=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #424
—January 12, 1995—
News and resources for environmental justice.
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HIGHLIGHTS OF 1994: A CONSERVATIVE SPEAKS–PART 2
[Continuing from last week: excerpts from a previously-unreported
speech by Gordon K. Durnil, former U.S. Chairman of the
International Joint Commission (IJC), which recently recommended
new ways of protecting the environment. [1]]
Now some thoughts about MORALITY. And no, I am not going to
preach to you about what values you should personally adopt. I
am no smarter about all that than are any of you. But something
that David Crombie, the former Mayor of Toronto, said last fall
really made an impression on me. It was his explanation of why
the environmental movement is growing. Why so many people are
stepping forward demanding action. People not particularly
organized by anyone, not just Democrats or Republicans, both
liberal and conservative. Just many, many people who have an
environmental problem in their community, usually associated with
a sick child; people who are frustrated because they cannot get
the attention of the polluter or the government to prevent
additional pollution or to rectify past mistakes.
Crombie said something like, “When people start asking questions
about nature, they are, in reality, asking questions about their
God. Their activities and their concerns are based in their
religious beliefs. And for that reason, they have staying power
and will not be going away soon. In all probability, their
numbers will continue to grow.” Thoughtful words from a
thoughtful guy. And, of course, he is right. It is the
motivation to do the right thing that will be the real catalyst
for environmental success. And whether you call it religion,
morality or ethics, there are right things to do and wrong things
to do. I contend that it is morally wrong to continue to put
quantities of a persistent toxic substance into the environment
when we do not have good evidence that it will not cause harm to
humans or wildlife; but when we do have sufficient evidence to
know that caution is in order. What ever happened to the Golden
Rule?
As I heard someone testify last fall, “In our system,” he said,
“it is not chemicals that should be thought innocent until found
guilty. It’s people.”
And, it is morally wrong for our national legislature to refuse a
thorough study of the adverse health effects of chlorine, as they
now are proceeding [to do] in the Clean Water Act debates. “What
we don’t know won’t hurt us,” seems to be their creed. I have
the opposite fear….
Most environmental progress in the United States and in Indiana
has come under Republican leadership. Still, when Republicans
speak, they tend to refer to aesthetics or think in terms of
conservation. You know. The river is so pretty we need to save
it. The forest is so full of deer for hunting that we need to
preserve it. But in reality, contemporary environmentalists are
primarily concerned with health –what caused their neighbor’s
child to have a birth defect? Words about conservation or beauty
sound cynical to those folks who wonder why their child’s immune
system is suppressed. So Republicans need to learn the
difference between conservationists and environmentalists.
Republicans are too often determined to use words and phrases
such as cost/benefit analysis when considering an environmental
standard. It makes sense, we always say, to weigh the benefits
of the environmental standard against the costs. But the parents
on the west side of Indianapolis might wonder what are the
benefits of lead exposure to their child? Certainly the
diminished learning capacity of a small child is not a benefit.
Measuring monetary factors against adverse human effects and
conditions is a common Republican mistake. I agree that
cost/benefit analysis needs to be done, but part of the cost
factor must include health effects….
So –can a political conservative be an environmentalist? Can an
environmentalist be a political conservative? Sure. Why not?
Who says otherwise –besides those in the media; teachers of
political science; non-thinking liberals and unthinking
conservatives? Let me tell you why I think those folks are
wrong. When I attend meetings of the [National] Wildlife
Federation, and other environmental groups, even Greenpeace, I
have people come up to me after my speech telling me that they
are Republicans and political conservatives. They thank me for
giving them an excuse to come out of the closet, so to speak.
Why are they at those meetings? It is simple. They have
experienced an environmental problem; they or someone in their
family or neighborhood have been an environmental victim and they
are trying to learn more. Such environmental groups are often the
only source of environmental information, especially information
about adverse human health effects, available to average people.
For them their political philosophy is not a barrier to
learning….
It is important to point out that most environmentalists I have
met are not organized by any large group. Most are environmental
victims, relatives of environmental victims or friends of
environmental victims. Their numbers are growing in the same
proportion as is breast cancer, testicular cancer, reproductive
problems, learning problems, juvenile crime and hyperactivity. A
lot of those environmental victims are Republicans….
Let’s wrap up this discussion with some practical reasons why
conservatives should be interested in and leaders for
environmental protection; interested in what we are doing to
ourselves and to our children with some of the chemicals we use
and the processes we employ. I start with the presumption that
all reasonable people prefer clean air and clean water; that such
people are opposed to unknowing exposures to various poisons to
our children, our families and our friends. So where do we
start? The best way, the least expensive way, the conservative
way and the least painful way to accomplish the goal of
protection from the most onerous pollutants is prevention. Just
don’t do it in the first place. Governments, jointly or
singularly, will never have sufficient funds to continue cleaning
up all those onerous substances lying on the bottom of lakes or
working their way through the ground. So for economic reasons
and for health reasons, prevention is a conservative solution.
Let’s not continue to put in what we now are paying to clean up.
Conservatives want lower taxes. Conservatives want smaller
government, with less regulations and fewer regulators.
Pollution prevention, instead of all the high-cost bureaucratic
mandates and regulatory harassment at the tail end of the
pollution trail, can achieve those conservative purposes. If you
don’t make an onerous substance in the first place, you won’t
later need to regulate it; you won’t need regulators or the
increased taxes and fees to pay their expenses. If you don’t
discharge it, you don’t need to buy a government permit with all
the attendant red tape and bureaucratic nonsense to which
businesses are now subjected. Pollution prevention corrects not
just the physical health of our society, it promotes economic
health.
Conservatives believe in individual rights. We believe in the
right to own private property, and to use it as we see fit.
Private dry lands should not be deemed to be wet by a remote
government. Such actions violate our basic constitutional
rights. But is not the insidious invasion of our bodies by
harmful unsolicited chemicals the most flagrant violation of our
individual rights?
We conservatives bemoan the decline in values that has besieged
our present day society. We abhor government and media assaults
on our constitutional right to freely practice our religion in
today’s value neutral, politically correct society. Why then
should we not abhor the lack of morality involved in discharging
untested chemicals into the air, ground and water to alter and
harm, to whatever degree, human life and wildlife?
We conservatives preach out against the decline in learning in
our schools; the increased incidence of juvenile crime; we worry
about abnormal sexual practices and preferences. Should there be
evidence (as there is) that some of those things are being caused
by chemicals tested and untested flowing into our environment,
should we not add them to our litany of concerns?
We preach self-reliance, but can we be that if unbeknown to us
mysterious chemicals are affecting our ability to be reliant upon
ourselves?
We conservatives believe it unconscionable that government
programs such as welfare are tearing at the fabric of the family.
We are upset with the growing incidence of birth out of wedlock,
of single parent families; with children bearing children. Why
then are we not so concerned with the causes, and the increased
incidence, of childhood cancers? Why not visit the local
children’s hospital and visit with those brave youngsters with
ineffective immune systems trying to fight off the devastating
evils of cancer? Observe the parental pain. See how that
circumstance tears at the family. Why not add childhood cancer
to our concerns about the family; asking why the emphasis is
still on how to cure it, instead of on how to prevent it?
These are grim matters, but I am optimistic about the future. I
have always been an optimist. I always believe things will turn
out as they should. Oh, it might require an extraordinary effort
by me, and you, but given the desire and a willingness to work,
things in my life normally turn out okay. I believe that about
the environment. The symmetry of nature is loaned to us for
human use over relatively short periods of time; seventy or
eighty years, if we are fortunate. Each of us has a moral duty
to not disrupt that balance. For centuries humans met that moral
duty, but over the past one half century we have become just too
urbane to worry about such mundane things. We have unknowingly
done with chemicals what we would never have intentionally done
had we pursued the moral basis of the conservative philosophy I
described earlier.
Daily we are being exposed to more and more information about the
need for environmental stewardship; about the need to exercise
precaution before putting harmful chemicals into the environment.
I would just ask that you pay a little more attention to what is
being said. Don’t immediately dismiss worrisome words.
Investigate the facts on your own. Don’t be diverted by the
formalized concentration of attention on trash. Don’t demand
100% proof of harm before acting. Think about morality and the
Golden Rule. Set priorities, make some decisions and then act on
those decisions. I have done that and I have come to the
conclusion that we are unintentionally putting our children and
our grandchildren in harms way. And I have concluded that we
need a basic change of direction.
===============
[1] In 1994, the International Joint Commission (IJC) issued its
SEVENTH BIENNIAL REPORT ON GREAT LAKES WATER QUALITY, the third
such report to advocate new approaches to environmental
protection. (See RHWN #284, #319, and #378.) The IJC’s
recommendations are summarized in Peter Montague, “Our GreatestAccomplishment: Grass-roots Action Has Forced a Major Shift inThinking,” THE WORKBOOK Vol. 19 No. 2 (Summer 1994), pgs. 86-90.
Paper reprints available for $2.00. In the fall of
1995, Indiana University Press [phone: 800/842-6796] will publish
Mr. Durnil’s book, THE MAKING OF A CONSERVATIVE ENVIRONMENTALIST.
Descriptor terms: ijc; pollution prevention; religion;
environmentalism; david crombie; ethics; morality; wildlife;
human health; children; chlorine; republican party; indiana;
conservation; cost benefit analysis; nwf; greenpeace; taxation;
taxes; economy; economic development; growth; chemical trespass;
golden rule; gordon k. durnil; international joint commission;
great lakes; philosophy;