TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/122490/1224331.000

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                                                                                ENVIRONMENT, Page 48

ENDANGERED EARTH UPDATE

Is The Planet On The Back Burner?


War and recession may be grabbing the headlines, but the
relentless trashing of the world's air, land and seas continues
apace

By EUGENE LINDEN


    This could be the winter of discontent for
environmentalists. As the threat of war rumbles in the Middle
East and the U.S. economy tumbles into recession, preserving
the planet's air, land and water is in danger of losing its
place among the most pressing issues of the day. It's not that
last April's Earth Day has been forgotten already: more and
more people are recycling household waste, toting reusable
shopping bags to stores and planting trees in their backyards.
And after more than a decade of debate, Congress finally
overhauled the Clean Air Act this fall. But these encouraging
steps hardly begin to attack the most ominous threats to the
environment, such as deforestation and global warming. For the
most part, the populist fervor for preservation has not
generated effective government action at a national or
international level. Both the people and their leaders seem
totally bewildered about how to tackle global problems. Too
often they mistakenly see a conflict between a healthy
environment and healthy economies. As a result, the ecology
movement has entered a twilight zone in which everybody claims
to be an environmentalist, but few people know what to do about
it.

    That uncertainty showed up clearly in a poll of U.S.
households taken for TIME late last month by Yankelovich Clancy
Shulman. Fully 94% of those surveyed considered protecting the
environment a very important issue, and 63% supported stronger
laws and regulations to get the job done. But when it comes to
financing preservation, the public is sharply divided. Of the
people polled, 48% were willing to "go full speed ahead" in
"spending money to clean up the environment," but 47% said
that, given other national problems, it would be better to "go
slow." Despite their desire for a cleaner environment, 64%
admitted that they personally "should be doing more" to achieve
that goal. Perhaps the most revealing finding in the survey was
that 80% agreed with the statement "There are so many
contradictory things said about the environment that it is
sometimes confusing to know what to do."

    Amid the confusion, the U.S. environmental movement is
stumbling badly. In November voters turned down a passel of
overly ambitious environmental initiatives at the state level,
throwing the responsibility for policy back to elected
officials, with whom it belongs. There is little hope, however,
that either Congress or the White House will offer an
environmental agenda in the near future. Exhausted by debate
over the Clean Air Act and distracted by the twin threats of
recession and war, Congress has no major environmental
initiatives pending. The Bush Administration, all but
abandoning the President's promise to be an "environmentalist"
in the Oval Office, has not followed up on its decision to
elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to Cabinet-level
status, nor has it come through with an adequate plan to
protect the threatened spotted owl. Regarding global issues,
the Administration temporizes on threats to the atmosphere and
lags in, rather than leads, efforts to deal with dangers to the
land and oceans. Says Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee: "1990
was a year of decision for the environment, but no decisions
were made."

    The story is no better outside the U.S. Efforts to come to
grips with global climate change amount to a desultory drift
from conference to conference, without international leadership
or any agreement about what should be done. The destruction of
tropical rain forests continues unabated. All around the world,
the expectations of Earth Day have given way to enervating
debate and procrastination.

    Environmentalists must share part of the blame: they have
not offered a coherent plan of action either domestically or
internationally. Admits Lester Brown, president of the
Washington-based Worldwatch Institute: "The agenda is fairly
confused. A number of environmental groups have grown up
independently, with their own memberships, their own budgets
and their own objectives." Thomas Lovejoy of the Smithsonian
Institution is worried that the cacophony of environmental
lobbying is beginning to be counterproductive. Says he: "I
sense a real frustration among the more concerned and active
members of Congress about enough being enough. If you wear out
your best friends, you've got a problem."

    Unfortunately, ecological ills do not go into remission
simply because environmentalists cannot get their act together
or because congressional attention is focused elsewhere. As
time passes without meaningful action, options disappear, and
the costs to present and future generations continue to rise.
The urgency of the problems is too easily forgotten. "To some
people, the whole concept [of environmentalism] is a luxury,"
says Madeline Albright, professor of international relations
at Georgetown University. "In the future, as the economy
tightens up, it is conceivable that people will think we can't
afford environmental improvements."

    But failing to protect the environment is ultimately more
costly than preserving it. Consider the case of Eastern Europe.
For decades, the communist-bloc countries stoked their
industrial production without regard for the environmental
consequences. Only this year was the scope of the resulting
ecocatastrophe revealed to the world. Zoltan Illes, Hungary's
Deputy State Secretary for Environment and Nature Protection,
estimates that health problems and loss of production because
of air and water pollution reduce his nation's gross domestic
product more than 6%.

    The fall of the Iron Curtain could spur a cleanup. West
Europeans lead the world in environmental consciousness because
they have suffered egregious homegrown pollution as well as
grime floating in from the east. Expenditures on environmental
protection in Western Europe have increased from $46 billion
in 1987 to $73 billion this year, and are expected to rise 75%
more by the year 2000. Additional funds and technology will
undoubtedly go to help neighbors to the east modernize their
industries and fight pollution. Both Sweden and the
Netherlands, for example, have offered to help Poland cleanse
its air. Klaus Matthiesen, environment minister of the German
state North Rhine-Westphalia, notes that spending on
environmental preservation "must be regarded as an important
motor of economic change."

    Financial pressures have led many developing nations to
continue shortsighted policies that squander natural resources.
In Brazil the appointment by President Fernando Collor de Mello
of outspoken conservationist Jose Lutzenberger as Secretary of
the Environment raised hopes that the burning of the Amazon
rain forest would be halted. But environmentalists are still
waiting for Collor to prove that his commitment to saving the
Amazon is more than public relations. "Lutzenberger has not
presented one significant change in internal policy," says
Fabio Feldmann, the only Brazilian congressman elected on a
green platform.

    Throughout the world, environmentalists look to America to
provide leadership, but instead the nation sits on its hands
like a perplexed giant. Both individually and at the policy
level, Americans seem to be all for environmental protection,
so long as it does not disrupt business as usual. Though the
U.S. is the world's biggest contributor to the industrial and
automobile emissions that threaten to wreak havoc with the
global climate, none of the past three Administrations have
delivered a national energy policy.

    Attempts by several states to fill the policy vacuum
floundered this year, and the tactics of the environmental
lobby were at least partly responsible. The contest over
California's "Big Green," Proposition 128, for instance, was
marked by overstatement on both sides of the issue. Prominent
environmentalists, including EPA Administrator William Reilly,
were troubled by the sweep of some of Big Green's provisions,
like the pesticide curbs that would have banned any chemical
found to cause cancer in any rat. Given the legitimate debate
over many of the provisions in the proposition's 16,000 words,
it was entirely possible for a Californian to vote against the
measure and still feel that he or she was an environmentalist.

    People have long distrusted industry assertions, but they
expect better from environmentalists, who have enjoyed great
credibility. The debate over Big Green's pesticide provisions
left many voters wondering whether environmental interest
groups exaggerate for effect. Congressman Al Swift of
Washington State says the environmental lobby in Congress has
grown from a David into a Goliath without exercising the
restraint that should come with its greatly expanded influence.

    The defeat of the environmental ballot initiatives provides
an opportunity for interest groups to rethink their approach
to environmental issues. Many citizens are tired of being asked
to become lawmakers when they enter voting booths and decide
on the merits of intricate policy questions that are supposed
to be the province of Congress and state legislatures.
Environmentalists might also reconsider their tendency to favor
more government regulation as the answer to most ecological
problems. In Washington State voters rejected a ballot
initiative that would have put curbs on development, partly
because they feared it would mean new government intrusions
into their lives. Regulations that lead to the creation of new
bureaucracies are not attractive to citizens who are fed up
with the inefficiency of government red tape. "People want to
be more certain and careful about how their money is spent to
clean up the environment," says Sheldon Kamieniecki, an
associate professor at the University of Southern California.

    Adjustments of the tax codes are usually better than
regulations as a way to discourage polluting or wasteful
practices and to reward efficiency. If a person wants to drive
a gas guzzler, it makes sense for him to pay higher gas and
sales taxes. Farmers would quickly look for alternatives to
chemical pesticides if they were taxed according to the cost
of cleaning them out of the environment. Regulations are most
useful as a last resort for dealing with problems, such as
nuclear waste, that are too dangerous to be left to the
marketplace.

    If environmentalists must accept part of the blame for the
present policy paralysis, they also deserve credit for some
noteworthy victories this year. In a remarkably swift
turnabout, Japan agreed to phase out its large-scale drift-net
operations in the Pacific. Under pressure, Taiwan and South
Korea have also agreed to curb the use of the giant nets, which
indiscriminately trap turtles and marine mammals along with
fish. In the U.S. the Interior Department banned offshore
drilling in a number of sensitive areas for 10 years, buying
time to understand better the interaction of oil and delicate
marine ecosystems.

    Among the most significant developments has been a major
shift in attitude by several international corporations.
Companies that in the past had an adversative relationship with
conservation groups have begun to take actions that are more
than public relations. Following the lead of H.J. Heinz's
StarKist Seafood Co., major American tuna canners voluntarily
decided to stop buying fish from fleets that carelessly kill
dolphins and other marine mammals. McDonald's addressed a major
solid-waste problem by switching from polystyrene to paper
wrappings for its fast foods. Conoco decided to use
double-hulled tankers in an effort to reduce the risk of oil
spills, and it has made a commitment to lessen the impact of
its exploration operations on rain forests and other sensitive
ecosystems. The Houston-based oil company made the happy
discovery in Gabon that shrinking the size of drilling areas
and roads to minimize damage to forests saved money as well as
trees.

    The realization that preserving the biosphere can also save
money might be the salvation of the environmental movement if
the industrial world should enter a deep recession. It is true
that war or an economic downturn might divert resources that
could otherwise be used for such projects as restoring wetlands
and rivers. But Denis Hayes, the leading organizer of Earth
Day, argues that hard times might have the positive benefit of
causing people and businesses to change their throwaway
mentalities and adopt a more conserving approach.

    The global environmental awakening has been a true populist
movement, a broad-based eruption of concern noteworthy for the
absence of charismatic leaders. Ordinary citizens have begun
to see the connection between environmental issues and their
own welfare. Now it is time for political leaders to translate
public concern into effective global action. Eventually deeds
must catch up with environmental rhetoric, or humanity will
learn the hard way that a healthy planet is not a luxury but a
necessity.


____________________________________________________________
1990 SCORECARD


    WINNERS

    THE U.S. LANDSCAPE: Decisions by Coca-Cola, Pepsi and
McDonald's to switch to recycled or degradable packaging will
help reduce litter and ease the burden on landfills.

    MARINE MAMMALS: Japan agreed to stop its South Pacific
fishing vessels from using deadly drift nets. U.S. tuna canners
will no longer buy tuna caught by methods that endanger
dolphins.

    EASTERN EUROPE: Now that the communist bloc's dirty laundry
has been exposed, West European nations are beginning to offer
financial and technological assistance to begin the cleanup.

    LOSERS

    ENVIRONMENTAL PROPOSITIONS: U.S. voters said no in November
to a series of unwieldy ballot initiatives that tried to do
everything from preserve forests to curb pesticide use.

    RAIN FORESTS: As yet, no international efforts have
succeeded in dealing with deforestation. New studies show that
the rate of tropical-forest destruction has accelerated 80% in
the past decade.

    CORAL REEFS: Under assault by development, tourism and
fishing, coral reefs worldwide are also being hurt, some
scientists believe, by the unusually warm temperatures of
recent years.

    SPLIT DECISIONS

    THE ATMOSPHERE: The U.S. Congress toughened the Clean Air
Act, but whether the legislation will clean up America's air
or merely slow the rate of decline is anybody's guess. Work on
a treaty to counter the threat of global warming is proceeding
at a dangerously slow pace.

    THE SPOTTED OWL: It was put on the threatened-species list,
but the Bush Administration has not come through with an
adequate plan to save the ancient Northwestern forests that are
home to the bird.