By Peter Montague
Starting in the 1950s, awareness of environmental destruction developed slowly in the US. Various events slowly shook the public awake: atomic fallout from weapons testing in 1956-1963; a nationwide pesticide scare in 1959; birth defects from the drug thalidomide in 1961; Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring in 1962; the discovery of cancer-causing food additives.
By 1965, the dangers of a deteriorating environment were acknowledged at the highest levels of government; the President's Science Advisory Committee in 1965 published Restoring the Quality of Our Environment, a catalogue of pollution problems and their effects on human and environmental health.
Starting in the late 1960s, the modern "environmental movement" took shape as activist lawyers and scientists came to the aid of citizens who were trying to ban the pesticide DDT, prevent air pollution by stopping new highways, discourage nuclear technologies and curb obvious water pollutants such as foaming detergents. During the 1970s, Congress passed a dozen major environmental laws.
In other industrialised countries, governments and citizens began similar efforts. The governments of Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain, Sweden, West Germany, Japan, France, and Canada passed a series of laws aimed at reversing the trend of environmental destruction.
Universities organised seminars and conferences and eventually created whole departments devoted to "environmental studies". A new industry developed, called "environmental consulting". The mass media began to devote significant space to environmental problems.
Now, after 20 years of intense efforts to reverse the trends of environmental destruction, the question is: are we succeeding?
So far as we know, only one study has tried to answer this question in a rigorous way. The study, called Index of Environmental Trends, was published in April 1995 by the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives in Washington, DC.
In it, the authors measured trends in a wide range of serious environmental problems facing industrial societies. The study relied on the best available data, most of it gathered and maintained by national governments.
The study examined 21 indicators of environmental quality, summarising the data into a single numerical "environmental index". The index shows that, despite 20 years of substantial effort, each of the nine countries has failed to reverse the trends of environmental destruction.
The study ranked the countries from least to most environmental deterioration over the years 1970-1995 as follows: Denmark -10.6%; Netherlands -11.4%; Britain -14.3%; Sweden -15.5%; West Germany -16.5%; Japan -19.4%; United States -22.1%; Canada -38.1%; France -41.2%.
Here is a brief discussion of the 21 categories of data from which the summary index was calculated:
Air quality
The study used six measures of air quality: sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, particulate matter (essentially, soot) and carbon dioxide. The first five are called "criteria pollutants" in the US. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, thought to be contributing to global warming.
The study found reductions of sulfur oxides in all nine countries, but also found that acid rain —caused by sulfur oxides — continues to damage forests in Denmark, Britain and Germany. The same is true in the US and Canada, so additional reductions will be needed.
The study did not include "the vast range of hazardous air pollutants, called 'air toxics' in the United States", because "regulatory bodies in the nine countries have failed to comprehensively monitor or regulate most hazardous air pollutants".
The study says, "There are roughly 48,000 industrial chemicals in the air in the United States, only a quarter of which are documented with toxicity data".
The study also did not include indoor air pollution, which is "virtually unmonitored and ... probably on the rise in many of the countries surveyed".
The study notes, "The necessary reductions in NOx [nitrogen oxides] and CO2 [carbon dioxide], it seems, may require far more change than seems politically possible — major reductions in the use of private automobiles, for example".
Water
Water quality in the index is represented by pollution trends of major rivers. Specific measures include dissolved oxygen, nitrates, phosphorus, ammonium and metals.
Unfortunately, national trend data on water quality are generally poor, compared to data on air quality. For example, in the US, only 29% of the nation's river miles have been monitored.
The study did not include trends in ground water quality "because most countries do not produce national trend data on ground water pollution. Yet ground water in all index countries is contaminated, and by most measures, the problem has worsened since 1970".
The study did measure ground water withdrawals, compared to the natural rate of replenishment.
Chemicals and wastes
The study measured production of fertilisers, pesticides, and industrial chemicals.
The chemical industry continues to grow at a rate of 3.5% a year, thus doubling in size every 20 years. Of the 70,000 chemicals in commercial use in 1995, only 2% had been fully tested for human health effects, and 70% had not been tested for any health effects of any kind.
At least 1000 new chemicals are introduced into commercial use each year, largely untested. If all the laboratory capacity currently available in the US were devoted to testing new chemicals, only 500 could be tested each year, the study notes.
The study examined trends in municipal wastes and nuclear wastes in the nine countries. Both kinds of waste are increasing steadily. Trend data for industrial wastes and hazardous wastes are not available.
The study concludes, "The United States is arguably the most wasteful — that is, waste-generating — society in human history".
Other measures
The study examined the area of wetlands, and the amount of land devoted to forests in each of the nine countries.
Two additional measures were used in developing the index of environmental trends: the amount of energy used, and the total number of automobile miles travelled.
In sum, this study of nine nations reveals that environmental destruction is continuing, and in some cases accelerating, despite 20 years of substantial effort to reverse these trends. The study concludes, "The index data suggest that achieving across-the-board environmental protection and restoration will require deeper, more fundamental change than has yet been attempted in the countries surveyed".
The questions raised by this study seem obvious, at least for the environmental movement:
- Given that we are clearly not succeeding in reversing the trend of environmental destruction, how can we think that by merely redoubling our efforts we will begin to succeed?
- Isn't it time we made some serious effort to evaluate what has worked in the past and what has not worked? It seems clear that most of what has been tried has not worked well enough to make a real difference.
- Shouldn't we be asking ourselves what path we want to take in the future? Don't we need to identify a path that might achieve "deeper, more fundamental change" than we have aimed for in the past?