M EDITORIAL ES&T observes Earth Day Twenty years ago this month ES&Tpublished a variety of articles in the front section including a review of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences programs by its then-director Paul Kotin; a discussion of the failures of auto emission systems; praise for local-level water quality protection programs in Cleveland, Ohio; and features on post-1974 auto emission projections for California and on the use of membranes for water recycling. Buried among these pieces was a one-page Outlook column describing the events surrounding the first Earth Day, a student-led environmental teach-in that was to occur on April 22. The article noted that more than 900 colleges and universities and 4ooo high schools in the United States would participate. Prominently mentioned were pre-Earth Day teach-ins at Berkeley, California, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and a walk from Sacramento, California, to Los Angeles that was to take place March 21-April 22. This month we commemorate the 20th anniversary of that first Earth Day with a special edition of ES&T. We have assembled feature articles and Views by leading figures in the environmental profession today. They address the greenhouse effect, sustainable agriculture, toxic waste disposal, protection of the ocean “cornmons,” forest decline, and other important issues. Some of these were topical on that 6rst Earth Day; others have reached headline proportions only in the interim. As Bernhard Ulrich points out in his feature on Wuldsterben, the decline of forests had already begun in 1970 but was largely undetected. Even while marches were going on in the United States in 1970, rain was acidifying the lakes and soils of the Adirondacks and the Black Forest. Wastes were leaking from landfills and underground storage tanks that were presumed to be secure-or more likely, not thought about at all. Xenobiotics were piling up in sediments; radon was leaking into basements; and chlorofluorocarbons were eating away at the ozone layer. All of these now-notorious processes were largely undetected in 1970, but they were sensed by those who were perceptive enough to know that a complex industrialized society was not taking care of its wastes or noting its impact on the environment. 0013-936x1901092~0397$02.50~0 e 1990 American Chemical Society
Earth Day is an open challenge to those who make the decisions about how our planet is managed, but it is also a challenge to those who are responsible for generating knowledge about the natural world and our effect on it. And it is a challenge to those who are involved in the education of professionals and the general public. It is increasingly clear that we have not done a thorough job of explaining how our planet functions, how it is affected by humans, and what the risks are of alternative life styles. We have not as scientists and technologists joined the discussion of relative risks, alternative technologies, and the nature of uncertainty in the decision-making process. We have failed to affect the training of very young people especially, and our professional schools for training environmental scientists and engineers are underfunded, underappreciated, and tenuous. We have failed to measure and articulate the costs of destruction of resources. We have allowed governments and industry to take a short view, and we have failed to convince politicians that the study of the planet is as important as the conquering of it. Given the vast economic resources of developed countries, especially of North America, we still must be indicted as users rather than stewards. This special issue commemorates Earth Day because the editors feel that it is symbolic to all who have an interest in the protection of the environment, though admittedly in different ways. To some people the first Earth Day was the beginning of a new awareness that the planet was threatened and that political action was needed to protect it from disastrous levels of pollution. In the 1970 Outlook column it was noted that many of the organizers of the environmental teach-in were veterans of the antiwar movement: “. . . the students are not just talking about stopping a war, but a complete change in life-style. In their minds this means changing priorities of government spending from defense to feeding the hungry, urban housing, cleaning up air and rivers, preserving our national resources, enhancing the much abused ‘quality of life.’ ” In his guest editorial in this issue, Denis Hayes echoes this call for a new life style. He and others would surely point out that the fundamental issues today are Environ. Sci. Technoi., Vol. 24, NO.4, 1990 397
not really much different from the issues of 1970, though the players and the war zones are changing. “Measured on virtually any scale,” he declares, “the world is in worse shape than it was 20 years ago.” In another View, Gus Speth of the World Resources Institute notes that “the paradigms we’ve lived by-steeped in the images of conquering nature and of man as lord of all he surveys, however tempered over time by new evidence-are manifestly bankrupt.” Earth Day reminds others of an era when the nation was divided, a time of confrontation when passions ran high-when science and technology began to be denigrated and industrialists were perceived by many as evil exploiters of the natural world. In the ES&TOutlook in 1970 it was noted that “industry inevitably will be a major target of Earth Day activities-it can? escape” (emphasis added). As Paul Busch points out in this issue, “although Earth Day was overwhelmingly positive, it polarized many of the very people who must join together if we are to build a long-lasting environmental ethic in our society.” That antagonism continued in the following years and surfaced in the early 1980s when EPA was threatened with virtual extinction. That it remains an undercurrent in this country cannot be denied. What has surprised many people is that the movement has more than just survived. It is becoming a worldwide political force and, if recent polls are accurate, it may now have ingrained itself as a new consciousness in the minds of most people-at least in Western countries. Few who participated in the marches and demonstrations that day, and even fewer who cynically looked on, could have foreseen the strength of the environmental movement that followed the first Earth Day; how it survived the attempted purges of the early 1980s and surged to prominence in the last few years. In the interim since 1970 we in the United States have seen the passage of the powerful 1972 amendments to the Water Pollution Control Act, the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Superfund, and many more federal and state laws to regulate the protection of the environment. Similar changes have taken place in other countries and, more importantly, we now see multinational consortia emerging to control pollution. Notwithstanding Denis Hayes’ pessimistic (and possibly accurate) assessment, there seems to be real change occurring in the attitudes of lay people, politicians, and yes, even industrialists. The environmental ethic, at least at a superficial level, now seems to be a part of our culture. There remain, of course, serious questions as to whether this new ethic will be. translated into societal change, and if so, on what basis. Will environmental activism be a new form of religious passion that recklessly attacks institutions with no rational basis or alternative plan? Will it be. recognized, as Gus Speth seems to grudgingly admit in his View in this issue, that only technology can save us from technology? Will the new politics of the next century be a consortium of technol!NE
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ogists and environmentalists or a confrontation? What, in fact, is the basis of the apparent change in ethic? Is it merely an uninformed, hysterical, not-in-my-backyard reaction? Is it an appreciation of nature or a concern for property values that is driving public opinion? Are the fears of pollution based on science or on mysticism? Or, as some political pragmatists would say, does it matter? To scientists and engineers, these questions are very important because they get to the quick of our professional and ethical training. We are taught to draw conclusions based on data and to formulate and carefully test hypotheses, rejecting those that cannot hold up to careful scrutiny. In making judgments, we seek to be entirely objective and certain. But, as Peter Rogers points out in his article on the debate over climate change, we are now forced to admit that these methods do not always work when addressing environmental change. We may have to change the “focus of the debate from argument over scientific fact to how to make good decisions under high levels of [socially acceptable] uncertainty. . Finally, Earth Day is an important day because it represents another step in our civilization, that is, a step toward making us more civilized. Ours is not the fist environmental movement, but it is the first based on scientific investigation and reasoning rather than on naturalism. It juxtaposes two powerful forces: a faith in technology that became almost a religion during the past century and deeply ingrained feelings about nature that are apparently within us all. It is, therefore, a potentially profound development in the evolution of human culture. Let us hope that Earth Day 2010 will see an integration of these two forces that will allow sustainable development, environmental protection, and human prosperity for all of Earth’s inhabitants.
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Wi//iumH. G k e lurr been editor of
ES&T since 1988.
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