=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #196
—August 29, 1990—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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MAKING PEACE WITH THE PLANET.
Is our situation hopeless? Is pollution so widespread, human
population so large, and ecological destruction so advanced that
we cannot salvage planet earth? Not at all, argues Barry
Commoner, the well-known biologist. We can save the earth, expand
development using technologies in harmony with the ecosphere, and
thus give every human the means to a good life. But we must start
now to make the necessary changes. We have little time to waste.
Commoner’s new book, MAKING PEACE WITH THE PLANET, sketches a
global blueprint for solving the environmental crisis. He begins
by describing our environmental situation: after 20 years of
intensive effort, during which we spent more than $100 billion
dollars, we have failed to curb environmental destruction. Ozone
depletion, global warming, increasing contamination of
groundwater and oceans, smogridden cities, large inventories of
radioactive wastes, and widespread chemical contamination of our
food, our water, and of ourselves, all indicate that the
environmental movement has failed to achieve its goals and is
losing more ground each passing day. Creation of the EPA (U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency), passage of a dozen major pieces
of federal legislation, and publication of approximately 10,000
pages of federal regulations, have not managed to reverse, or
even to control, environmental destruction.
The reason for this failure, Commoner argues, is that we have
tried to cure the symptoms instead of trying to prevent the
disease. Once pollution is created, Commoner argues, there is
little that can be done about it. Take, for example, the chemical
industry. Under the federal Community Right to Know law, the
chemical industry has reported that it emits 20 billion pounds of
toxic chemicals annually into the environment. Based on these
data, the Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) has
estimated that the actual yearly release of toxic chemicals into
the environment is close to 400 billion pounds. Of this, only 1%
is destroyed, which is the only way to prevent these substances
from threatening living things. If the other 99% of chemical
industry wastes were to be destroyed, the cost would be $20
billion annually. But the entire profits of the chemical industry
in recent years has been only $2 billion per year, so obviously
the chemical industry cannot afford to destroy its own wastes.
This is why the chemical industry still releases 99% of its
wastes to the environment and must continue to do so. Commoner’s
point: once pollution has been created, it is too expensive to
control. The only way to avoid damage from pollution is to avoid
creating it in the first place: pollution prevention is the only
way. (“If you don’t put something into the environment, it isn’t
there,” says Commoner, with characteristic simplicity.)
Commoner next describes the underlying source of the problem:
changes in technologies since World War II. He analyzes modern
industrial manufacturing technology, then agriculture, then
transportation, then energy systems. In each case he shows that
the new production techniques do not make new products (with a
few exceptions, such as TV, computers, video tape, and some
pharmaceuticals). What they produce is old, familiar products
using new production methods using new raw materials, resulting
in greater profits for industrialists but far more pollution.
What will it take to solve these worsening problems? It will
first require the environmental movement to face the fact that
prevention is the only way even though pollution prevention will
be politically tough to achieve because it runs directly counter
to the main goal of industry, which is to maximize profit in the
short term. Non-polluting technologies do not necessarily return
high profits in the short term, so industrial leaders bent on
maximizing short-term profits will stubbornly oppose the
changeover to nonpolluting technologies. We must face the fact
that environmental quality and the current economic goals of most
businessmen are in direct conflict. This means that the
traditional environmentalists’ tactics of compromise and
accommodation cannot bring about the necessary changes. Commoner
argues that the rise of the grass-roots environmental movement
has shown the way: grass-roots groups have shown a willingness to
take the hard road politically, to refuse to compromise with
local polluters. Grass-roots environmentalists want pollution
avoided, prevented, stopped. They do not want their children
slightly poisoned or a little poisoned. They simply do not want
their children poisoned, period. This refusal to compromise
explains why “…it is the grass-roots organizations that are now
at the cutting edge of the public movement to end the
environmental crisis,” Commoner says.
What is to be done? Commoner argues that any environmental
problem has three components: a polluting technology, per-person
use of that technology, and the number of people involved. By
examining several representative cases, he shows that the real
problem is modern technology, not the size of the human
population and not per-capita consumption. Commoner believes it
is important to reach agreement on the nature of the problem
before we can build a movement to implement solutions. Size of
the human population is not the most important component of the
problem; by far, the largest contributor to global destruction is
the technologies that humans employ, he shows.
Commoner then demonstrates that ecologically sound alternative
technologies already exist in most cases. Successful,
non-chemical agricultural techniques exist; affordable ways to
harness solar energy exist; low-pollution transportation systems
exist; modern chemical technologies almost all represent
substitutes for earlier, less-polluting technologies, so we could
return to the earlier technologies and reduce our destruction of
the planet. Commoner is certainly not a Luddite seeking the
abandonment of all modern amenities; but he argues that we must
give up some modern technologies, returning to earlier ones, if
we are to end our self-destructive war against nature.
Commoner shows that even ecologically sound technologies can be
misused and misapplied by individuals bent on maximizing
short-term profits, so he argues that our systems for controlling
technological choices must embrace social goals as well as the
goals of individuals and corporations. He also warns that we must
keep in mind three general goals for any technological decision:
(a) to prevent local pollution and destruction; (b) to prevent
potential worldwide effects (global warming or ozone depletion,
for example); and (c) to accelerate ecologically sound economic
development in the third world. “If these goals are approached
piecemeal, there is the danger that the method used to reach one
of them will interfere with the others,” Commoner points out. His
emphasis on third world development is central to his global
blueprint for solving the environmental crisis. We cannot achieve
peace with the planet unless we achieve peace among the
inhabitants of the planet, he argues, and gross economic
disparities between the northern and southern hemispheres are a
key source of conflict.
Commoner provides ballpark estimates of the dollar costs of
restructuring American industry and he shows that the
transformation of our basic industrial system will be expensive
but affordable, if we cut military spending. Worldwide, military
spending will need to be cut about in half, he estimates. He
points out that the most productive economy in the world is that
of Japan, where military expenditures are 1% of gross national
product (GNP) or less; in the U.S., we spend 7% of GNP on the
military. Japan uses 30% of its GNP as business investment
capital; the U.S. uses only 16% of GNP that way. Reducing the
military budget will free up needed capital for the necessary
transformation of the U.S. industrial base.
Most wars today are fought in the third world, fueled by residual
cold war ideological disputes, and made possible by arms
shipments from U.S. and U.S.S.R. to both sides. Some 25 million
people have died in wars since World War II–the vast majority of
them in third world countries. Equitable and ecologically
compatible development of the third world is essential, if wars
are to be reduced and avoided.
In sum, “substantial environmental improvement can only occur
when the choice of production technologies is open to social
intervention… [so] we must find suitable ways to implement the
social governance of production,” Commoner says.
We say: Read this book. Get: Barry Commoner, MAKING PEACE WITH
THE PLANET (New York: Pantheon, 1990). $19.95. Have your library
order it.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: barry commoner; making peace with the planet;
overviews; agendas; transportation; energy; manufacturing;
petrochemical industry; agriculture; fertilizers; pesticides;
plastics; air pollution; water pollution; regulation; economics;
conversion; ldcs; ethics; social control; production;
accountability; military; waste reduction;