€SGT EDITORIAL
At a recent conference sponsored by the Council for Chemical Research, Inc., in Keystone, Colorado, a participant from the chemical industry said, to paraphrase, “It is no longer useful to label people ‘environmentalist,’ ’industrialist,’ ‘capitalist,’ or ‘activist’;we are in the business of protecting the planet together, and we should get on with that business.” Is this another sign that a fundamental change is taking place in our society? Is there a new environmental conscience in the laboratory and in the board room that hardly existed before? I think so. This conscience is not evenly distributed within industry and commerce; some sectors lag far behind others and some are hardly moving, but there is undeniable evidence that something is happening that cannot be explained entirely by the profit motive. Some observers say that eventually it will include all manufacturing industries, transportation, and utilities. It is the greening of world industry. It is interesting to speculate on the root cause of this new attitude-if indeed it is new. Some people might say that it has been nascent in the subconscious of private sector workers all along. Perhaps the “new” corporate environmental conscience is a natural phenomenon, the culmination of several parallel and epochal changes that have occurred in world civilization over the past century or so. Perhaps these changes are rooted in the ancient culture of the human race and are deeply linked to the soil our ancestors worked, to the woods and prairies where they hunted, to the air they breathed, and to the water in which they bathed. Perhaps the industrial revolution that has occurred in a relatively brief period of human existence cannot erase these primeval memories. Indeed, at our most basic level perhaps we are all tied inextricably to the land, and we are mortified at the damage that we did to our home before we woke up. The people who work in and manage our industries are not immune to these primeval feelings. Though they take carbon, iron, and nitrogen from the Earth and rework them to make new products, though they use new science and tools that their ancestors could never have imagined, I know from personal experience that they too feel deeply that there is an environmental ethic that is right. They too are concerned about the danger of irreparable 0013-936X/92/0926-1265$03.00/0 ID 1992 American Chemical Society
harm to their progeny. Beyond the cynicism and the materialism, there is a force that all of us feel but do not fully comprehend. It is the difference in our perception of a clear mountain stream and a sickening, slimy rivulet; and in our perception of a pine-scented spring day brightened with the blush of new flowers, and choking smog. It is this difference that has made even the most hardened corporate executive concede that the environmental movement is not a transient phenomenon. It rings too true. Yes, there are still differences of viewpoint, still controversies that will separate us into groups bent upon immediate goals and influenced by other ideologies, but there is also an unmistakable commonality among us that emerges in times of crisis. We see the possibility of such a crisis looming before us-some seem to see it more clearly than others-and it is this that brings us closer together. If sustainable development is to be a reality, it must come about through major changes in our society, not the least of which are the attitudes of “environmentalists” toward industry and of industry toward the planet. I feel this change taking place, and it must be encouraged by all.
Environ. Sci. Technol., VOI. 26, NO. 7, 1992 1265
