Environment Too Big to Fail eople are fickle. Their attitudes change continually about the environment, and concerns in the U.S. have hit a new 25 year low-point according to a recent Gallup poll, and reported on by ABC News. Looking at the full results, only 34% of Americans worry about global warming a “great deal”, for example, compared to 41% as recently as 2007. Americans’ worries about warming rank dead last among eight environmental issues, while drinking water is their greatest concern. Fifty-one percent of us feel that economic growth is our highest overall priority, even if it hurts the environment. How sad. It is like someone entered “Greatest Challenge” in the Google search box, and world opinion returned, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Fortunately, if we wait a while, opinions will change depending on the latest perceptions of people. Perhaps when the economy improves, people will become more concerned about the environment again. Or when environmental catastrophes hit, we will begin to take notice. Still, if we wait too long to be motivated, it could be too late or prohibitively expensive to fix the problem. Sound policy is tough in times of such whimsy. Must we freeze the moment when people care and quickly record the vote for posterity? And exactly when did the environmental movement become so politicized? Why should Republicans be against climate change legislation and Democrats be for it? It is not a partisan issue. Forty years ago, the Republican administration of Richard M. Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency and passed the most important environmental legislation for pure air and clean water in U.S. history. What is conservatism if it does not stand for conservation of our natural resources? When the public is finally convinced that the environment is at risk, they will act. But when will that be? Prudence dictates that we take precautions against serious risks. We store food to stem the tide of hunger and malnutrition. We pay for education to ensure a more successful life and future vocation, and we purchase insurance for our homes in case of fire. Likewise, we must take action to protect the environment because it provides sustenance to all of life on earth, and it is too precious to risk. I guess we’ve learned the lesson that large banks are too big to be allowed to fail. Governments proved that by bailing them out in late 2008 to staunch the Great
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Recession. Insidiously, these banks and brokerages succeeded in manipulating the system such that they reaped the profits when times were good, and the public covered their losses when things went bad. Big business enjoyed the profits and the rest of us covered the risk. Well, if that is true for big banks, it certainly must be true of the environment as well. The environment is simply too big to be allowed to fail. Humans have always played a role in changing the face of the landscape, but today we are changing the entire planet more rapidly and more extensively than ever beforesour atmosphere, land, and oceans, are irreversibly and irreparably being damaged. Ecosystem services, which serve as the foundation for fisheries, food production, water supply, and pest control worldwide, are at risk . Imagine, in the past 60 years global population has increased from 2.5 billion to 6.8 billion; we have added 75 ppm to the CO2 concentration of the planetary atmosphere (a 27% increase over preindustrial levels); the pH of the entire ocean has decreased from 8.2 to 8.08 (a 32% increase in hydrogen ion concentration); and the temperature of the earth’s surface including the oceans has increased about 0.5 °C (an enormous storage of heat). That is why polar ice is melting, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are breaking-up, continental glaciers are disappearing, and thousands of plant and animal species are struggling to move to higher elevations and latitudes. We cannot withstand sixty more years like the last. What’s at stake is nothing less than the habitability of our coastlines, the water supply for millions of people who depend on glacial meltwater; the health of our ocean fisheries and coral reefs, the ability to recover from more frequent floods and droughts, and the overall economy of our people. The environment really is about the economy after all. It is too big to be allowed to fail.
Jerald L. Schnoor Editor
[email protected].
10.1021/es1009949
2010 American Chemical Society
Published on Web 04/14/2010
