Putting Polluters on Notice

In the summer of 1969, then-Sen. Gaylord Nelson was on a conservation speaking tour of the West when he visited the beaches of Santa Barbara, at that time despoiled by one of the worst oil spills in U.S. history. The devastation affected him deeply. Later, while reading an article about the teach-ins organized by anti-Vietnam War activists, Nelson asked himself, Why not have a day for a nationwide teach-in on the environment? Thus was born Earth Day 1970.

The original Earth Day was marked by a massive public outpouring of concern for the environment. Earth Day helped spawn new laws such as the Clean Air and Water Acts and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, but it did little to staunch the more serious wounds of our dying planet. Environmental experts are increasingly convinced that unless humanity drastically changes the way it relates to creation, the very survival of life on Earth is threatened -- and as soon as in the next few decades.

Much of the activity during the 20th-anniversary celebration of Earth Day this April 22 will focus on individual acts: conservation, recycling, the use of environmentally benign products, and the like. If done on a truly massive scale, such individual and community efforts could have a powerful effect on the whole of our society, including the sphere of public policy.

But there is a danger in an overemphasis on personal acts, when the most grievous assaults on the natural world come from corporations and nations whose self-interested policies of acquisitiveness and greed have brought us to the edge of ecological cataclysm. And the United States, to its great shame, has been the world's foremost contributor to bringing the planet to this perilous state of affairs.

One might think that the United States -- out of embarrassment, if not concern for the common good -- would be the international leader in efforts to curtail the poisoning of the planet. Unfortunately, for the past decade, the opposite has been true. Ronald Reagan, and appointees of his such as James Watt, did more than any previous president to undermine the environment.

George Bush's first year in the White House drew low marks from environmentalists, even though his political handlers had successfully positioned him as the environmental candidate. He has blocked international efforts to set target dates for curtailing the emission of gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect and ozone layer depletion, proposed a cut of $400 million from water pollution and sewage programs, backpedaled on protection of wetlands, and actively opposed some of the most potent elements of this spring's Clean Air Act.

WITH THE PAUCITY OF BENEFICIAL activity in the national arena, much of the most consequential environmental work is being focused on the state and local levels. A number of cities and states have already passed forward-looking legislation that could have far-reaching impact on the nation's landfills, water supply, and air quality, regulating everything from disposable diapers and plastic grocery products to carbon dioxide emission levels and auto air conditioners.

Vermont, for example, passed last year a bill that will prohibit, beginning in 1993, the sale of motor vehicles in the state that have air-conditioning systems that emit the ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Organizers promise that soon all products that yield CFCs will be banned in the state.

Vermont's accomplishment could have significant influence beyond the state's borders, with possible repercussions on both industry and national law. "We've found that when given a mandated timetable, industry is able to come up with alternatives," suggested Fred Kosnitsky of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, the state's largest environmental and consumer advocacy group and the moving force behind the auto air conditioning ban. "All they need is an irresistible incentive."

While the "irresistible incentive" of state laws are, by definition, limited to a single state, when several states act in a like manner -- especially if some of them are the larger market states -- pressure will be strong for the federal government to follow suit.

Auto air conditioning in cool New England is seen as a luxury, not a necessity. When such an initiative emerges in a Sun Belt state, however, it might be a different story, for one of the most challenging environmental questions before us is, Are we willing to change the way we live, give up some convenience, for the sake of a cleaner world?

It would be unrealistic -- and unfair -- to expect one segment of society voluntarily to take on an undue proportion of the economic and lifestyle sacrifices that are needed. However, most people are willing to transform the way they live when they see that everyone is sharing the burden in a fair and equitable manner.

But such personal changes could be rendered almost irrelevant in the absence of a political uprising that confronts the systematic abuse of our Earth by corporations and states. An event such as Earth Day has the potential to focus the public's concern and outrage about our ravaged environment in such a way as to put on notice its worst abusers.

The chair of Union Carbide, one of the planet's most notorious despoilers, understood the stakes when he said, "An aroused public can put us out of business, just like it put the nuclear industry out of business." Polluters be warned: Such work is becoming everybody's business.

Jim Rice is editor of Sojourners.