I had an illustration in this past weekend's
New York Times Sunday Review, for an article on what some economists call the "resource curse" and how it affects the U.S., Appalachia in particular. The concept of the resource curse is used to explain why so many of the continents and regions around the world with the most resources- oil, gas, gold, diamonds, copper, fruit, etc.- are often the poorest. A simple explanation is that historically, conquering colonists arrived, ethnically cleansed or enslaved the indigenous population, and extracted all the resources out of the land, leaving little behind. Replace colonists with corporations, and things aren't too drastically different today. Although in the U.S. we more often use eminent domain as opposed to genocide. But the companies still show up, take all the resources, employing the locals for a while, and then pack up when the resource is gone, leaving behind joblessness and a severely polluted ecology- like a big, fat tick, draining it's host of blood and leaving behind an oozing, infected wound. And probably Lyme disease. Capitalism has always been a terrible way to divvy up our resources.
The article details the way some people in these communities of Appalachia are starting to fight back against the many fracking outfits chomping at the bit to drill, baby, drill- having learned some lessons after the coal companies had their way with the land for so, so long. I chose to have some fracking rigs in the middle of a lush Appalachian landscape, with the rich color being drained from the picture postcard setting, like an oil spill slowly spreading over the land. Here's a view of the spread:
You can read the story
here. Thank you to Nathan, my AD on this one!
