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<text>
<title>
(Jan 4, 1971) Issue of the Year: The Environment
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--Man of the Year
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
January 4, 1971
Man of the Year
Issue of the Year: The Environment
</hdr>
<body>
<p> The astonishing achievement of the year," says Ecologist
Lamont Cole of Cornell, "is that people are finally aware of the
size of the problem." They can hardly avoid it. In 1970, the
cause that once concerned lonely crusaders like Rachel Carson
became a national issue that at times verged on a national
obsession; it appealed even to people normally enraged by
attacks on the status quo. With remarkable rapidity it became
a tenet in the America credo, at least partially uniting
disparate pubic figures ranging from Cesar Chavez to Barry
Goldwater and New York's conservative Senator-elect James
Buckley.
</p>
<p> At the root of this phenomenon were the dire warnings of
ecologists that man's headless outpouring of noxious wastes is
overwhelming the biosphere's ability to cleanse itself. As the
year began, the pubic's foreboding was bolstered by the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, which devoted 40
symposia at its annual meeting to environmental dangers. Late
in January, President Nixon stressed the subject in his State
of the Union address, which he followed up with a February
special message. Soon the press issued almost daily reports on
assorted ecological disasters--oil spills, fish kills, nuclear
radiation.
</p>
<p> By April 15, fears about herbicides had forced the Pentagon
to suspend the use of Agent Orange (2,4,5-T) as a chemical
defoliant in Viet Nam. Ecological idealism inspired the young
and pleased the old as evidence that youth was finally doing
something constructive. By the time Earth Day dawned on April
22, ecoactivists of all ages were suffused with a quasi-
religious fervor. Many were also armed with petitions and
pickets against a growing list of alleged villains of pollution,
including Dow Chemical, General Motors and Chicago's
Commonwealth Edison Co.
</p>
<p> For a time, a backlash developed among Americans who viewed
the environment as a digression from pressing concerns like
poverty, racism and the war. They noted that ecologists, with
their holistic view of nature, proclaimed dangers on every front
but failed to set clear priorities for action. Ghetto blacks
were incensed when white collegians buried perfectly good cars
as a protest against smog. Others wearied of the apocalyptic
warnings of the "New Jeremiahs"--ecologists with an almost
masochistic appetite for doom, and demographers with passion for
slogans ("Stop at two"). Even ecologists scoffed at faddists who
denounced colored toilet paper on the theory that the dyes
polluted rivers. "Poppycock!" said DuPont's chemists, and no
other experts disagreed.
</p>
<p> Universal Yearning. Yet the backlash soon waned. Whatever
exaggerations may have been committed by the environmental
evangelists, no one could really scoff at the new American
concern with "the quality of life," the universal yearning for
clean air and water, quiet cities and communion with nature.
That yearning gave rise to scores of new environment books, from
The Tyranny of Noise to The Politics of Ecology. It spurred
myriad official responses, from the advent of car-free streets
in New York City to a mammoth suit filed by 15 states, accusing
Detroit automakers of willfully delaying emission devices.
</p>
<p> In the November elections, U.S. voters discarded six of the
twelve Congressmen with the worst environmental records, and
approved $1 billion in bond issues for pollution controls. In
December came the Senate's remarkable--an unexpected--vote
against funding that ecological nemesis, the SST. Last week a
Harris poll showed that Americans now regard pollution as "the
most serious" problem confronting their community--well ahead
of crime, drugs and poor schools.
</p>
<p> Surely this represents a momentarily askew estimate of what
Americans most fear in their own lives and families. The
relatively sudden passion sources. On the one hand, it
represented the response to a problem which American skills,
including technology, might actually solve, unlike the immensely
more elusive problems of race prejudice or the war in Viet Nam.
On the other hand, it represented a creeping disillusionment
with technology, an attempt by individuals to reassert control
over machine civilization. In 1970, the abuses were real enough.
Last summer the dangers of dirty air were dramatized by the smog
that shrouded most of the Eastern Seaboard for days. After a
nationwide sampling, the Bureau of Water Hygiene reported that
5% of the water was contaminated and 11% was smelly, discolored
or foul. Many cities fought a losing battle to get rid of their
garbage. Philadelphia and San Francisco may run out of landfill
dumps by the end of 1971.
</p>
<p> Global Problem. Because some pollutants are killers, fear
has begin to reinforce a vague feeling that life is slipping out
of control. Take mercury, a poison that can destroy brain and
nerve cells. Last spring dangerous concentrations of the metal
were found in fish from the Great Lakes region. By year's end,
mercury had also turned up in tuna, swordfish and Arctic seals.
Suddenly it seemed clear that the poison, an industrial waste,
had tainted the oceans to an alarming if still unknown degree.
</p>
<p> Other human pollutants showed up in the remotest areas.
After sailing across the Atlantic in a reed boat last summer,
Explorer Thor Heyerdahl reported that stinking nodules of oil
covered a 1,400-mile stretch of mid-ocean. Apparently the oil
was dumped by ships cleaning their tanks. Since 1950, warned
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, pollution and overfishing have killed 40%
of marine life in the oceans. Meeting in Malta and Rome,
scientists charted ways to save the seas--providing
international cooperation can be achieved.
</p>
<p> Many foreign countries began to discover environmental
problems. Russia, Sweden and New Zealand banned DDT. The
Japanese in particular were enraged by the effects of forced-
draft industrialization on their lovely country. After 48
schoolchildren were felled by photochemical smog in Tokyo last
summer, kogai (environmental disruption) became the nation's top
issue. Last week Japan's Diet responded by enacting 14 tough new
laws aimed at sending big polluters to prison.
</p>
<p> If disaster spurs a belated environmental consciousness,
national pride apparently does not. Italy, once "the garden of
Europe," is now choking in litter and traffic congestion. Of
its 5,000 miles of glorious coastline, 4,320 are polluted by
municipal and industrial wastes. But Italians barely notice the
mess. West Germans give low priority to the fate of Lake
Constance, the country's biggest source of fresh water. Last
summer the water turned reddish-brown; experts say that
Constance is going the way of "dead" Lake Erie. Communist
countries are also racing for industrialization, with scant care
for the impact on nature. Even Red China admitted last year that
its cities have environmental problems. The official dispatches
sounded almost smug--as if combatting pollution was a badge
of progress.
</p>
<p> For its part, the U.S. faced hard choices between ecology
and economics. President Nixon set the pattern for official
action, a zigzag between environmental reform and worries about
the recession. He supported the SST, partly to help save 20,000
aerospace jobs and ordered more timbering in national forests
despite objections of environmentalists and Congressmen. To
soothe oil producers, he opened up 543,897 acres in the oil-
polluted Gulf of Mexico for oil exploration and drilling.
</p>
<p> Conservators winced when Nixon fired Interior Secretary
Walter J. Hickel for his abrasive style and disagreement with
Administration policies. Hickel had become the unexpected hero
of episodes like the battle to halt a jet-port that endangered
Florida's Everglades National Park. Though a former Governor of
Alaska and thought to be friendly to the oil interests, Hickel
delayed construction of the ecologically questionable 773-mile
oil pipeline from the state's North Slope to a southern port.
He cracked down on oil drillers fouling the gulf of Mexico, and
even put eight kinds of whales on the official Endangered
Species list before he got on it himself.
</p>
<p> In firing Hickel, though, Nixon replaced him with a
potentially tougher law enforcer: the new Environmental
Protection Agency under William Rickelshaus. Nixon also named
Russell Train, a respected conservationist, to head the Council
on Environmental Quality. He proposed an instructional treaty
to control development of the ocean floors, and signed a bill
making oil polluters liable for damage.
</p>
<p> More highways. Congress often matched Nixon's ambivalence.
The Senate produced ample environmental crusaders, notably
Edmund Muskie, Philip Hart and Gaylord Nelson, the instigator
of Earth Day. But except for passing Muskie's Clean Air Act,
which focuses on auto pollution, and the Family Planning
Services and Population Research Act, it was business as usual
on Capitol Hill. Even the Highway Trust Fund was routinely
extended, its bulging coffers still devoted solely to paving the
nation without a thought to the consequences.
</p>
<p> In some ways, many state and local governments outdid
Congress. Though Maine and Vermont yearn for new industry and
jobs, both states chose to risk scaring away developers by
enacting new laws that, if enforced, firmly protect their
largely unspoiled natural resources. Buffalo, N.Y., started to
phase out the sale of leaded gasolines. Akron and New York's
Suffolk County spotted a way to combat both the money shortage
and water pollution. Instead of building costly new sewerage and
treatment plants, they banned the sale of detergents containing
phosphates, prime source of water contamination.
</p>
<p> The year's key protectors of the environment were the
courts, which paid unusual attention to a new breed of
conservationist lawyers. Despite a threat by the Internal
Revenue Service to take away their tax-exempt status, groups
like the Environmental Defense Fund pressed suits against
governmental agencies and private industries. Legal actions
prodded the Departments of Agriculture and HEW to expand--and
start enforcing--an existing ban on DDT. In Alaska, the
controversial pipeline was delayed in part by a private suit
citing the Environmental Quality Act of 1969, which required
federal agencies to study the environmental impact of any new
project--and make the studies public.
</p>
<p> For conservationists, the biggest legal victory was the
growth of their "standing" to sue polluters, a right that
historically was limited to plaintiffs who had a personal stake
in a suit's outcome. Michigan passed a law permitting all
residents to sue polluters. The Supreme Court upheld a lower
court's ruling that gave standing to a coalition of
conservationists who had won a suit blocking a highway project
along the Hudson River. In New York, other conservationists
successfully invoked the 1899 Refuse Act, one of the toughest
federal anti-water-pollution laws on the books.
</p>
<p> Significant Steps. Last week the 1899 law became the basis
for a new Federal executive order, requiring factories to get
permits to discharge any effluents into navigable waters.
Industry, in fact, is increasingly besieged by Washington. Last
year the Justice Department prosecuted both Chevron Oil Co. for
spilling oil into the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Power & Light
Co. for dumping hot water into Biscayne Bay. Detroit reeled
after the Clean Air Act mandated pollution-free cars by 1975--an
order that automakers called technically impossible and
downright absurd.
</p>
<p> Industry's first response to the legal crunch last year was
a flood of advertisements that depicted factories as
environmentally kind, or shifted the blame for pollution to the
growing population's demands (spurred by advertisers) for more
and more products. But business soon did more than issue
defensive propaganda. The industries must under fire for
pollution--power, autos, chemicals and paper--all made
significant steps in controlling effluents. Many container
companies are beginning tentative experiments with recycling
glass, paper and aluminum.
</p>
<p> Industry's problem is almost as complex as an ecosystem.
Because many environmental standards differ from state to state,
industries in lenient states have an economic edge over
competitors in tough states--and thus an incentive to resist
pollution abatement. Of they close polluting plants, moreover,
they throw employees out of work, and employment is part of a
corporation's social responsibility. Beyond this is the problem
of who shall pay for anti-pollution devices. Ultimately the
consumer, of course, but how much will he accept?
</p>
<p> Despite such pressures, however, "the decade of the
environment" got off to a good start last year and the pace
seems unlikely to slacken. Citizen groups have already
identified 1971's targets, including strip-mining companies that
destroy the landscape and cause water pollution. Washington,
for its part, plans to set new noise regulations on industrial
equipment and will press for new bans against dumping wastes in
the oceans. What 1970 proved is that the environment issue
cannot be dismissed as a fad. By changing national values, it
may well spur a profound advance in U.S. maturity and harmony
with nature, the parent of human life.
</p>
</body></article>
</text>