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GUEST EDITORIAL Needed= an environmental theology About 16 years ago I became involved in production of one of the earliest attempts at an interdisciplinary overview of air pollution, Air Conservation, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In retrospect, we fell far short of the goal of evolving a rational framework in which all aspects of the subject could be considered. Some of the sharpest disagreements within the group concerned the appropriateness of economic analysis of the health impact of air pollution. I clearly remember commenting that it seemed possible to hold a rational discussion up to a certain point, but that beyond that point science departed and theology took over. It has required most of the intervening 15 years for me to recognize the prophetic nature of that remark. I have since become more aware of the vast fund of ignorance from which we attempt to discuss and regulate air pollutants. Our lack of definitive knowledge of human health effects is explainable by our unwillingness to perform potentially lethal experiments on humans, although it is not excusable on these grounds; opportunities to acquire epidemiological data have been missed through unwillingness to pay the cost of a really unequivocal experiment. Our ignorance in other areas is less excusable; we even lack good data on the role of atmospheric particulate matter in corrosion, an area that certainly cannot claim ethical inhibitions. We have studiously ignored paradoxical or counter-intuitive results. An early study of the effect of photolyzed automotive exhaust on rats showed the exposed rats to be healthier than the control group. A rough calculation suggests that successful dissipation of the cloud of smog over Los Angeles would result in a 30 percent increase in incidence of skin cancer there. (I do not endorse either of these findings; they stand uncontroverted, yet seem unmentionable in a “polite society” that is quite unshocked by a synopsis of Deep Throat.) However, the real problem in making decisions comes not from the paucity of data, but from essentially theological considerations, or, if you prefer, metaphysical ones. “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” While there are substantial differ-
ences around the world as to the identity of “thou,” the answer to that question locally accepted almost uniquely determines the framework in which questions of matters and morals, including environmental ones, are decided. Where man is an illusory housing for a spirit seeking oblivion, questionable health effects are unlikely to command much interest. At the other extreme, a fully self-consistent humanism necessarily regards any impact on human life span as some sort of deicide. One of our leading national characteristics is the total absence of theological (or metaphysical) consensus. Any attempted discussion of the aims of pollution control (to pick only one example) almost immediately breaks down into a half-dozen or so parties, each with its own deity; the preservation of the status quo, return to assumed conditions of some previous time, progress, the preservation of the lousewort, perfect visibility; there are also absolute evils, including death, cancer, and change. I have my own convictions in the matter, but this is scarcely the place to advance them. However, it is essential that we recognize that better data will not resolve controversies about permissible pollution levels. Real consensus can only occur in the context of a shared metaphysic. Nobody ever accomplished a religious conversion by logical argument; the name for the activity involved there is not debate but evangelism. We will make little progress in resolving our conflicts until we recognize the essentially religious nature of the varying underlying assumptions.
Dr. James P. Lodge currently is a private Consultant in Atmospheric Chemistry. He was previously a Program Scientist in Atmospheric Chemistry at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Volume 13, Number 1, January 1979
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