angeles, Denver, Santiago), bowls surrounded by hills or mountains where trapped pollutants form a gravy-like haze that fiddles with our bodies until we fall flat because our lungs fill with fluid instead of oxygen.
Doc understood the relationship between unfit air and an unanticipated virus. Whether covid is from a bat, a civet or a lab leak, a virus’s ride is accelerated by dirty air. The virus attaches itself to air pollution particles and goes with the flow on its way to inflame human blood vessels.
When Doc started writing for us, I called him to say this will never work. “You’re going to get us sued from here to the harvest moon. We’re small. We’re owned by two women who wouldn’t be business partners unless each believed the other one was going to get us to the tippy-top of our profession. We don’t have a lawyer. We don’t have any spare change. We can’t charm any more mean dogs than the ones already nipping us.”
“I’ll send you my reference material every week,” he said. “No one else will put up with me. No one else will listen. What I’ve found is important. We are deliberately and unscrupulously being harmed by those who think we’re standing in the way of profit. We’re called troublemakers instead of peace-makers.”
He explained how swiftly companies create a marketing campaign by saying they will reduce the carbon footprint in the United Kingdom and Europe by 80 percent, when truthfully, they are ruining Arkansas forests by cutting hardwoods and converting them to pellets to keep the Tottenham Hotspurs warm.
Trees are our planet’s lungs. Two-thirds of our drinking water originates in forests.
Cutting Arkansas forests means hiring temporary loggers, forest ownership, sneaky permits, 2-cycle chainsaws, hungry truckers, new roads from the forest to the mill to the railroad, storage facilities, export fees and documents, shipping lines and numerous bidders – things that add to the problem, not the solution.
Doc was saying that honest businesses have value for all, honest people must stay ethical despite temptation, and if we didn’t protect our world, who would?
As of June 23, he has 28 pages of 10-to-a-page columns on our website.
Adios, Doc. Gracias y descanse en paz.
“Forests are measured in acres but sawdust pollution from cutting trees and scraping them into fine particulates is measured in deaths.” Dr. Luis Contreras