Questions for Public Officials

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Question 5A: What would you do to ease racial and class differences during the period of intense stress we'll probably experience with Y2K?

Statement 6: A significant number of people are moving to the country because of the year 2000 computer problem. If these migrations become large, or if computer failures release toxics or radioactive substances (which the EPA has publicly expressed concern about) or if governments and businesses just get too distracted by Y2K work to pay attention to the environment, the environment could be hurt pretty badly.

Question 6: What are you going to do to ensure that we don't have toxic leaks or nuclear accidents because of Y2K? What do you propose to do to protect the environment from Y2K-related damage?

Statement 7: A lot of experts are saying that hospitals are threatened by the year 2000 problem--that some of their equipment has embedded microchips that might fail, or that computers might not be able to do important calculations with patient records. And the agency that handles Medicare payments is not ready for the year 2000. Furthermore, some medicines might become hard to get. I've heard that 70 percent of the world's insulin is produced by one company in Europe.

Question 7: Do you know how they're progressing on their Y2K preparations? What would you do to ensure we have adequate health care in January 2000?

Statement 8: The media likes to play games with the year 2000 problem. One day they'll say that it isn't a problem, and the next day they'll publish some scary millennial survivalist story. They paint pictures of how divided people are about Y2K and they seldom actually investigate what's behind the claims of officials, corporations, and fear-mongers. And a lot of good stuff that's going on--like concerned citizens getting together to prepare their communities--never gets reported. The Internet is filled with good analysis and documentation, but also with wild doomsday rantings and false reassurances.

Question 8: What will you do to get the media to give us the useful information, inspirational stories and good guidance we need to get our communities ready for the year 2000? We can't really do it without their help.

Statement 9: Many people are concerned that our entire infrastructure could be threatened, especially if the electrical grid goes down, because the entire system is completely interdependent and a failure by telecommunications could bring down the electrical grid, all banking, and emergency services.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print