=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #425
—January 19, 1995—
News and resources for environmental justice.
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BIG-PICTURE ORGANIZING, PART 5: A ‘MOVEMENT’ IN DISARRAY
The environmental community in Washington finds itself in
near-total disarray. They had put all their eggs in Bill
Clinton’s basket, and now most of those eggs are broken. If
anyone held a lingering hope for this President, Mr. Clinton laid
it to rest this week when he quietly killed the Chemical Safety
and Hazard Identification Board. Congress had created the Board
in the Clean Air Act of 1990 to “investigate the causes of
chemical accidents, issue reports to Congress and other federal
and state agencies, and propose ways to reduce the risk of
injuries arising from the production and use of chemicals.” At
least 19 chemical accidents occur EVERY DAY in the U.S. (see REHW
#408), and the Board was intended to play a role similar to the
National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates airplane
crashes and recommends ways to improve airline safety. Both
organized labor and the environmental community wanted the
Chemical Safety Board very badly. Indeed, both workers and
communities NEED such a board very badly. Real people are hurt
every day by chemical accidents and no agency has clear authority
to investigate the causes. After an accident, industry
investigates itself. At one time, Mr. Clinton evidently saw the
need. He appointed 3 highly-qualified members to the Board, and
they had already been confirmed by the Senate. But this week the
President quietly killed the Board in an apparent attempt to
appease the Chemical Manufacturers Association and the disciples
of House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The President seems to believe
he can out-Republican the Republicans. The good news is that no
one can any longer hold on to false illusions about this
President’s stance on environmental justice for workers and
communities.
It took the environmental community a long time to recognize the
truth about this President. When Mr. Clinton entered office, he
immediately started behaving just like his predecessor, George
Bush (for example, see RHWN #324, #326
and #345). Still, after
12 years out in the cold, when this President snapped his fingers
the big environmental groups wagged their tails like lost puppies
happy to find a home, any home. For example, the big enviros
worked hard to give the President a victory on NAFTA, the North
American Free Trade Agreement. There were 2 big centers of
opposition to NAFTA –organized labor and the vast majority of
local environmental activists (joined by Greenpeace, Sierra Club,
Friends of the Earth, and Environmental Action). To help Mr.
Clinton overcome the people’s opposition to NAFTA, several of
the big Washington enviro groups formed the Environmental
Coalition for NAFTA, which included Environmental Defense Fund
(EDF), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), National
Wildlife Federation, the Audubon Society, and the World Wildlife
Fund. “We [environmentalists] were one of the 2 big prongs the
administration had to fight,” said John Adams, leader of NRDC.
“The other was labor. We broke the back of the environmental
opposition to NAFTA. After we established our position, Clinton
only had labor to fight. We did him a big favor.” [1]
Mr. Clinton returned the favor by giving the big enviros
“access.” He invited them into the White House to have breakfast
with Vice-President Al Gore. “I can’t tell you how wonderful it
is to walk down the hall in the White House or a government
agency and be greeted by your first name,” said Brock Evans, the
Audubon Society’s chief lobbyist. [2] But getting friendly with
the White House staff and drinking orange juice out of silver
cups never produced any tangible environmental benefits. After
all, what changes can occur if everyone is committed to
maintaining lock-step with whatever the President proposes? In
May, 1993, in the presence of two dozen national environmental
leaders, I heard John Adams of NRDC say to Carol Browner, head of
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “You are our general. We
are your troops. We await your orders.” At that point there was
already plenty of reason to be suspicious of this
administration’s environmental intentions; for example, in
February, 1993, Ms. Browner had announced her plan to kill the
Delaney clause, the only existing federal law based on the public
health principle of prevention. The Delaney clause prohibits
known cancer-causing chemicals from being intentionally added to
processed foods. It doesn’t allow a small amount of poison or a
“negligible” amount. It allows zero. Ms. Browner’s idea –which
she adopted directly from the food chemical industry –was to
replace the Delaney Clause with a “one-in-a-million” risk
assessment, which would allow “small” or “negligible” amounts of
cancer-causing chemicals to be added to the American food supply.
This was an idea that George Bush and Dan Quayle had been
talking up, but it was Bill Clinton who actually proposed it in
legislation. The Washington enviros supported the President’s
anti-prevention agenda because such support would continue their
“access.”
Currying favor with this President led the environmental
community into several deep traps. For example, Natural
Resources Defense Council (NRDC) blundered into a terrible
dilemma. To support President Clinton, NRDC caved in on Delaney.
Instead of supporting prevention, NRDC is now pushing the
“one-in-a-million” risk standard that the food chemical industry
favors; NRDC is calling for elaborate “risk assessments” to be
completed for every pesticide used on our food. [3] Such risk
assessments are a scientific sham because the necessary data on
health effects of chemicals do not exist and will never exist.
Combinations of many chemicals are simply too complicated to
study scientifically. Even more importantly, since the public
cannot understand the technical details of risk assessment, the
public is cut out of the debate as soon as risk assessment
becomes the centerpiece of pesticide policy. The fight is
reduced to NRDC’s experts against the experts representing
President Clinton and the food chemical industry. And since the
long-term health consequences of exposing people to many
different chemicals simultaneously can never be known, risk
assessments are built upon dozens of judgments, suppositions, and
guesses. What seems to be a scientific debate is actually a
debate decided not by facts but by political clout. But with the
public cut out of the debate, who holds the clout? NRDC? Or the
President and his friends and supporters in the food chemical
industry –Monsanto, Dow and the others? It is hard to imagine
how NRDC’s “experts” think they can win such a political struggle
without popular support.
It gets worse. Now House Speaker Gingrich has seized upon the
enviros’ favored regulatory tool –the risk assessment –and is
saying every government regulation must be accompanied by a risk
assessment. Mr. Gingrich has proposed “The Risk Communication
Act of 1995” which would require all government agencies to
conduct a risk assessment and a cost/benefit analysis for every
regulation that might affect “more than 100 people” –in other
words, just about every regulation.
The procedure for risk assessment is spelled out in the proposed
law. Government will be required to assemble a “peer review
panel” made up of “scientific experts in the appropriate
disciplines with recent professional experience with the
substance for which risk assessment and cost/benefit analysis is
conducted.” In other words, only scientists employed by the
regulated industries are likely to meet the selection criteria as
peer reviewers. These “peer review panels” will analyze the
government’s risk assessments; if the peer review experts
disagree with the government’s experts, the proposed regulation
will be shelved until government can convince the independent
peer reviewers that the government is right, or until hell
freezes over, whichever comes first. In Mr. Gingrich’s hands,
the enviros’ favored tool, risk assessment, becomes a powerful
political weapon for paralyzing, and thus further discrediting,
many legitimate government programs.
This proposed law is a logical result of the big enviros’
political style: caving in on basic principles such as
“negligible risk” in order to be permitted to continue playing
footsie with the power elite in Washington; selling out political
allies like organized labor and the grass-roots environmental
movement in order to enjoy eggs benedict at the White House;
allowing the President and his corporate supporters to define
what is politically possible; never enunciating a clear,
far-reaching program that confronts the choke-hold that the
corporate form has on America; avoiding all ideas for fundamental
reform that combine economic fair play with real protection of
human health and the environment; in sum, never advocating a
program that could catch the public imagination and spark a real
revolt against the status quo.
The big enviros –and their supporters –have to recognize that
the apostles of Newt Gingrich did not take power by lobbying in
Washington. They took power by organizing at the grass-roots
level in communities across America. They did not appeal to
voters by watering down their language and selling out their
principles. Of course Mr. Gingrich and his friends are lying
about their intentions –they are saying they want to help the
little guy when in fact most of their programs are aimed at
consolidating the political and economic power of corporations
and the corporate elite. But over the years most of the big
environmental groups have been guilty of the very same lies.
The big environmental groups –the traditional environmental
“movement” as they like to call themselves –now lack viable
political ideas that can reshape and regain power by appealing to
the American people. They are too timid or too indentured to
speak of the nation’s real problems: the raw power that the
global corporations wield over our jobs, our quality of life, our
mass media, our elections, our legislatures, our schools, our
courts, and indeed our minds.
Because the traditional environmental movement is afraid to even
WHISPER about these deep-seated sources of the nation’s ills, the
movement now finds itself in near-total disarray; viewed as
sell-outs and detested by grass-roots activists who are fighting
for their lives and their children’s future in workplaces and
communities across America; lacking political vision; fragmented;
marginalized; dispirited; coopted; stumbling in directions that
can only reinforce the status quo.
It is time to abandon all hope of saving our communities, our
health, or our environment, by tweaking government regulations.
It is time for big-picture organizing in the nation’s best
political tradition. It is time to examine in detail how
corporations managed to get out-of-control in a nation founded on
the principle that the people are sovereign. Out of control,
serving only their own narrow interests, corporations have set
the nation on an accelerating downward slide. A bold populist
political program to directly confront these unpleasant realities
is the only road that offers any hope.
                
                
                
                
    
–Peter Montague
===============
[1] Mark Dowie, “The Selling (out) of the Greens; Friends of
Earth–or Bill?” THE NATION Vol. 258 (April 18, 1994), pgs.
514-517.
[2] Quoted in Mark Dowie, cited above.
Descriptor terms: chemical accidents; chemical safety board;
president clinton; national transportation safety board; nafta;
edf; nrdc; delaney clause; john adams; pesticides; risk
assessment; food safety; food chemical industry; newt gingrich;
republican party; negligible risk; corporations; the corporate
form; populism;