Comment ▼ Environmental report cards n the days of the Cold War, an old Soviet joke told of student dissidents who were arrested for putting up banners in the middle of the night. But when the police brought them into the station and unfurled the banners, there was nothing written on them—they were completely blank. “What is the meaning of this?” demanded the police. The students replied, “There is no need for words, comrades. Everyone knows the problems.” When it comes to the environment, at first thought it might seem that everyone knows the problems and nothing more can be added. But last month, the U.S. EPA published its Draft Report on the Environment, which was 20 months in the making and is available for public comment until the end of the year (www.epa.gov). It was one of the last acts of Governor Christine Whitman as Administrator of EPA following her resignation. The report paints a generally positive portrait of cleaner air, purer water, better-protected land, and improved public health during the past 30 years in the United States. There is always a concern that “environmental report cards” risk dumbing-down the scientific intricacies of the situation with selective reporting and anecdotal evidence. But this report, bolstered by hundreds of pages of a companion technical document, really tries to provide a comprehensive summary of the state of the U.S. environment. Abraham Lincoln once said, “If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.” The report represents a good effort at taking stock of where we are and whither we are tending and at identifying knowledge gaps where monitoring and research are needed. My own thinking is that, indeed, many aspects of the environment have improved since EPA was founded in 1970. Inland lakes and streams are cleaner because of passage of the Water Pollution Control Act of 1972 and the billions of dollars spent on upgrading municipal and industrial wastewater discharges. Air pollution, as indicated by six criteria pollutants (ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and lead), has definitely decreased. Such improvements are the result of end-of-pipe pollution control measures that should be rightly celebrated, but they are not the means of emissions controls needed for the next 30 years. Their returns are diminishing. Geometric increases in population and consumption require geometric increases in emissions
controls, and the control strategy is not cost-effective for the foreseeable future. We need a whole new paradigm involving industrial ecology, pollution prevention, renewable energy resources, and enlightened environmental policy to achieve a sustainable future. The scale of the problem has also changed. Everybody lives downwind from somebody else—there is no upwind anymore. Many of our problems are global: greenhouse gases and climate change, transboundary pollutants, and declining species. Because humans are more numerous and are consuming more, we have created “tragedies of the commons” on a grander scale than ever before. E. O. Wilson, in his book The Future of Life, laments a world where, following each latitudinal line around the earth, all the species will be the same due to extinctions and the mixing of exotic species by global commerce. Our inland waters are improving, but there is evidence that estuaries, coastal waters, coral reefs, and ocean fisheries are declining. At greater scales, our problems reflect an increasingly interdependent, interwoven globalization of the world’s economy, where the status of our environmental future depends on our actions and those of so many others. Trade and the environment are inextricably and forever linked. Americans are living longer and growing stronger than ever before and, certainly, this is a sign of success that is rightly applauded by the EPA report. Life-threatening infectious diseases have been minimized by improved sanitation, drug discovery, and modern medical care. Although human health has improved, it is not the case that ecological health has enjoyed resurgence. Rather, there is growing evidence that the two are in inevitable tension with one another. There is much to cheer about a cleaner environment but, unfortunately, we are a long way from a sustainable future. That should be the central focus of our monitoring, research, and policy efforts in the coming years. Not everyone yet knows the problems, but we should.
© 2003 American Chemical Society
AUGUST 1, 2003 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ■ 271 A
I
Jerald L. Schnoor
[email protected]
