FLARING NATURAL GAS
The purposeful, though extremely wasteful, burning in the air of escaping natural gas which is
often an unused bi-product of oil wells. Of course, this resource should be used too, but it is
cheaper in many areas (especially in the oil-rich Middle East) to simply burn it. Satellite
images of the world at night show whole vast areas of Saudi Arabia and other countries in the
region aglow with flared natural gas burning and polluting away. There is also a lot of wasteful
gas flaring in the United States and other countries outside of the Middle East.
Of course, given the serious climate change
disaster currently underway, even better than capturing and using this natural gas at the present
time would be to just leave it in the ground along with the oil, and to instead foster much
greater use of renewable power sources such as electricity generated from solar and wind plants.
But capitalist profits are of course far more important than the rational use of resources and
the saving of human lives.
“During frigid temperatures in February [2021], Texas’ largest oil field
burned off 1.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas in one day—enough to power tens of
thousands of homes for at least a year.” —New York Times, “As Texans Shivered,
Drillers Burned Off Enough Gas to Power Thousands of Homes”, March 27, 2021.
FLU [INFLUENZA]
Any of a large number of mostly closely related infectious viral respiratory diseases, which
are often relatively moderate (even if quite unpleasant and generally much worse than colds),
but in some cases are quite serious and even fatal (especially for the elderly). The flu is
spread mostly though airborne droplets released when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or
talks, though it can also be spread by touching infected surfaces. Because it is a highly
contageous and mostly airborne disease, it is very appropriate for infected people to wear
medical masks when in public places. (Though in the
ultra-individualist U.S., where people are not very considerate of each other, this is often
not done.)
Flu viruses are very prone to rapidly evolving
into new strains. Once you’ve had a particular strain of the flu, you won’t get that strain
again. However, you will be vulnerable to newly evolved strains on future occasions. This leads
to an annual flu season in Winter months with widespread outbreaks.
Fortunately, there are now “flu shots”
(inoculations) available, which are usually quite effective in either preventing the person
from catching the current flu variety, or at least lessening the severity. Unfortunately, in
the U.S. there is such widespread medical ignorance, and unscientific opposition to
inoculations, that every year thousands of people needlessly die from the flu.
“In the last flu season [in the U.S.], the condition was associated with
27,000 deaths, 266 of them children. Since data collection began in 2004, the pediatric
deaths were the highest for any influenza season outside of the swine flu pandemic in
2009.” —New York Times, “Rare Complication Shows Potential Harm of Infections
Like Flu”, September 13, 2025.
FLYGSKAM [Swedish (c. 2018). Pronounced: fleeg-skahm]
1. Flight shaming; i.e. criticizing someone
for traveling by airplane when unnecessary, given the harm to the environment which airplanes
create.
2. The social movement encouraging people to
stop traveling by planes in order to reduce carbon emissions and other harm to the environment.
This movement began in Sweden in 2018, and one of its most prominent proponents is the young
Swedish environmental activist, Greta Thunberg. Although well meaning, flygskam is a
liberal reformist movement which is very unlikely to lead to significant environmental
improvement worldwide, though for now it has made some impact in Sweden. Like much liberal
political action, it focuses on what individuals can do as individuals, and not on what
mass protest movements can do. And of course it “forgets” to mention the central role of
capitalism and capitalist profits in the destruction of the environment and the absolutely
essential need for socialist revolution to truly put an end to this.
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In an epidemic or pandemic (such as that of the Covid-19 outbreak
in 2020) the disease may spread so fast that the hospitals and
health care system in a country may be completely overwhelmed. This is especially the case in
capitalist society where the government is generally so unconcerned with maintaining the good
health of the working class and general population that the health system is quite inadequate
all the time! But in an epidemic the situation may suddenly be aggravated to an extreme
degree. In order to attempt to deal with this, the health authorities try to keep the disease
from spreading so fast through social distancing and isolation, so that—even if the same
total number of people are eventually infected—the disease cases will be spread over a longer
period of time. This is known as “flattening the curve”.