FEATURE
Is There Cause for "Environmental Optimism"? A n e w book has sparked debate over whether the task of environmental improvement is essentially complete. WILLIAM
K. R E I L L Y DEVRA
A
PHILIP LEE
M o m e n t o n the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental O p t i m i s m by Gregg Easterbrook, Newsweek and Atlantic Monthly contributing editor, has triggered sharp debate on the condition of the environment, U.S. environmental policy, and the environmental movement. Easterbrook argues that the observed condition of the Western world shows human-caused environmental problems are small in scale and moving toward solution. He criticizes environmentalists and some environmental scientists for preaching despair in the face of profound success. The book gives voice to a growing national movement to ease environmental regulations. Easterbrook's thesis, which he promoted in talks and in print months before his book appeared in April, was well received by many who heralded it as a needed antidote to the views of environmentalists. Indeed, the text fits well with demands by regulated businesses for a reexamination if not a rollback of environmental regulations and laws. It also comes at a time when the political influence of environmental organizations is at an all-time low. National groups have become increasingly estranged from community activists who have fueled their movement, and now they face a hostile Congress, a lukewarm president, and a growing belief that environmental laws may not always be needed. To examine if Easterbrook's environmental optimism is justified, ES&T asked former EPA Administrator William Reilly, public health researcher and policy adviser Devra Davis, and former New York Times reporter Philip Shabecoffto comment on the book's thesis and how it fits into the broader issue of whether a turning point in environmental protection has been reached.
SHABECOFF
DAVIS
Tempering "middle class enthusiasms": William K. Reilly Just before taking u p m y duties as EPA Administrator in 1989 I received m e m o r a b l e advice from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "Do not allow your agency to b e c o m e transported by middle class enthusiasms." In the opinion of Gregg Easterbrook, a self-described ecorealist a n d a liberal Democrat like M o y n i h a n , m a n y leading e n v i r o n m e n t a l i s t s , having alerted the nation to the urgency of clearing the air a n d cleaning the water, have lost their perspective a n d are increasingly shrill in tiieir warnings about " m i d d l e class e n t h u s i a s m s . " In their undifferentiated passion to m a i n t a i n the war fever against Alar, radon, asbestos, a n d h a z a r d o u s waste, Easterbrook argues, they frighten the public, mislead the press, a n d divert attention from more serious environmental assaults. He believes the time has c o m e to tell some truths. O n e concerns the t r e m e n d o u s progress the United States, Japan, a n d several E u r o p e a n n a t i o n s h a v e m a d e in reducing pollution and restoring water bodies. To Easterbrook the reluctance to c o n c e d e t h e grandest achievement of m o d e r n g o v e r n m e n t — h e goes so far as to say t h a t e n v i r o n m e n t a l progress stands with Social Security as the two t r i u m p h s of liberalism—cannot be excused as a tactic to avoid aiding deregulators. For a q u a r t e r c e n t u r y Americans h a v e p a i d taxes; a c c e p t e d restraints o n d e v e l o p ment; a c c o m m o d a t e d steadily increasing prices for a u t o m o b i l e s , electricity, water, a n d m o r e to i m prove their environment. The e n v i r o n m e n t in U.S. cities has b e c o m e vastly cleaner. The war is not won, b u t the troops m a y b e losing heart or losing confid e n c e in environmental advocates w h o c o n t i n u e to l a m e n t a decline that s e e m s to defy extravagant efforts, including the expenditure of 2% of the U.S. gross d o m e s t i c p r o d u c t o n pollution controls. Environmentalists have r e s p o n d e d vigorously to Easterbrook's provocative claim of environmental vic-
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tory. The Environmental Defense Fund issued a detailed critique of his use of science (i) on such matters as climate change (Easterbrook is a skeptic) and species loss (though concerned about destruction of biodiversity, Easterbrook criticizes the models for overstating species losses). I do not share all of Easterbrook's views. I consider quite disturbing the preponderance of scientific opinion that foresees global warming. Impairm e n t of a global s y s t e m by h u m a n a c t i o n is a worrisome prospect fraught with still unfathomable, potentially widespread effects. Taking precautions to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions is only p r u d e n t . Yet a careful reading of Easterbrook reveals that, while doubting the models and judging the alarms about warming to be excessive, he favors policy positions such as energy taxes that are in line with environmentalists' views. The nation's environmental programs do need reform. It is legitimate a n d overdue. We now know enough to design programs for a new era, to ensure their scientific soundness with comparative risk assessment, and to craft rewards and incentives for pollution prevention that will complement the penalties for noncompliance with environmental laws. We understand that prescriptive regulations written in Washington do not always fit diverse local situations. And we have learned that for environmental policies to be effective we must engage businesses, states, and localities directly and cooperatively in devising commonsense approaches to environmental problems. We know that further progress on many fronts, notably air and water quality, means getting a handle on diffuse sources of pollution that result from millions of people making countless individual choices. More than half the remaining water pollution problem is attributed to runoff from farmlands, city streets, and similar sources. We have revolutionized the automobile—it burns 98% cleaner today than the 1970 models—but 85 million more cars are on the road, driving twice as many miles as 25 years ago. Drivers hate to have their cars emissions-tested or to abandon them for vans when commuting. In short, the pollution challenge today is not General Motors, it is the general public. We know enough, too, to recognize that safeguarding natural systems—soils, wetlands, estuaries, wildlife habitat, and the like—must be elevated in priority if we are to leave a productive land base for future generations. Because Americans resist controls on land use more than they do other environmental controls, the challenge in dealing with landrelated problems is more complex and requires new strategies and partnerships. Finally, we know that as vexing as many environmental challenges are in this country, environmental degradation and serious health problems are widespread and grotesque in the developing world, where contaminated water contributes to the deaths of millions of children each year. U.S. experience must be put to good use to address this tragic reality. Americans retain their deep sympathies for the environment. Every poll confirms it. Yet people do want change, more responsive government, less intrusive regulation, and a reduced role for Washington.
They want the levers that control their lives within reach of their hands, closer to home, in the states and localities. Congress is responding to many of these demands. The ban on new unfunded mandates is an overdue response to long-standing complaints by mayors and governors. Congressional debates on risk assessment, wetlands protections, a n d the "takings" issue, however, have featured much counterproductive, even mischievous, bashing of EPA and other agencies that have led the nation to one of the few great public policy achievements of our time.
"The pollution challenge today is not General Motors, it is the general public." I will let the specialists debate details of scientific fact and analysis presented in Easterbrook's 700page book. Undoubtedly, the sheer breadth of his undertaking, the range of issues he covers, and the confident, provocative arguments he advances expose him to criticism in the details. But it cannot be denied that his is an original, serious book that will stimulate a necessary reconsideration of our approach to the environment. William K. Reilly served as EPA Administrator from 1989 to 1993. He is currently a visiting professor at Stanford University's Institute for International Studies and is associated with Texas Pacific Group, an international investment partnership. Reilly was president ofWorld Wildlife Fund-U.S. and the Conservation Foundation in the 1980s and has served on numerous environmental advisory boards.
"Feel-good" environmentalism: Philip Shabecoff The misinformation purveyed by A Moment on the Earth begins on the front of the dust jacket with a quotation from former EPA Administrator William K. Reilly, saying it "will be the most influential book since Silent Spring." The book is, in fact, likely to cause more mischief t h a n any environmental work in recent years, considering its timing and heavy publicity. Early in the book Easterbrook protests that he is not offering us "a philosophy of don't worry, be happy." But that is exactly what the book does. It has no other purpose that I can find. The book's subtitle, "The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism," tells us w h a t h e is a b o u t . In o p p o s i t i o n to w h a t h e d e scribes as the doomsday pessimism of environmentalists, Easterbrook offers us a new "ecorealism" based on rationality—his own, of course—which, among other things, tells us not to worry so much about what we are doing to the environment now because, over the long run, nature can take care of itself. VOL. 29, NO. 8, 1995 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY • 3 6 7 A
The war to save the environment in the rich, industrial countries is already over and we have won, he concludes. "Almost every pollution issue will be solved within the lifetimes of readers of this book." The great irony is that Moment appeared just as the anti-environmental right—or, to use another neologism coined by Easterbrook, "unviros"—has taken political power in the U.S. Congress and is attempting with some success not only to halt environmental progress but to roll back many of the gains made since m o d e r n environmentalism emerged a century ago. The foes of environmental regulation in Congress and in its lobbies are already waving Easterbrook's volume around as their equivalent of Mao's little red book. Easterbrook's ecorealism is constructed out of a tissue of muddy logic, careless dismissal of what in many cases is overwhelming scientific consensus, and
"Environmentalism carries a message of hope, t h a t humans can correct their mistakes." confused or caricatured use of facts. In many cases he offers "facts" and conclusions that are simply dead wrong. He repeatedly sets up straw man arguments in order to knock them down, such as stating that "runaway global warming," which no credible scientist has predicted, will not occur. A list of corrections prepared by the Environmental Defense Fund of scientific errors it found in just four chapters runs more than 50 pages. The corrections, unlike the information presented by Easterbrook, are footnoted. The most serious problem with Moment, however, is that its intellectual foundation lies in shallow, shifting sand. His fundamental misperception is that environmentalism is based on pessimism— that its message is doomsday. Quite the contrary is true. Environmentalism carries a message of hope, a conviction that humans are wise enough to correct their mistakes. The modern environmental movement in this country emerged from the Progressive Era of Theodore Roosevelt and is based on the idea of progress, the idea that we can, must, and will do better in caring for our habitat and ourselves. Easterbrook takes environmentalists to task for complaining about air quality after all the progress that has been made, or about insisting on lower levels of hazardous substances when it is expensive to do so. But scientists and environmentalists know we can and should do better. We should not be satisfied with a 40% improvement in air quality when as many as 50% of the children in our major cities suffer from respiratory problems as a result of pollution (2). Yes, there has been waste and inefficiency and 3 6 8 A • VOL. 29, NO. 8, 1995 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
misplaced priorities in addressing the nation's environmental problems. In what large-scale human endeavor, public or private, has there not? But are we wasting money by sometimes spending millions of dollars to save a h u m a n life—your child's life? Perhaps—if that money is used to save more lives. But would it? Is not the real problem in end-ofcentury America rampant individualism and personal self-indulgence that turns its back on the common good and on the needs of our fellow citizens in the national and international community? The billions upon billions of dollars that are spent on alcohol, tobacco, entertainment, gambling, luxury cars, and electronic gadgets far exceed what we spend on the environment. We should be asking why we aren't spending more of that money on saving lives. Easterbrook's ecorealism confuses society's capacity for addressing environmental problems with its will to do so. The rush by large segments of industry to use the current political climate to roll back environmental laws makes a mockery of fatuous predictions that "pollution will end within our lifetimes, with society almost painlessly adapting a zeroemissions philosophy." The actual reality—as opposed to Easterbrooks feelgood virtual ecoreality—is that environmental and public health goals are reached only when scientists, environmentalists, and citizens identify problems and exercise continual pressure on the political and economic systems to correct them. That is not going to change. Nature may be able to take care of itself over the long run, but we humans have to take care of our environment and ourselves here and now. Philip Shabecoffwas environmental correspondent for The New York Times for 14 years. He is founding publisher of GREENWIRE, the environmental news daily, and author ofA Fierce Green Fire (Hill and Wang, 1993), a history of the U.S. environmental movement.
A "dead-body" approach to health: Devra Lee Davis Easterbrook begins this lyrical, infuriating book with a metaphor for nature's resilience to h u m a n environmental transgressions: the dive of a Manhattannesting peregrine falcon and its return from the threat of extinction is depicted as "a dance of ages, a polonaise performed by numbers of living things too great to contemplate, for periods difficult to fathom even in abstract terms." Easterbrook's own "dance" ends with a pratfall 38 chapters later. Although he presents a number of valid general conclusions, many others are just wrong. Yes, the U.S. environment today is much improved over the times when the Cuyahoga River caught fire and the skies of Donora, PA, were blackened with deadly air pollution. Yes, environmental bad news makes front-page headlines, and good news fills the back pages. When looking for villains, Easterbrook focuses on the polarizing public relations campaigns of the "enviros" and the "unviros." He would do well to look to his own profession. In their thirst to sell news, reporters magnify controversy, often plucking from obscurity the lone scientific voice with an outrageous position. In his zeal to make the case for rational environ-
mental policy, Easterbrook downplays two important points. First of all, environmental policy seeks to prevent h a r m before it occurs. Programs succeed when disease is prevented, disaster averted, and public health and the environment advanced. The fact that these benefits cannot easily be quantified does not mean they are unimportant or do not exist. Second, he fails to appreciate that the physical environment may be m u c h more resilient than ecosystems or h u m a n health. Easterbrook describes the apparent recovery of the Sacramento River from a 1991 spill, when a tank car dumped 12,000 gallons of herbicide. He never mentions the continuing assessment of reported increases in miscarriages, asthma, and other symptoms of persons who live in this once-pristine environment. Similarly, he touts the remarkable improvements in water quality in the Great Lakes but fails to note that states have banned eating contaminated fish from these bodies. Studies have found that children with slight elevations in exposure to these contaminants are shorter and less developed intellectually. In his search for glad tidings, Easterbrook confuses a lack of environmental health data with success. A 1990 National Research Council report on environmental epidemiology documented the astonishing failure to invest in and develop an adequate infrastructure to generate long-term studies of U.S. environmental health (3). While billions of dollars have been spent moving contaminated soil, paltry sums have been devoted to assessing the health impact of toxic exposures. And pending federal budget cuts threaten the ability of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health to assess such impacts through the National Cancer Registry and other inexpensive and productive environmental surveys. Easterbrook repeatedly mistakes the absence of reported elevations in cancer rates in polluted regions such as Love Canal as proof that no such effects have occurred or will yet occur. In fact, no systematic m o n i t o r i n g has b e e n u n d e r t a k e n of all workers and residents who have lived in these areas. Where such assessments have been conducted— often on a scientific shoestring with meager state support—their results are hardly comforting. One study showed the cancer rate doubled for North Carolina residents who drank polluted water and it dropped when that pollution ended {4). Easterbrook's interest in Love Canal is more than journalistic. He points out that his mother, Vimy, worked at Hooker Chemical and at 58 died of breast cancer. He vividly recalls that as a child when visiting that plant his head was set reeling with airborne chemicals. He treads a middle ground, however, insisting studies did not show "any general epidemic of cancer," although "careless handling" of compounds may have resulted in h u m a n cost, perhaps his own mother's life. Whether or not anyone's mother's breast cancer was attributable, in part, to exposures to specific toxic chemicals cannot be known with certainty. Breast cancer is a persistent, increasingly c o m m o n disease with multiple causes a n d long latency between exposure and onset. When adequately con-
ducted in large populations, epidemiological studies can at best confirm past hazards. Despite this, Easterbrook tacidy adopts the "deadbody" approach to public health regulation, appearing to side with those who require proof of h u m a n harm and discount experimental evidence. He reports that overall U.S. cancer deaths, except lung cancer, have dropped, without noting that new cases of the disease have increased for people of all ages, especially African-Americans. In fact, the good news about cancer is that relatively rare types afflicting the
"The physical environment may be much more resilient than ecosystems or human health." young, such as leukemia and testicular cancer, can often be cured but at considerable financial and personal costs. The bad news is that the incidence of some of these cancers has doubled within the past two decades, a n d younger generations of Americans are developing more new cases of these diseases and of asthma than ever. In 1798, Thomas Malthus warned that sexual appetite would invariably lead to a planet where population far outstripped the food supply. Other philosophers countered that prosperity would inspire people to tame those impulses in order to achieve material gains. Easterbrook is to be commended for seeking to expand the middle ground between these two longstanding, highly polarized views of the world. Whether his numerous factual offenses can be forgiven in light of the larger truths he articulates will best be judged by history. Devra Lee Davis is senior adviser to the assistant secretary for health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and serves on the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. From 1983 to 1993, Davis was Scholar in Residence of the National Academy of Science's National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine. She is author or contributor to more than 130 publications on cancer patterns, breast cancer, and environmental policy and epidemiology.
References Cl) A Moment of Truth: Correcting the Scientific Errors in Gregg Easterbrook's "A Moment on the Earth," Part 1; Environm e n t a l Defense Fund: New York, 1995. (2) "Danger Zone: Ozone, Air Pollution, a n d Our Children"; American Lung Association: Washington, DC, May 1995. (3) National Research Council C o m m i t t e e o n Environmental Epidemiology, Board o n Environmental Studies and Toxicology, a n d C o m m i s s i o n o n Life Sciences. Environmental Epidemiology, Public Health and Hazardous Wastes; National Academy Press: Washington, DC, 1991; Vol. I. (4) Osborne, J. S. Ill et al. Am.}. Epidemiol. 1990, 132 (Suppi. 1), S87-S95.
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