HERE WE GO AGAIN
It seems as if the entire "developed" world is depending on rapid industrial innovation to pull its chestnuts out of the fire. The people who run the permanent government (they're not elected) seem stuck on the idea that tremendous growth will be required to solve the problems of poverty, well-being, and pollution within the U.S. and throughout the world.[1] Even the Brundtland Commission --the prestigious group that coined the phrase "sustainable development" back in 1987 --argued that the world's total economic activity would have to increase 5-fold to 10-fold to lift all humans out of poverty.[2] The need for growth has become an axiom of modern industrial/economic/political life.
A corollary to this axiom says that rapid technical innovation is the way to achieve growth. Therefore "sustainable development" requires rapid growth, which in turn requires rapid technical innovation, according to the people who think of themselves as managing the planet.
Obviously, this view creates an imperative to deploy new technologies --an imperative that is particularly visible, these days, in the fields of genetic engineering and materials science. (Materials science is the systematic effort to create materials that nature never made, from which to construct next year's automobiles, airplanes, rockets, medical machinery, sky scrapers, foodstuffs, space stations, pesticides, communications and entertainment platforms, armaments and so on.)
It seems worth mentioning that, in the recent past, mad dashes toward new technologies have usually created serious trouble:
** Our oil-based civilization seemed like it was giving us a wonderful life until it started warming the planet: in 1995-1996 the world's community of meteorologists reached consensus that our devotion to petroleum has ominous implications for the kind of world we will leave to our children.[3]
** For 50 years, new uses of mercury proved to be very productive in scientific instruments, silent light switches, latex paints, pesticides, and more. But now we find that the mercury content of the world's atmosphere has nearly doubled and consequently the fish in most of our fresh waters have become poisonous from a build-up of toxic mercury in their tissues.[4]
** Lead is a superb pesticide, gasoline additive, paint supplement, and glaze for pottery, but now we find that, millions --literally millions --of children in the U.S. and abroad are having their intellectual capacity permanently diminished by lead poisoning.[5,6]
** The invention of DDT made it possible to control malaria-bearing mosquitoes without understanding anything about the life-cycle of the mosquitoes --so easy that we forgot how to employ knowledge of mosquito ecology to control malaria, relying instead on the heavy hand of DDT.[7] Now that the side-effects of DDT have become apparent --disrupting the hormones of wildlife and contaminating humans on a global scale --DDT is being phased out and malaria (the number one killer, worldwide) is resurgent. Other infectious diseases are spreading as well, because of environmental dislocations caused by human technologies.[8]
** Learning how to "fix" nitrogen from the atmosphere was a marvelous innovation, leading to artificial fertilizers, increased per-acre agricultural yields, and green lawns. But now "environmental disruption caused by a planetary overload of nitrogen is emerging as a new global concern"[9] --a triple threat, warming the Earth, contributing to the destruction of the ozone layer, and diminishing valuable biodiversity.
** Nuclear energy was sold to taxpayers with the promise of electricity "too cheap to meter" and nuclear weapons so horrific that they would make war unthinkable. Nuclear electricity turned out to be expensive, and today war is hardly unthinkable. Furthermore, in late 1996, the U.S. Secretary of Energy declared, "The arms race is over. Our struggle now is to get rid of this sea of plutonium." The world's several-hundred-ton stockpile of plutonium (a substance described by its discoverer, Glenn Seaborg, as "fiendishly toxic") has created what the NEW YORK TIMES calls "one of the most intractable problems of the post-cold-war era."[10]
This list could readily be extended, but the point is probably clear.
Now, driven by the perceived need for rapid innovation to promote economic growth, we find that "We are in the midst of a second industrial revolution, one in which new high-tech materials are entering the workplace at an almost overwhelming rate," says Tai Chan, program manager of occupational health and safety research for General Motors.[11,pg.703] Of course, after they enter the workplace, high-tech materials enter commerce and eventually enter the general environment.
A recent article in ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES (a U.S. government scientific journal) says, "Seeking an elusive combination of high strength and light weight has driven engineers to develop a staggering variety of new fibers and particles."[11] And: "Unfortunately, many of the most desirable manmade fibers have many of the least desirable health-related characteristics." And: "Typically composed of various combinations of ceramics, polymers, and metals, these composites can pose a health risk to workers who inhale fibers and particulates, and may present health hazards as serious as those of asbestos." And: "In fact,... researchers don't have a good understanding of the mechanisms that may contribute to the toxicity of ultrafine materials." In other words, here we go again.
Carroll Pursell, a technology historian at Case Western Reserve University says, "Technology should be about the exercise of prudence. But economic considerations usually push new developments forward."[11,pg.703]
This is certainly the case with genetic engineering. The genetic engineering industry hit its stride in 1995-1996 when U.S. regulators (Food and Drug Administration, and Environmental Protection Agency) approved the commercialization of half a dozen new genetically engineered crop species, which are now being dispersed into the environment by farmers on a large scale. Soon these species will be sold abroad.
For the first 3 billion years of life on Earth, genes could only be shared among species that were similar enough to mate and reproduce. There was no way dog genes could get into cats, or corn genes into wheat. The gene pool of the mating species limited the genetic information that any species could contain. Natural genetic variations have always occurred, and those that promote survival may endure and eventually cause a species to evolve, but the process up until now has been glacially slow.
What's new about genetic engineering is that it allows genes to be shared among completely unrelated species. And QUICKLY. Genes from a trout can be put into a tomato, for example, to give the tomato some desirable characteristic that only the trout used to have. Species created in this way are called "transgenic species" or "living modified organisms" (LMOs).[12] Now, literally, for $68 any microbiology graduate student can purchase a gene splicing kit and start transplanting tobacco genes into mosquitoes, or shark genes into lady bugs to see what will happen.
In 1996, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) published a book urging caution as transgenic species are released into the environment. The book basically asks, "What will it mean to have a steady stream of animal and microbial genes entering the gene pools of plants in wild ecosystems?" Based on principles of ecology (principles derived from observing the way nature works) UCS warns of the following scenarios:[13]
** Gene flow, in which new genes from insect-, disease-, or herbicide-resistant species flow to wild plant relatives and weeds, causing agricultural and ecological havoc unless effective controls are available and affordable;
** Harms to nontarget species arising, for example, from new gene products with toxic qualities being ingested by birds and other feeders in the regions where living modified organisms are cultivated;
** Cascading effects on an ecosystem triggered by the introduction of living modified organisms, such as pests developing resistance to Bt in transgenic plants (see REHW #521) or being diverted to other food sources;
** Loss of biological diversity arising when living modified organisms displace other species, a particularly acute problem in third-world nations that possess great crop diversity but lack the infrastructure and expertise to prevent losses.
Yes indeed, here we go again.
We must ask, why do we create such similar problems again and again? Why do we never seem to learn?
1) Most fundamentally because we believe we are the master species, and that the rest of creation exists for our benefit. We are free to do with it as we please. This completely wrong idea, this suicidal fantasy, is explored with wit and wisdom in Daniel Quinn's philosophical novel, ISHMAEL (Bantam, 1995). As Quinn sees it, either we will get rid of this deep-seated idea, or this idea will get rid of us.
2) Because we have set up our rules so that the people who perpetrate new technological mistakes profit from them in the short term, leaving the long-term costs to be born by others.
What could we do differently? We could put the burden of proof on those who want to deploy new technologies, similar to the way we put the burden of proof on people who want to sell new pharmaceutical drugs. An elegant, conservative scheme for shifting the burden of proof has been proposed by economist Robert Costanza. He calls it the "precautionary polluter pays principle." (See REHW #510.) Basically, it would require technical innovators to post a performance bond up front, to cover the worst-case costs of what they're about to unleash on the world. Would it slow the pace of technical innovation? Surely it would. Do we need such a slowing? Only if we desire a future for humans.
Happy New Year!
--Peter Montague
But times have changed. After years of Reagan/Bush/Clinton appointees to the federal bench, the courts are no longer sympathetic, and won't be for the foreseeable future. The appellate courts are even more universally hostile. Naturally, this has emboldened the corporate polluters. Furthermore, the polluters have become much more aggressive because of three other trends:
(1) For more than a decade, corporate profits have been rising, which translates into greater size and power;
(2) Election finance laws have been easily circumvented and, therefore, control of the legislative and executive branches of government has been readily purchased;
(3) A legal/scientific regulatory system has been established --with full concurrence by the big environmental groups --placing the burden of proof on the regulators and requiring scientific consensus on risk assessments before regulatory control can be initiated (instead of a system placing the burden of proof on the polluters, and basing public health protection on precautionary preventive action). This system has created endless opportunities for contrarian scientists, who create doubt for a living, to paralyze the regulatory apparatus. Thus has science been turned into a powerful shield for business-as-usual.
To stay in tune with these shifts, EDF itself has shifted. As its main strategy, EDF now forms partnerships with corporate polluters, aiming to modify their behavior by schmoozing with mid-level executives. (It must be obvious that any corporation wishing to change its behavior could do so without forming a partnership with EDF or anyone else. Environmental advice is just not that hard to come by. Therefore, corporations are acquiring --and EDF is making available --something besides environmental advice when polluters form a partnership with EDF.) The new EDF strategy seems emblematic of the changes that have occurred throughout the mainstream environmental movement. (For example, the Sierra Club openly endorsed Bill Clinton for President in 1996 while Sierra Club founder David Brower was openly denouncing Mr. Clinton as the most anti-environmental President in memory.) EDF blazed this trail.
The last page of my 1996 EDF calendar offers a 10-point program to "save the Earth" (EDF's phrase) as follows (and I quote):
"1. Visit and help support our national parks.
"2. Recycle newspapers, glass, plastic and aluminum.
"3. Conserve energy and use energy efficient lighting.
"4. Keep tires properly inflated to improve gas mileage and extend tire life.
"5. Plant trees.
"6. Organize a Christmas tree recycling program in your community.
"7. Find an alternative to chemical pesticides for your lawn.
"8. Purchase only those brands of tuna marked 'dolphin-safe.'
"9. Organize a community group to clean up a local stream, highway, park, or beach.
"10. Become a member of EDF."
What I notice here is the complete absence of any ideas commensurate with the size and nature of the problems faced by the world's environment. I'm not against recycling Christmas trees --if you MUST have one --but who can believe that recycling Christmas trees --or supporting EDF as it works overtime to amend and re-amend the Clean Air Act --is part of any serious effort to "save the Earth?" I am forced to conclude once again that the mainstream environmental movement in the U.S. has run out of ideas and has no worthy vision.
Even among hard-working, down-in-the-trenches, poorly-paid environmental groups, whose work and guts and commitment I greatly admire, I would have to say that successful strategies have eluded us. To make this point, I'm going to look briefly at pesticides. My point is not to take away from the efforts of pesticide activists. On the contrary, I mean to celebrate and honor them. Many people have died, many others have devoted their entire lives --making enormous sacrifices in the process --fighting one pesticide battle or another. People have given up lucrative careers and devoted all their time to fighting the pesticide companies, which are some of the largest and most ruthless adversaries on the face of the Earth. Their families have supported them in this, and together they have all paid a dear price. Farm workers, Vietnam veterans, thousands of innocent families --all have paid dearly to gain the knowledge we now have about pesticides and how the regulatory system has failed us. Along the way, let it be said, important local victories have been won.
To honor these dedicated people, we owe it to them to examine our present situation coldly. Consumer's Union (CU), publisher of Consumer Reports, issued an important book in 1996, PESTICIDES AT THE CROSSROADS. (See REHW #521.) CU concludes that after 25 years of enormous effort by citizen activists, the total public health threat from pesticides is as great today as it was 25 years ago. Without citizen activism things would be worse. However, the most optimistic face we can put on our situation today is something like, "We have fought them to a draw."
In truth, even this assessment is overly rosy. In his new book, OUR CHILDREN'S TOXIC LEGACY, Yale University professor John Wargo makes the following points:[1]
** Between 1964 and 1982, total pesticide use in this country doubled.[1,pg.132]
** Today, nearly 325 active pesticide ingredients are permitted for use on 675 different basic forms of food, and residues of these compounds are allowed by law to persist at the dinner table.[1,pg.5]
** Congress ordered U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] in 1972 to go back and review the health effects of all registered pesticides, one by one. Congress gave EPA only 5 years to complete the job because, after all, public health was at stake. As of 1994 --after 22 years of best effort --EPA has re-evaluated fewer than half of the pesticides presently found on our dinner plates. This health evaluation is now scheduled to be completed in the year 2010, but by then much of the information will be outdated because, history shows unmistakably, new kinds of health damage from existing pesticides will have been discovered.[1,Chap.5] In the meantime, we are all exposed.
** Nearly one-third of the pesticides now in use are suspected of causing cancer in laboratory animals;[1,pg.5]
** Another third of the pesticides in use are thought capable of disrupting the human nervous system;
** Many others are suspected of disrupting the endocrine (hormone) system that regulates growth, development and healthy functioning in fetuses, children, and adults.
** Some foods, such as apples and milk, are permitted to contain nearly 100 different pesticide residues.[1,pg.7]
** A study by the National Academy of Sciences (which Professor Wargo personally participated in), published in 1987, "demonstrated that no one in the federal government had a clear understanding of the magnitude or distribution of pesticide residues in the food supply or the public health threat they posed."[1,pg.10] The situation is not different today.
** "Government's traditional response to this uncertainty," says Dr. Wargo, "has been to license pesticide use anyway and to assume that exposure may be accurately predicted and carefully managed."[1,pg.14] "Effective control of exposure, however, requires detailed information concerning where pesticides are used; where they move and come to rest; their concentration in air, food, water, or soil; and their toxicity to humans and species not considered to be pests. Understanding these effects for a single pesticide may easily cost millions of dollars. Understanding them for tens of thousands of separate licensed products along with their combinations is a virtual impossibility," Dr. Wargo writes.[1,pg.13]
And: "As the power, authority and reach of international markets [read: corporations--P.M.] expand, our understanding of the environmental effects of hazardous technologies appears to be diminishing. We now have more specialized information, but understand it less."[1,pg.xiii] Think about what that means.
In sum, government regulation of the public health and environmental hazards from pesticides does not work and cannot work. How much more clearly could it be said? By design, the system has failed.
The lesson to draw from all this is that regulation has not worked, does not work, AND CANNOT WORK. We can struggle endlessly to amend the laws and modify the regulations but such methods will NEVER bring toxic technologies under control, will never 'save the Earth.' It is now clear that the regulatory system serves the interests of the corporate polluters because it is a system they define. It is a dead end for activists. Devotion to its regime is counterproductive.
This is a frightening prospect, I admit. To be told that your life's work has taken a wrong direction? Who wants to hear such a message? Many will not be able to, and will devote the remainder of their days to performing more of the same skillful but pointless acrobatics.
For those who can hear the message though, it is a new day. Many are now devoting themselves to a most fundamental revaluation of the role of the corporation in our culture WHILE CONTINUING THEIR LOCAL STRUGGLES. During the last 100 years, the corporation has modified each of the institutions of our democracy for its own purposes--our courts, our law-making bodies, our schools, our elections--to meet needs defined by the corporation's internal logic. The colonization of our minds is nearly complete. But not quite.
We have said before and we say again, corporations have overtaken our culture and are driving it to the brink of ecological disaster not because they are staffed by bad people. On the contrary, many imprisoned by the logic of the corporation are good people, yet they remain prisoners all the same. They are not free to act upon their individual consciences. Their responsible individuality and their spiritual centeredness has been forfeited, subordinated to the requirements of the corporate form.
Where this examination of the corporate form will lead, no one can say, just as no one could say in America in 1795 where the incipient movement against slavery would lead. In 1795, white male property owners held all the levers of power granted under the new Constitution. The vast majority of the people had no say (just as today). Success against slavery was not guaranteed then, and success in our struggle to define the corporate form --to make it serve the "general Welfare" (to quote the Constitution) --is not guaranteed now. However, we know that, OUT OF CONTINUED STRUGGLE AT THE LOCAL LEVEL will emerge an understanding of what changes must overtake the corporate form.
--Peter Montague
The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) --important national organizations in the U.S. environmental movement --are both celebrating environmental victories in 1996.
Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, wrote recently, "It's been an extraordinary year for the Sierra Club. We were able to stave off the war on the environment waged by the 104th Congress and prevent the dismantling of 25 years of environmental protections for our air and water. In fact, we managed to push some positive environmental legislation through in the last few weeks of Congress, such as protections of the Presidio National Park in San Francisco and the Tallgrass Prairie in Kansas." He goes on, "The Sierra Club was able to make the environment a salient political issue. For the first time in history, the environment was a decisive issue in a number of Congressional races..."[1]
John Adams, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), assigned even greater importance to the same victories that Mr. Pope mentioned: "Now it is the end of 1996," Mr. Adams wrote recently, "and all of us who care about the environment can look back on what may be the single most significant victory in the history of the U.S. environmental movement. In the past two years, we have turned back an attack that the entire country thought was unstoppable--an attack on our National Parks, our public health, our keystone environmental laws that have stood for twenty-five years."[2]
So the U.S. environmental movement had a successful 1995 and 1996, according to these national leaders. But what about the environment itself? Here are a few facts gathered from the nation's newspaper of record, the NEW YORK TIMES:
** In 1996, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature [IUCN] in Gland, Switzerland, issued an updated worldwide "red list" of threatened species.[3] The new list is "startling," says the TIMES: 1096 mammals --nearly one-quarter of all the mammalian species on Earth --are critically endangered (169), endangered (315), or vulnerable (612). This is the first time the IUCN has assessed the status of the world's 4630 mammalian species. More than 500 scientists contributed to the latest edition of the IUCN's "red list." Many national governments are members of the IUCN.
The terms critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable have the following meaning to the IUCN:[4]
Critically endangered means an organism faces an "extremely high risk" of extinction in the wild in the immediate future. Immediate might mean 10 years for some species, longer for longer-lived ones. Endangered means a species faces a "very high risk" of extinction in the near future --in 20 years or more, for instance. Vulnerable means a species faces a high risk of extinction in the medium-term future, which could be 100 years or so depending on the species. These categories are not comparable with those established by the United States' Endangered Species Act (ESA), which assigns imperiled species the status of "endangered" or the less serious "threatened."
In addition to one-quarter of the world's mammals being threatened with extinction, the latest IUCN red list includes 1108 species of birds --more than 11 percent of all the bird species on Earth.
In addition to mammals and birds, the red list of 1996 includes 253 reptile species, 124 amphibian species, and 734 fish species in danger of extinction, but it emphasizes that thousands of groups of animals have never been assessed, so the truth is very likely worse than the IUCN has reported.
All told, this year's red list includes 5025 species that are in danger of disappearing forever.
That's worldwide. What about in the U.S.?
** In January, 1996, the TIMES reported that the Nature Conservancy (a private organization) had evaluated 20,481 species of animals and plants.[5] The Nature Conservancy reported that about one-third of the species studied are rare or imperiled in the U.S. Specifically, 1.3 percent were already extinct (or possibly extinct --extinction is hard to prove); 6.5 percent were critically imperiled; 8.9 percent were imperiled; and 15 percent were considered vulnerable.
The four groups with the highest percentages of species in danger of extinction are freshwater mussels (67.1 percent), crayfish (64.8 percent), amphibians (37.9 percent), and freshwater fish (37.2 percent). The groups with the LOWEST percentages of species in trouble were birds (13.9 percent), and mammals (16.1 percent). This study listed only full species, not subspecies, so endangered creatures like the northern spotted owl in the northwestern U.S. were not included.
Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson told the TIMES that the Nature Conservancy study was scientifically valid and was representative of the nation's fauna and flora, even though some groups, like insects, were not well represented. There are an estimated 100,000 species of plants and animals in the U.S., so the Nature Conservancy only looked at about one-fifth of all species --the ones for which scientists had sufficient information to make an assessment.
There is only one cause of this decimation: humans and their economic activities, which are premised on the unspoken assumption that humans are the master species of the Earth and can do whatever they please with it.[6]
If the problem really has only one cause, why can't we make headway against it? For one thing, we can't seem to admit a defeat when we experience one. We insist on calling it victory.
Against the IUCN's and the Nature Conservancy's catalogs of destruction, we have Sierra Club's Carl Pope celebrating the year's accomplishments: managing to hang on to the environmental laws that have permitted the destruction for 25 years; protection of a former military base (albeit a park-like one), the Presidio, in San Francisco, and a slice of prairie in Kansas; and making the environment "a salient political issue" in a handful of Congressional races. For his part, John Adams celebrates the fact that 25 years of ineffective U.S. environmental laws have been retained. Adams calls this "the single most significant victory in the history of the U.S. environmental movement." If these evaluations are correct, then the environmental movement in the U.S. is bankrupt.
The national environmental organizations are continuing to work exclusively on the symptoms of our distress. They are working to pass laws and regulations, one at a time, to apply a zillion bandages to a zillion small wounds, each of which is oozing blood. This is a strategy doomed to fail. It has failed year after year, and it will continue to fail into the future until the human animal has disappeared.
Let's be blunt. Few will disagree with the following assessment by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton: "The business class dominates government through its ability to fund political campaigns, purchase high-priced lobbyists, and reward former officials with lucrative jobs."[7] (Obviously this is true not only in the U.S.; this is a global problem.)
If this is so, why do we keep trying to tweak government, to pass one more law that either won't be enforced or won't change anything that matters? Instead, why don't we focus our attention and resources on the institutions that give the business class the undemocratic power to dominate government (as well as to dominate our vision of what's right and good)? Think of where the environmental movement could be today if, 25 years ago, we had begun to focus our creative energies on diminishing the excessive power of the corporate class instead of on tweaking ineffective environmental regulations.
Before government can help the environment in any significant way, government must be restored to a point where it can debate real issues and seek real solutions. That will require us to get private (corporate) money out of our elections AS A FIRST PRIORITY.
To his credit, Carl Pope went on record in a recent SIERRA magazine saying that the key institution of the business class --the corporation --is a "major obstacle to the defense of clean air and water and the preservation of wildlife habitat."[8] This was an important, positive statement.
Despite this, the Sierra Club spent almost $7.5 million trying to influence the outcome of Congressional races in 1996 --during an election campaign where total spending exceeded $1.8 billion.[9] This $7.5 million represents a breathtaking amount of cash, when compared to the money that is available to work on campaign finance reform --the effort to get private/corporate money out of elections --where even one million dollars is a huge sum. That $7.5 million could have funded a major effort to achieve campaign finance reform, but could make almost no difference in a $1.8 billion national election. Spent on a national election, those funds could do nothing to diminish the excessive power of the corporate class. Despite Mr. Pope's recent --and welcome --acknowledgement that corporations are a key problem, the Club evidently still doesn't have a strategy that can lead to anything but more of the same old stuff --and I offer this saddening assessment as a member and supporter of the Club.
Still it should be said that the Sierra Club is among the more progressive of the nation's 15 large national environmental organizations. At this point, the rest of the groups are far off target with the exception of Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. NRDC seems unlikely ever to understand the centrality of the corporation to environmental destruction. Indeed, most of the Big 15 are committed to failed strategies, supporting Clinton/Gore, pretending to themselves that success will arrive when the Democrats come up with the corporate cash needed to retake control of Congress. History tells us it is a false hope.
But isn't it really individual lifestyles that are the problem, not corporate money and power? It is difficult to imagine people in an industrialized country like the U.S. successfully curbing their appetites while corporations are spending $23 billion each year promoting hedonism (usually called "consumerism") through advertising. Corporations have spent a century intentionally reversing our "old fashioned" attitudes of frugality, thrift, simplicity, and religious reverence for life. (And most recently they are in our schools, dismantling environmental education programs, intentionally exorcising the knowledge and attitudes our children will need for survival.) A few people have been able to withstand this ceaseless barrage of corporate propaganda, but not many. Before people can sort out what it's going to take to prevent the extinction of humans, we will need to clear our minds and focus on fundamentals, in preparation for a difficult national debate. Getting corporate money out of the institutions of our democracy is the first requirement.
--Peter Montague
NOTICE Environmental Research Foundation provides this electronic version of RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY free of charge even though it costs our organization considerable time and money to produce it. We would like to continue to provide this service free. You could help by making a tax-deductible contribution (anything you can afford, whether $5.00 or $500.00). Please send your contribution to: Environmental Research Foundation, P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403-7036.
--Peter Montague, Editor
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