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Earthly Necessities: A New Environmentalism fo r the 1990s by Peter Montague C 00026 About The Workbook. . . The Workbook is a fully indexed catalog of sources of information about environmental, social, and consumer problems. It is aimed at helping people gain access to vital information that can help them assert control over their own lives. The Workbook is a tool for all the people who, in their various ways, are working to provide a world characterized by economic justice; clean air and water and uncontaminated soil; abundant, safe, minimally polluting energy supplies; rapid, safe, convenient transportation; convenient recreational areas; clean, quiet, and safe streets; shops and stores offering a wide variety of durable, safe, and inexpensive consumer goods; thriving small-town and regional-scale economics; adequate, readily available child care facilities; inexpensive medical care; participatory democracy; wholesome, fairly priced food; land reform; decent housing for all; easily accessible education services; widely available legal help; readily available scientific and technical tools and advice; scientific land use planning; justice in the courts; attractive, clean workplaces; meaningful work for all. Staff members of The Workbook and of Southwest Research and Information Center believe that war, racism, sexism, poverty, crime, and environmental destruction are all parts of the same problem. Solutions to the problem will require action on many fronts. We hope The Workbook can serve this vast, nameless movement for change. THE WORKBOOK accessto information SOUTHWEST RESEARCH AND INFORMATION CENTER PROJECT STAFF Don Hancock, Nuclear Waste Safety Raymond Morgan, Community Liaison, Puerco River Education Project Kathy Cone Newton, Editor The Workbook Frances Ortega, Community Liaison Richard Regan, Washington Representative Paul Robinson, Public Lands and Resources Chris Shuey, Community Water Quality Lynda Taylor, Radiation, Toxics and Health Luis Torres, Northern New Mexico Program Chris Magoc, Kori Quintana, Annette Velazquez-Aguayo, Irene Walkiw Research Assistants BOARD OF DIRECTORS David Benavides (President) Katherine Montague (Vice President) Barbara McAneny (Secretary) Sandra Simons-Ailes (Treasurer) AnneAlbrink Diana Jones Peter Montague Luis Torres Mary Ann Tsosie Linda Velarde WORKBOOK STAFF Editor: Kathy Cone Newton Contributors: Don Hancock; Kate Lincoln, Peter Montague, Richard Regan, Paul Robinson, James Schmidt Typesetting and Layout: Kathy Cone Newton, Don Hancock Proofreading: Annette Velazquez-Aguayo, Don Hancock . Printing: VanGuard Printing; Cover by Web Southwest SPONSORS OF THE WORKBOOK A. Adler & P. Abrams, Eugene Adler Family Fund, Bette R. Baldwin, Richard Barish, E. Bazan, Richard Blalock, Elizabeth Akiya Chestnut, Dr. & Mrs. John C. Cobb, Kay Drey, Wallace & Valerie Ford, Roland A. Goodman, Alice Grisham, Dr. and Mrs. C.D. Hancock, Sharon Harrington, John W. Hawley, Susan Jones, Anne Kanapilly, Alan Locklear & Marie Valleroy, Nancy S. Lovejoy, Stephen Mooser, A.D. Nelson, Carol Oldcrshaw, John Picaro, David Riley, Lin and Paul Rowland, Eugene E. Ruyle, David E. Simons, Dale Smith, Susan and Ronald Tansky, Nina Wallerstein, Perry R. Wilkes, Jr., Working Assets Money Fund, Anonymous TUE WORKBOOK is published quarterly by Southwest Research and Information Center, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) educational corporation. Subscription rates for U.S. residents are: S8.50 for students and senior citizens, S12.00 for individuals, and S25.00 for institutions. Canadians add $4.00. Please inquire for other foreign rates. Mailing Iddrcss: SRIC, P.O. Box 4524, Albuquerque, NM 87106. ISSN 0195-4636. Material in The Workbook is indexed in Alternative Press Index, P A J S . Bulletin, and Book Review Index. Copyright 1991 by Southwest Research and Information Center. Cover art by Betsy James f Table o f C on ten ts Volume 16, Number 2 Summer 1991 THE WORKBOOK FEATURE: Earthly Necessities: A New Environmentalism fo r the 1990s by Peter Montague 50 SOURCES OF INFORMATION: AGRICULTURE 63 The Harvest: Stale Strategiesfo r Sustainable Agriculture CONSUMER AFFAIRS 65 Breaking Down the Degradable Plasties Scam Green Business: Hope or Hoax? ECONOMY AND TAXES 67 ............^ Working Parents: Get the Money You've Earned! EDUCATION 68 Not Only English: Affirming America's Multilingual Heritage ENERGY 69 Investing in Solar Energy Global Warming and Energy Choices ., Building a Brighter Future: State Experience in Least-Cost Electrical Planning GOVERNMENT AND MILITARY 73 . Mobilizing Democracy: Changing the U S. Role in the Middle East War in the Gulf: An Environmental Perspective Women and the G ulf War Persian Gulf War Series: The Media and Our Right to Know The U S. Military's Toxic Legacy MINORITIES AND THIRD WORLD 78 Nicaragua: A Country Guide POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENT 78 * Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality Site Unseen: The Politics o fSiting a Nuclear Waste Repository Green Revolutions: Environmental Reconstruction in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 83 Chemical Sensitivity TRANSPORTATION 84 The New York City Cyclist WOMEN 85 Women, AIDS, and Activism . Walking to the Edge: Essays o fResistance WORK 87 ' New Solutions: A Journal o f Environmental and Occupational Health Policy . . SRIC PUBLICATIONS 88 NETWORKING NOTES 90 DIALOGUE 91 INDEX 94 CENTER NOTES 96 000027 The Workbook Feature Earthly Necessities A New Environmentalism for the 1990s by Peter Montague "Nothing is inevitable unless we believe it to be so." -- FoLke Dovring1 Introduction: THE GRASS-ROOTS MOVEMENT EXPANDS A s the grass-roots movement for environmental justice gains momentum and begins to forge alliances with other people seeking justice in housing, education, health care, gender rights, land rights, civil rights, and income, the time seems right to review our situation, to try to put our new environmental movement into an even broader context.? Biologist Ren Dubos coined the phrase "Think globally, act locally" as a prescription for guiding thought and action. At no time has the need for global thinking been more pressing. And at no lime has the opportunity for local action been more promising. Dumps and incinerators rejected in the northeastern and midweslcm United Slates are increasingly being foisted on communities in the southern and western U.S.-- especially on African-American, Hispanic and Native American communities.3 Facilities being rejected everywhere in the U.S. are increasingly exported to Latin America, Asia, Africa, and most recently to Eastern Europe* As a result, ' the grass-roots movement is fast becoming a multi-racial, ethnically diverse international movement with members, allies, and supporters worldwide. Each day more people -- not "experts," just people -- realize that the Earth cannot sustain the demands being made upon it, and this realization is driving change in the direction it needs to go. In the past two years in eastern Europe, governments toppled in no small measure due to environmental destruction and neglect.3 Worldwide, the grass-roots movement is riding a tide of transformation, a tide driven by earthly necessities. As time passes, our adversaries will adopt new ideas, or they will be over whelmed by these earthly necessities. Cover and feature illustrations by Betsy James The nature o f the problems weface The traditional environmental movement recognized two main kinds of ecological problems: destruction of the land and chemical contamination of the planet. Unfortunately, despite praiseworthy efforts by many thousands of sincere, committed people, neither kind of problem has responded well to the remedies offered so far. It is now clear that industrialized peoples are destroying the Earth as a place suitable for human habitation more rapidly than anyone realized even two years ago.6 Slowly during the past twenty years it has become apparent that the main reason for our failure is that ihe industrial world has adopted a self-defeating philosophy of environ mental protection, a philosophy which, we can now see clearly, requires destruction of the environment before control can begin. I. THE "PROVE HARM" PHILOSOPHY OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL Land use The traditional response to land problems is to restrict particular uses. In the extreme case, a preserve is set aside in which human activities are severely curtailed. In the more common case, particular endeavors, such as building permanent structures, are prohibited in particular areas (wetlands, for example). But before any of these remedies are selected, profound harm to the land must be shown. Vast tracts turn to desert Enormous loss of topsoil occurs. Whole regions lose productivity from salts left behind by irrigation. Forests disappear. Once harm has been demon strated, then remedial steps are taken -- but often it is too late. Examples of destruction that cannot be reversed -- or that can be reversed only by huge influxes of capital -- include clearculting woodlands in Oregon, damming the Nile in Egypt, plowing extensive grasslands into ranches and farms in Florida, and devastating tropical forests in Vietnam, Malaysia, Hawaii, and Brazil. 50 The Workbook is an environmental-social change quarterly published by Southwest Research and Information \ *Subscriptions $12.00 per year (institutions $25.00}from SRIC, P.O. Box 4524, Albuquerque, NM 87106 The Workbook, Voi. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 Chemicals Similarly, the traditional approach to chemical contamination insists that harm must be proven before controls can be established. Controls usually take the form of numerical limits on the concentration of a particular chemical (often expressed as parts per million, for example) that can be released into the environment. More often than not, as time passes additional harm becomes obvious and standards have to be lightened, often repeatedly. In each instance, people and wildlife are extensively contaminated before controls are initiated. As with destructive land-use practices, this "prove harm" philosophy requires that great harm must occur before controls can be established. This philosophy is certain to create larger and larger problems as time passes, and in fact recent history tells us that this is already happening: ozone depletion, global warming, acid rain, widespread chemical contamination of humans and wildlife, loss of species, and increasing human illnesses such of cancer, respiratory ailments, and nervous system disorders are unavoidable results of the "prove harm" philosophy of chemical regula tion.7 II. A NECESSARY ALTERNATIVE: THE PHILOSOPHY OF PREVENTION. Sustainable development If we are to avoid complete destruction of the planet as a place suitable for human habitation, we must adopt a very different approach to environmental problems of land use and chemical contamination. This will mean a new kind of thinking in industry and government, and even among many established environmental organizations and other non government organizations. We must learn to prevent environmental problems. And what may be even more important to grasp is that successful prevention will require us to preserve diversity -- especially diversity of human cultures. The idea of prevention is not entirely foreign to the industrial ized world. A prevention philosophy has formed the basis of public health thinking for at least a century. Avoidance of contact with human wastes to prevent disease, nutritional standards to maintain health, and the provision of clean water are funda-' mental to public health thinking everywhere. In this sense, a preven tion philosophy has well-established precedents. Embedding a prevention philosophy within development practices, however, will require new ways of thinking. Some 23,000 square miles of productive dryland turn into worthless desert each year, world wide. More than 42,000 square miles of forests are destroyed yearly, much of it converted to low-grade farmland unable to support the farmers who settle it.8 For solving land-use problems, a prevention philosophy means revising modem concepts of development. As we will see, sustainable development means scaling down projects, involving local people in decisions, building on local knowledge and resources, and aiming to benefit local people. It means a sharing of power with local people, sharing resources with local people, and a conscious effort to conserve the social and cultural integrity of indigenous populations. The diversity of human cultures on Earth has resulted from people adapting to their surroundings. This process o f adaptation provides the only sound basisfor sustainable development. But during the last two hundred years industrialized nations have, time and again, disrupted this adaptation process, destroying self-sufficient agricultural communities and indigenous peoples. Florentin Krause writes, "the ecological wisdom of these cultures is one of the great books written by humankind's collective experience, but it is a book being burned in the stupor of modernity. It contains design principles for sustainability."9 When one examines "development" projects, both in the U.S. and in the developing world, a pattern emerges: often local people with intimate knowledge of the land are pushed aside by outsiders with money and political power who intrude upon an area to "develop" it (usually meaning to export its natural resources to distant locales). Big agricultural devel opment (including giant ranching and logging operations not for local or regional markets, but for export), ski resorts, condominium projects, and huge dams arc typical examples of "developments" that squeeze local people off their traditional lands. The result is often environmentally destructive, culturally devastating, and of little or negative benefit to local people. Furthermore, if environmental costs arc taken into account, so-called "development" is often a step backward for the sustainability of local cultures and of life on Earth. When the best lands are taken by big "development" projects, local people must leave an area (creating major problems of urbanization elsewhere10), or they must move their traditional activities onto marginal land, which magnifies environmental destruction. In 1940 one in every hundred people on Earth was living in a city larger than a million; by 1980 this had increased to one in ten. We need not look to Mexico City or Calcutta to see the resulting problems -- New York, or Los Angeles, will suffice. From twenty years of experience with projects in developing countries (including many failures and some successes), environ mental, development and peace groups have crystallized certain principles for truly sustainable development.11 They are as Batay Jame relevant in the United States as elsewhere: C00028 The Workbook, VoL 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 5 1 Six principles o f good development 1) The principle or cultural and social integrity: Develop ment must grow from within and not be imposed from outside. 2) The ecological principle: Development must adapt to nature, must maintain and rebuild diversity, and must rely on sustainable forms of resource use. 3) The solidarity principle: Development must provide the basic necessities of life and must offer secure living conditions to all people, must promote equity, and must avoid unequal exchange. 4) The emancipation principle: Development must foster self-reliance, local control over resources, empowerment, participation by the underprivileged and marginalized, and opportunities for action believed fulfilling by the people. 5) The nonviolence principle: Development must be peaceful, both in the direct sense (the non-use of physical violence) and in the structural sense (violence as embod ied in the institutions of society). Development must not promote, or continue, the concentration of power that breeds injustice, which gives rise to violence. As Florentin Krause said when he first enunciated this principle, "history and. common sense tell us that durable peace cannot come about so long as one part of humanity realizes its material ambitions at the expense of another part."12 6) The principle of resilience: Development must allow for mistakes and breakdowns without endangering the integrity of the immediate ecosystem and resource base. Small-scale technology provides a resilience that large-scale, centralized technologies cannot offer. For example, disrup tion of a small-scale electrification project may inconven ience part of a village but failure of the generators at a central hydropower dam can disrupt an entire region.13 Development that follows these principles will not have to be reversed later; it will likely not result in large-scale social disruption; it will allow local p'eople to develop a sense of security and longev ity, which can then translate into caring for the land because people can then have faith that, if they sustain the land, the land will sustain them. Secure resources and secure livelihoods lead to good husbandry and sustainable man-' agement. Sustainable development is not merely an issue'of fairness or justice. It is a matter of survival for all humans. Local people are the repository of wisdom about the land. They have traditionally lived off nature's interest, not depleted 5 2 The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 nature's capital, to use a money metaphor. Local people -- most often the women among local people -- are the true experts in local ecology.1* The stability of ecosystems depends upon diversity of species, both plant and animal. The rate at which humans are destroying non-human species has accelerated greatly this century, and the pace of change continues to quicken. Norman Myers has calculated that from the year 1600 to the year 1900, human activities caused the extinction of one species of wildlife every four years. From 1900 onward, the rate of extinction accelerated to an average of about one per year. The present rate is about one per day. Within a decade, we will be losing one species every hour.13 Forests are the wellsprings of diversity. There are more different species per square mile in forests -- particularly in tropical forests -- than anywhere else. Tropical forests have been the "powerhouse" of evolution, generating more species than any other environment At one time the earth supported between 5.8 and 6.2 million square miles of tropical forests. Today, about half remains (3.3 million square miles). By the middle of the next century, none will remain, unless things change.16 If the Earth's forests were reduced to only those areas now held in parks and preserves, we would lose 66 percent of all the Earth's plant species, 69 percent of all the Earth's bird species, and similar proportions of all other major categories of species. Norman Myers describes current trends as an "extinction spasm overtaking the biosphere." `The impend ing upheaval could rank as one of the greatest biological revolutions of all time," he says, comparing it in scope and significance to the emergence of oxygen-dependent life forms more than a billion years ago -- an upheaval in which the vast majority of then-existing life forms disappeared.17 If we allow current trends to proceed unchecked, it seems unlikely that humans will survive such vast changes. As scientist E.O. Wilson has said about species losses, "It is as if we were piloting a plane and periodically reaching down to toss out some piece or part, with no idea what that part may do, or how that part may contribute to the function of flying."18 Batey Ju n ta The forces driving plant and animal species to extinction today are the same forces driving indigenous peoples and local cultures into oblivion; profit-motivated, generally male-dominated schemes for "development" employing science and technology to simplify the envi ronment to force high yields of one or a few specific crops or products, most often for export and always for profit. Multinational corporations usually play key roles in such projects. One possible solution to some present-day land-use problems is to establish a preserve. But by now it has been widely recognized that it is counterproductive to create a land preserve when the indigenous people living nearby haven't sufficient land or income to support their traditional activi ties. It simply cannot work. Constant trespass, poaching and conflict can be the only resulL It is a mistake to stress too narrowly the need for preserving wildlife; what is required is a broad application of all six principles of development si multaneously. Human needs must be taken into account in a central way. Multiple uses of land should be encouraged, though not, of course, the kind of destructive multiple uses that occur when a commercial logging operation is permitted to clearcut a forest, effectively destroying all potential for other uses. Balance, perspective, and the development of mutual trust with indigenous people is essential for land preservation to succeed.19 Environmental protection that is pursued without regard for human values is doomed to fail.20 Ironically, to achieve the world-view we ultimately must live by -- one that is not human-centered, but recognizes the key importance of the interdependence of all living things -- we must attend to basic human needs first. Clean production, safe technology As it is with land use, so it is with chemicals; developing safe chemical technologies will require substantial reorienta tion of modem approaches. The new goal is embodied in a group of ideas now being called "clean production." Clean production aims to manufacture goods without using danger ous materials and without creating dangerous wastes. Such systems seek to minimize the use of raw materials, water, and energy, and to maximize the re-use of everything, wherever possible. Such systems also take into full account worker health and safety, community well-being, and cultural appro priateness and sustainability.21 Clean production systems are intended to use raw materials that are compatible with natural ecosystems and biological processes so that when the materials are discarded and returned to the environment, they will not disrupt nature. Clean production begins with the design of products and continues through selection, extraction and processing of raw materials, the manufacture and assembly of goods, materials transport during all phases, industrial and household usage, and the rintroduction of materials into industrial systems (recycling) or into the environment (discards). Clean production does not include "end of pipe" pollution controls such as filters or scrubbers or chemical, physical, or biological treatment. Measures that pretend to reduce the volume of waste by incineration or concentration, or mask the hazard by dilution, or transfer pollutants from one environ mental medium to another are also excluded from the concept of clean production. As a key clement in clean production systems, it is time to ban, or phase out, dangerous chemicals. What is a dangerous chemical? Any compound that is persistent, bioaccumula- Sitting Bull Speaks In 1875, gold was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Following this discovery, the federal government ordered the Sioux people to leave their Powder River hunting ground, land that had been guaranteed to them in the Treaty of 1868. In 1877 Tatanka Yotanka (Sitting Bull), Sioux warrior and tribal leader of the Hunkpapa Teton division, spoke to a Powder River council, thus: Behold my brothers, the spring has come; the Earth has received the embraces of the sun and we soon shall see the results of that love! Every seed has awakened and so has all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being and therefore yield to our neighbors, even our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves, to inhabit this land. Yet hear me, people, we have now to deal with another race -- small and feeble when our fathers first met them but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough they have a mind to till the soil and the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break but the poor may not. They take tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich who rule. They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own and fence their neighbors away; they deface her with their buildings and their refuse. That nation is like a spring freshet that overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path. [Quoted in T.C. McLuhan, Touch the Earth: A SelfPortrait o f Indian Existence (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971), p. 90.] live, or toxic should be presumed dangerous unless proven otherwise. (For example, iron might fall into one or more of these categories, but long experience has proven that iron itself is not dangerous to the Earth or to people.) One clear example of dangerous chemicals would be those built around the chlorine molecule. Other candidates for immediate classification as "dangerous" would be some of the toxic heavy metals like lead, thallium, mercury, and cadmium. Most industrial solvents lhat appear as pollutants in ground water and in many communities' drinking water supplies arc chlorine compounds.22 Although chlorine is one of the 92 naturally occurring chemical elements lhat form the building blocks of the universe, chlorine does not occur alone in nature, but always in combination with one or more other elements. The most common form is sodium chloride, or table salL C00029 53The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 When industrial chemists separate chlorine (usually by breaking down common salt), the chlorine atom becomes available to combine anew with many other elements, allowing the creation of a vast array of exotic synthetic chemicals. Unfortunately, though these chemicals may be profitable to make and sell, many of them are persistent, or bioaccumulative -- and in many cases they have all three undesirable characteristics. Common chlorinated compounds have names like carbon tetrachloride, chlo robenzene, chloroethane, chloroform, methylene chloride, trichloroethylene, and vinyl chloride. Many of them cause cancer, birth defects, and inheritable genetic changes. A handful of chlorinated compounds have already been banned or severely restricted in various countries, including the U.S.; some of these are DDT, Chlordane, 2,4-D, Dieldrin, Aldrin, ethylene dibromide (EDB), Endrin, Heptachlor, Lindane, Mirex, Silvex, 2,4,5-T, Toxaphene, vinyl chloride, benzene hexachloride, and dibromochloropropane (DBCP). These compounds have been banned or restricted precisely because they persist in the environment, enter food chains and bioaccumulate, or harm living things -- or because they have some combination of these negative characteristics.23 Just as sustainable land use requires attention to human values, so it is with sustainable industry. The pursuit of environmental protection without regard for basic human needs cannot succeed. As we phase out chlorinated com pounds or other undesirable chemicals, some manufacturing processes will be replaced by others. We must make provi sion for workers who will be displaced by the changeover. Too often in the past, the phrase "job retraining" has beten a * euphemism for training a worker to lose a S35,000-per-year job and accept a $15,000-per-year job. If we don't offer real alternatives to workers who lose their jobs as we convert from a toxic economy to a clean economy, we will never surmount the political barriers. One proposal worthy of serious consideration is a "superfund for workers." Modeled on the GI Bill, the superfund for workers would provide tuition support, to workers who chose to retrain themselves by going to college for two to four years.24 III. THINKING FOR SEVEN GENERATIONS It is time for all cultures to adopt the Iroquois peoples* principle of decision making. Iroquois wisdom says that, before making any decision, one must consider the effects on seven generations of humans.25 In all our decisions -- whether to build a chemical factory, a landfill, a ski resort, or a dam -- we should ask ourselves, what is the likely effect of this project on people during the next 150 years? If the r Vi 54 The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 effects appear to be destructive, we should not proceed. Short-term thinking, based on short-term profit, has gotten us all into the deep trouble we find ourselves in today. It is worth noting that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 requires, for some projects, an environmental impact study to discover and elucidate the delayed and distant consequences of a project. Thus U.S. federal law contains the seeds of Iroquois wisdom, if we would but recognize it and apply it broadly. Increasingly, we pay lip service to the sagacity of indigenous peoples. Now, for the sake of our common survival, we must take this wisdom into our hearts where it can inform our actions. IV. A SPIRITUAL BASIS FOR POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION In 1987 the United Nations' World Commission on Environ ment and Development (the Brundtland Commission) issued its report, Our Common Future, which popularized the concept of "sustainable development."26 Although it offered many valuable ideas, the Brundtland Commission based its views on one fundamentally insupportable premise: that continued industrial development by multinational corpora tions was the only possible future and that the next century would see a five- to tenfold increase in industrial output, worldwide, guided by the "prove harm" philosophy of controls. The destruction of land and forests inherent in such development, and the chemical damage it implies, seem very likely to extinguish the human species.27 A different future must be possible. Everyone favors sustainable development and, at least in principle, everyone favors more-or-lcss-equitable distribution of the fruits of the Earth. But it seems clear that we cannot offer a Western (some would prefer to call it Northern) lifestyle to all of the Earth's five billion inhabitants, who will become ten billion inhabitants during the lifetime of someone bom today. When Mahatma Gandhi was asked whether he hoped to approxi mate a British standard of living after India achieved inde pendence, he replied, "It took Britain half the resources of the planet to achieve this prosperity: how many planets will a country like India require?"28 Equity means more or less equal shares for everyone. If we are serious about achieving equity and we cannot do it by offering everyone a Western lifestyle, the only alternative is to modify that lifestyle, which presendy requires stripping the Earth and exploiting Third-World people. Bringing the Western lifestyle closer to something reachable by all the world's people will require selective de-industrialization. A good place to begin would be with current agricultural practices, which are enormously, and unnecessarily, destruc tive of the environment.29 That, of course,* would be just a beginning. We must leam to do with fewer things. We must get into the habit of asking ourselves, do I really need this? For selective de-industrialization to succeed, we will need to recognize that the opposite of wealth is not poverty but sufficiency.30 We will need to find new ways of achieving satisfaction in our own lives. This may not be as difficult as it sounds. People's sense of economic well-being depends upon their relative standing; relative equality seems more important to individual happiness than does the absolute level of production. Where will we find the wisdom to guide us in building a new civilization based not on ever-expanding consum erism but on a steady-state, no-growth economy? As William Ophuls says, we will need to fall back on prudence, self-restraint, gentleness, frugality and humility -- the traditional wisdom of the ancients.31 One new idea -- the Gaia hypothesis -- may provide an important spiritual basis that could in turn become a powerful political idea. The Gaia hypothesis suggests that all living things on Earth may actually constitute a single organism having the capacity to regulate the planet's ecosys tems to maintain conditions needed for sustaining life.32 V. A NEW ENVIRONMENTALISM FOR THE 1990S AND BEYOND Everywhere, existing authorities are losing legitimacy as they preside in silence, in complicity with the poisoners, over the destruction of planet Earth as a place fit for human habitation. People everywhere can agree: any government that stands silent while its people are poisoned and their resource base is destroyed is not a government fit to rule. The Declaration of Independence, which announced the creation of the United Slates of America on July 4,1776, put it most eloquently (even though it is expressed in the male-dominated language of the day): We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,-- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness___ In the United States, the grass-roots movement for environ mental justice has developed because people know their lives are threatened by pollution. The safety of their children has been sacrificed, their property values have been degraded, and their prospects for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi ness have been systematically diminished. People of color and native peoples are affected most strongly, although now it is evident that all Americans have been touched. And as each day passes, it becomes ever clearer that all human life is threatened by the poisoning that continues unabated. At every level of government the response has been, first, to deny the problems, and, second, to create a regulatory structure aimed not at eliminating pollution but at forcing people to "prove harm" before any controls are considered. As we have seen, the "prove harm" method of control guarantees -- even requires -- that many more people will be harmed, many more will be sacrificed, and that ul timately the entire planetary ecosystem will be danger ously damaged, threatening the stability and future possibilities for all humans on Earth. It is happening now. During the late 1960s, as people began to realize that something was terribly BetsyJune wrong, government devel0ped a regulatory bureaucracy that quickly adopted the "prove harm" philoso phy of control. Since this philosophy did not diminish envi ronmental destruction, people continued to protest. In the late 1970s, government developed and adopted a new technique for deflecting concerns. A process called "risk assessment" came into use to "prove" to people that releasing poisons into the environment creates an "acceptable risk" for the people being exposed. "Acceptable risk" is defined as' the likelihood that the poisons will kill "only" one out of every million exposed citizens each year. When the fancy language and the mathematical equations are stripped away, however, risk assessment is nothing more than an admission by govem- ment that certain individuals have been earmarked for disease and death, and that those people have been denied "due process of law" as guaranteed them in the fifth amendment to the Constitution. A risk assessment is nothing but-a plan for murder.33 Since destruction of ecosystems is never considered in a risk assessment, and since damage to plants, animals, fish and other non-human forms of life is never considered in a risk assessment, risk assessments can make bad projects look good. Risk assessment has therefore developed into an all purpose regulatory tool, giving governments a cloak of legitimacy as they continue to sanction the destruction of the planet as a place suitable for human habitation. The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, S u m m a r^fifO O o S S The new environmentalism does not sanction such destruc tive practices because we are a movement seeking justice. We believe all people have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that these rights include food and clothing, shelter, health care, education, and equal opportu nity for everyone. Gender rights, civil rights, the rights of the disabled, the old, the sick -- all these rights we assert as a matter of simple justice. Fundamental to all other rights is everyone's basic claim to a clean, safe environment. Govern ment does not have a right to kill citizens without due process, nor to take and destroy their land, nor to deny them their birthright, their heritage of clean water, clean air, and productive soil. Any government that denies these rights thereby relinquishes its legitimacy. From such governments, we must withhold our consent. This is not a call for revolution. It is a description of a new environmentalism -- an environmentalism that has already sprung into existence and is already visible in nearly every town and city in America. It is a grass-roots environmental ism that cannot give its consent to the destruction of the Earth, that does not recognize the legitimacy of governments which oversee the destruction of local land and water or of the larger ecosystems of the planet. Sin agua, no hay vida; sin lierra, no hay paz: "without water, there is no life, without land, there is no peace."34 The use of traditional lands by land-based peoples must be respected. In many parts of the world -- including many parts of the United States -- this will require land reform. The corporate rape of the land must give way to traditional sustainable practices. Small farmers and indigenous peoples alike must have land to sustain and rebuild our agricultural base, which has been progressively destroyed by inappropriate and unsustainable techniques of cultivation. The environmental crisis is really a crisis in the social systems of industrialism. It does' not matter whether the economy is called capitalism or socialism -- failure to protect the environment is evident in every industrial nation. It is the very concept of "progress" in the Western mind that we must challenge and redefine.33 Furthermore, as environ mental deterioration becomes more evident, we must guard against a resurgence of faith in the technical quick fix. Rather than leam to prevent environmental harm, th mind set of many scientists and engineers is to build a new ma chine to "fix" the problems created by last year's machines. History tells us that each fix will create its own new prob lems, many of them worse than those they were supposed to solve. President Bush's plan to drill for oil along much of the U.S. coastline and in Alaska's Arctic Wildlife Refuge -- an oilman's dream come true -- typifies this "quick fix" mentality,36as does the recent proposal to release billions of aluminized, hydrogen-filled balloons into the sky to intercept incoming sunlight hoping to offset the trend of global warming.37 5 ^ 77i Workbook, Voi. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 We are a movement that will be guided by the principles of good development, and by the tenets of clean production and safe technology. We will do our best to look seven genera tions into the future to decide what is sustainable and what is not. We will view all living things as essential to the well being of the planet. We will reject the "technical quick fix" mentality. Our political work -- whether it takes the form of cooperation or confrontation -- will be guided by a spiritual knowledge that life on Earth is sacred and must not be sacrificed for mere dollar profit. We will put humans first in priority so that all people can gain the resources needed to know that humans are dependent on the web of all life for sustenance and salvation. The Earth is our home and we will leam to take care of it, seeking guidance and assistance from native and indigenous peoples whose wisdom we now know we need. The grass-roots movement grows stronger every day. Its vision expands. Issues of concern to people of color and to native peoples everywhere are now recognized as issues for everyone. People in Connecticut, Illinois, Alabama, Arizona, in India and Thailand, in Ecuador and Brazil, in Poland and Czechoslovakia, in Kenya and Zimbabwe -- are all communicating now for common purposes. By this, we all gain strength and vision and unity. Together we are pressing forward, driven by earthly necessities. Together we can take back our planet from the polluters. Batsy JamM Acknowledgment I would like to acknowledge a debt to the Board of Directors and staff of Southwest Research and Information Center whose discussions on these and related topics have given form to many fresh ideas. I am especially grateful to Luis Torres whose thought and work on economic development in northern New Mexico has been particularly important to the growth of my own ideas.-- PM . Peter Montague is editor o/Rachel's Hazardous Waste News, published weekly by Environmental Research Foundation, P.O. Box 73700, Washington, DC 20056-3700. He is a member o f the research staffo f Greenpeace in Washington, D.C. NOTES and REFERENCES t. Folke Dovring, Riches to Rags: The Political Economy of Soda! Waste. Cambridge, Mass: Schenkman Publishing Co. [Box 1570, Cambridge, MA 02138], 1984, p. ix. 2. For a historical perspective on this movement, see Peter Montague, "What We Must Do -- A Grass-Roots Offensive Against Toxics in the '90s,' The Workbook Vol. 14, No. 3 (July/September, 1989), pp. 90-113. 3. For example, see Dana Alston, ed., We Speak for Ourselves: Sodal Justice, Race and Environment (Washington, Paris, London, and Budapest: The Panos Institute, 1990). And see Robert Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990). 4. For example, Robert Suro, "Border Boom's Dirty Residue Imperils U.S.-Mexico Trade." New York Times March 31, 1991, pp, 1, 16, offers this view of the U.S. border with Mexico: "...The runaway pollution and accompanying health threats can be found in virtually any city along the United States-Mexlco border, which has undergone an economic boom in recent years with the construction of hundreds of highly profitable American-owned factories operating under special trade rules. The American owners pay very low wages to the nearly half million Mexicans they employ and are not obliged to use expensive antipollution equipment.... "Furniture-making plants and metal-plating shops that fled environmental restrictions in California now flourish in Tijuana, Mexico, producing toxic wastes from their use of solvents. [There are about 1900 American plants now operating on the Mexican side of the border; they are known as maquiladoras.] "The starting wage for a maquiladora worker is about 82,000 pesos, or about $27, for a 49-hour week. More experienced workers receive as much as 140,000 pesos, or about $47, in addition to fringe benefits like a subsidized lunch.... "Last year, government and private health experts on both sides of the border repeatedly tested numerous water supplies in the Nogales area and found widespread contamination by the kind of chemicals that are normally found in industrial solvents and that are suspected or known carcinogens.... 'More than 1000 American-owned plants generate hazardous waste but only 30 percent of these have complied with Mexican rules requiring them to file information on how they handle those w astes....' The international trade in toxic waste is being tracked by the Waste > Trade Campaign, Greenpeace USA, 1436 U St., N.W., Washington, DC 20009. Phone (202) 462-1177. See Jim Valletta and H eather. Spaulding, The International Trade in Wastes; A Greenpeace Inven tory. 5th ed. (Washington, D.C.: Greenpeace, 1990); and see the Campaign's occasional newsletter Greenpeace Waste Trade Update. A Waste Trade Campaign spinoff is the Hazardous Exports Preven tion Project (HEPP), which is developing a computerized database of announced plans by multinationals to export their technologies to de veloping countries. For further information contact Ken Bruno, Greenpeace, 709 Centre St., Jamaica Plains, MA 02130; phone (617) 980-0300. 5. `Of course environmental destruction is not the only force underlying the sweeping, and largely peaceful, governmental changes that occurred throughout eastern Europe, but environment was key. A few examples will highlight the importance of environ ment in the political changes that have occurred recently. The concept of "glasnost" or openness is intimately related to awareness of environmental damage. The New York Times March 3,1988, p. A4, ran a column by John Tagliabue entitled ` Bratislava Journal -- Much Ado About Brown Coal on the Danube." Datetined Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, It told the story of a report written by Bratislava's Ecology Club. Mr. Tagli abue described it as a '60-page report pointedly called Nahlas -- the Slovak equivalent of glasnost or openness -- that chronicles the perils to the region's environment.... "It was a remarkable thing, even if it could be produced only for the club's internal use, in a place where such independent activity [writing a report about environmental damage] is viewed much the way other communities would look upon arson or a well poisoning.... 'But the ecology report also says something about the way independent activity cuts in and out of the Communist Party, blurring the desired dean lines between rulers and opposition.... "Perhaps it was just that blur that prompted the final official reaction. The report was ultimately confiscated and its authors censured publicly....' In a striking photo essay on pollution in eastern Europe, photogra pher Antonin Kratochivil and writer Marlise Simons said, 'For a long time, to question official production targets and methods was to question the Communist system and its commitments to heavy industry. Plant managers were judged by their ability to meet production quotas, without regard to cost, harm or waste. "As alarm about the choking air and the frightening rate of illnesses grew, the party bosses at first attempted to suppress the protests, deeming ecological concerns a ploy of the West to weaken socialism. Yet with the end of communist rule in much of eastern Europe, the enormity of this environmental disaster has fully been recognized." (New York Times Magazine, April 29,1990), pp. 31-35. Describing sodal problems caused by environmental contamination in Bulgaria, 77mes writer Marlise Simons said, "In other parts of eastern Europe the authorities have started to make an inventory of the disastrous legacy of unrestrained industrial growth under commu nism and are asking for help in the West. But in Bulgaria the subject is still treated as a state secret. "The steel and chemical industries are also increasingly having trouble finding workers. To attract labourers to the steelworks at Krimikovd, the government has promised to exempt young men from military service if they will work for five years at the plant... [Some 200 tons of arsenic spilled into the Pirodopska River, which feeds into the Topalnika River, which is used to irrigate some of Bulgaria's best agricultural land.] "'The government knew everything and said n o th in g sa id [Deltcho Vichev], himself a government employee. 'The whole summer they let people go swimming and fishing in that river.' "Nine months after the spill, after continuous pressure from experts and from EcoGlasnost, the Bulgarian environmental movement, the authorities imposed a five-year ban on fishing, swimming or using irrigation water from the Topolnika.... "The arsenic in the soil around Srednogorie and on the fields downstream is likely to remain there. 'It does not decompose,' said Mr. Vichev, who joined Eco-GIasnost because 'those of us who understand the seriousness of the pollution must speak out." (Marlise Simons, "In Bulgarian Town, the Killers Are Lead and Arsenic Pollution," New York Times, March 28, 1990, p. A8.) It is worth pointing out that the new governments in eastern Europe have, for the first time, created environment ministries. See, for example, Marlise Simons, "Pollution's Toll in Eastern Europe: Stumps Where Great Trees Once Grew," New York Times, March 19, 1990, pg. A11, and Reuters, ` Pollution in East Described as Grim," New York Times, June 17, 1990, p. 11. The pro-democracy movement in the Soviet Union is directly analogous to the grass-roots environmental movement in the U.S., except that the Soviet movement is actively seeking political and economic reform even more aggressively than are U.S. grass-roots groups. Democratic decision making, openness, environmental restoration, and ecologically sound development are viewed as inextricably intertwined within a "green" perspective in the USSR. See Mikhail Lemeshev, Bureaucrats in Power-- Ecological Collapse, translated by Sergei Chulaki (Moscow: Progress Publish ers, 1990). [17 Zubovsky Boulevard, Moscow USSR.] For a description of the "green" student movement and of the grass roots-based Socio-Ecological Union in the USSR, see Ekaterina 000031 The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 57 Gotovina, AH Our Life, translated by Svetlana Voronina (Moscow: Master Publisher, 1990). [Yaroslavskoye Highway 4-3-221, Moscow 129348 USSR.] 6. For a good overview of destruction of the land, see "Rehabilitat ing and Restoring Degraded Lands," in J. Alan Brewster, ed., World Resources 1988-1989 (New York: Basic Books, 1988), pp. 215-233. Earlier this year the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) revealed that destruction of the earth's ozone shield was proceeding twice as fast as it had predicted. The U.S. Environmental Protec tion Agency made the announcement; William K. Stevens, in "Ozone Loss Over U.S. Is Found To Be Twice as Bad as Predicted" (New York Times, April 5, 1991, pp. 1, D18) .wrote: The ozone layer, which protects living things from the Sun's harmful ultraviolet rays, has been depleted in many areas of the globe, and at the latitudes of the United States the loss is proceeding twice as fast as scientists had expected, the [U.S.J Environmental Protection Agency announced yesterday. The agency said the declines measured in the late fall, winter, and early spring amounted to 4.5 to 5 percent in the last decade. "It is stunning information,'' William K. Reilly, the agency's Administrator, said in an interview after the announcement in Washington. "It is unexpected, it is disturbing...." According to agency calculations based on the new ozone findings, over the next 50 years about 12 million Americans will develop skin cancer, and more than 200,000 of them will die. Under previous assumptions, only 500,000 cancer cases and 9,300 fatalities were forecast.... . Scientists say that for every 1 percent decline in the high-altitude ozone shield, 2 percent more ultraviolet' radiation reaches the earth's surface. Besides skin cancer, the harmful ultraviolet radiation can cause eye cataracts. Scientists say it can also affect the human immune system adversely, that it harms the ability of phytoplankton, tiny plants at the basis of the oceanic food chain, to reproduce; that it can damage some crops and wild plants. Two scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory earlier this year wrote, "...a consensus is emerging that even trace levels of environmental contamination can have potentially devastating environmental consequences.... With alarming regularity, we find reports of chemical contamination in parts of the world previously thought to be pristine.... We maintain that ambient levels of pollution have risen to the point where human health is being affected on a global scale. Humans are exposed to hundreds of organic chemicals daily.... We have examined background cancer risks of 11 global pollutants. We focused our study an pollutants for which data were readily at hand, rather than attempting a comprehensive survey.... Background cancer risk based on measured exposure can account for 1-2% of 58 The Workbook, Voi. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 actual annual cancer deaths, a number consistent with other estimates of the contribution of chemical pollution to background cancer rates. [This means these 11 chemicals are causing 4800 to 9600 deaths of U.S. citizens each year and untold additional deaths in other countries.-- P.M.] This risk is far in excess of the generally accepted target risk of [one-in-ten million] to [one-in-ten-thousand] lifetime cancer risk. Current regulatory approaches for environmental pollution do not incorporate ways of dealing with global pollution...." See Curtis C. Travis and Sheri T. Hester, "Global Chemical Pollution," Environmental Science and Technology Vol. 25. No. 5 (May 1991), pp. 814-819. 7. Humana and wildlife are heavily contaminated with exotic synthetic chemicals as a result of a half-century of cavalier chemical usage by Industrialized nations. According to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), all adult Americans (100%) have measurable quantities of styrene in their fatty tissues; 100% have ethyl phenol; 96% have ethyl benzene; 96% have chlorobenzene; 96% have benzene; 91% have toluene; 83% have PCBs; 93% have DDE, a breakdown by-product of DDT. At least 140 individual xenobiotic chemicals (chemicals foreign to the human body) have been found in adult Americans. See, for example, J.S. Stanley, Broad Scan Analysis o f Human Adipose Tissue. Vol. 1. Final Report [EPA/S6Q/5-8S/035], Springfield, Va.: National Technical Information Service, 1986. Report No. PB 87177218/REB. See also Vol. 2 of the same study: PB 87-177226. There are several hundred industrial toxins in the tissues of the vast majority of Americans today. Even our unborn children receive a hefty dose of in dustrial toxins before they leave the womb because many toxins cross the placental barrier and are measurable in umbilical cord blood at birth. Naturally, wildlife is also contaminated: Between 1969 and 1984 the levels of PCBs (an industrial toxin) in antarctic polar bears quadrupled. At the current rate of increase, by the year 2005 (14 years from now) the average polar bear will have 50 parts per million (ppm) PCBs in its fatty tissue (adipose tissue); polar bears will then meet the EPA criteria classification as a hazardous waste. Some species of cetaceans (the whale family) already far exceed polar bears in PCB concentra tions. Killers whales from the deep ocean have 410 ppm PCBs in their blubber, and blue-white dolphins off the coast of Europe have 833 ppm. Thus these creatures are now classifiable as hazardous wastes by EPA criteria. See Joseph Cummins, "Extinction: The PCB Threat to Marine Mammals," The Ecologist Vol. 18 (1988), pp. 193-195. If breast milk from American mothers were bottled and sold as a commercial product, it would be subject to ban by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because it is so con taminated with pesticides and industrial poisons that it fails to meet FDA standards for food suitable for human consumption. See Table 1. With their first mouthful of nourishment, American children are given a dose of industrial poisons -- a foretaste of things to come, it turns out, be cause chemical contamination increases steadily in Americans as they grow older. The Incidence of cancer In Americans Is Increasing. See Table 2. More and more people are getting cancer and are "learning to live with it." U.S. authorities who have been waging a "war on can cer" since 1971 try to put a good face on this but in naked terms it is hard to see how the steadilyincreasing incidence of a painful and debilitating disease can honestly be called progress. Table 1. Typical Levels of Pesticides and PCBs In Human Milk in the U S . FDA Action Levels, Allowable Dally Intake, and Actual Dally Intake of Breast-Fed Infants. Pesticide Typical FDA Action Levels Levels for (whole whole milk milk) (cows') -- parts per billion -- Allowable Actual Daily Daily Intake Intake (Adult) (Infant) --micrograms/kilogram-- Dieldrin Heptachlor Expoxide PCBs Total DDT 1-6 8-30 40-100 50-200 9 0.3 63 38 0.1 0.5 1.0 . 5.0 0.8 4.0 14 28 Source: Walter J. Rogan and others. "Pollutants in Breast Milk," New England Journal o f Medicine Vol. 302 (June 26, 1980), p. 1451, Table 3. Table 2 . U.S. Cancer Incidence and Deaths In 1987, and the Percent Change In Rates of Incidence and Death per 100,000 U.S. Population, 1950-1987. Cancer type stomach rectum cervix colon ovaries larynx testicles bladder Hodgkin's childhood (all types)-leukemia lung male female skin' breast prostate kidney lymphoma All types excluding lung All types Incidence In 1987 24,600 43,000 12,800 102,000 19,000 12,100 5,500 45,500 7,300 6,600 26,400 154,000 110,800 52,200 25,800 130,000 96,000 21,900 29,900 811,000 965,000 Death In 1987 13,740 7,638 4,423 49.613 11,838 3.670 422 9,589 1,755 1,787 17,440 129,866 87,164 42,702 5,912 40,896 27,863 9,332 '16,269 347,028 476,894 Percent change In incidence, 1950-1987 -72.6 -12.5 U S +24.9 +0.6 +57.3 +97.3 +52.5 +15.1 +28.4 +2.6 +256.9 +224.1 +483.3 +283.8 +58.3 +97.3 + 101.0 +153.1 +27.4 +42.2 Percent change In deaths, 1950-1987 -75.3 -65.9 -73.0 -3.1 -0.5 -8.1 -64.5 -35.3 -61.7 -58.7 -1.8 +245.0 +220.9 +471.3 +147.2 +3.6 +10.9 +28.9 +100.0 -19.0 +7.0 Source: U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), Cancer Statistics Review 1973-1987 [National Institutes of Health Publication 90-2789] (Bethesda, Md.: National Cancer Institute, 1990), Table 1-3, page 1.41. 00003:: Tho Workbook, VoL 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 The Incidence and severity o f asthma Is Increasing In the U.S., especially among children. The prevalence of asthma increased 29% in the U.S. during the period 1980-1987, from 31.2 per 1000 population to 40.1 per 1000. (Thus we can calculate that the prevalence of asthma is doubling every 20 years.) In 1987, some 9.6 million Americans were suffering from the disease. U.S. deaths from asthma increased 31% during the 1980-87 period, from 1.3 per 100,000 population to 1.8 per 100,000 population. See U.S. Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health. Asthma. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983.) [NIH Publication No. 83-525. USGPO Stock. No. 017-044-00033-8). R. Fulwood and others, `Asthma - United States, 1980-1987," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report Vol. 39, No. 29 (July 27,1990), pp. 493-497. Single copies available free from Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA 30333; phone (404) 332-4555. R. Michael Sly, 'M ortality From Asthma, 1979-1984." Journal o f Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Vol. 82, No. 5 (Novem ber, 1988), pp. 705-717. Peter J. Gergen and others. "National Survey of Prevalence of Asthma Among Children in the United States, 1976 to 1980." Pediatrics, Vol. 81 (Jan., 1988), pp. 1-7. See also Richard Evans III and others, "National Trends in the Morbidity and Mortality of Asthma in the US; Prevalence, Hospitalization and Death from Asthma Over Two Decades; 1965-1984." Chest Vol. 91, No. 6 (June, 1907) Supplement, pp. 65S-74S. In the U.S., fe rtility seems to be decreasing. Among white Americans in their prime reproductive years (their 20s), fertility is decreasing; among African-Americans of the same age, fertility is decreasing even more rapidly. Among American men there is evidence of decreased sperm counts and increased numbers of morphological (shape) abnormalities in sperm. See United States Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Reproductive Health Hazards in the Workplace [OTA-BA-266] (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 1985 [Appendix A, "Repro ductive Dysfunction in the Population."]), pp. 341-342, and 346. The incidence o f Parkinson's disease and o f Neuron Motor Disease (also called am yotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease) are both Increasing, See Office of Technology Assessment. Neurotoxicity: Identifying and Controlling Poisons o f the Nervous System [OTA-BA-436] (Washing ton, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 1990), pp. 55, 272. 8. Gro Harlem Brundtland, and others, Our Common Future (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 2. 9. Florentin Krause, Energy for Sustainable Development, Part One: The Soft Energy Path (Nairobi, Kenya: Environment Liaison Centre [ELC], January 1985), p. 5. The address of the ELC (a United Nations organization) is P.O. Box 72461, Nairobi, Kenya. Krause's booklet was published in cooperation with the International Project for Soft Energy Paths (IPSEP), c/o Friends of the Earth, 218 D St., S.E.. Washington. DC 20003; (202) 544-2600. 10. For an overview of problems stemming from urbanization, see 'Human Settlements" in J. Alan Brewster, editor, World Resources 1988-7939 (New York: Basic Books, 1988), pp. 35-50. 11. Quoted in Thijs de la Court, Beyond Brundtland: Green Devel opment in the 1990s. Translated by Ed Bayens and Nigel Harde. (New York: New Horizons Press [an imprint of the Council on International and Public Affairs, 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017; (212) 972-9877], 1990, pp. 135-136. At least four of the six principles first appeared in Florentin Krause's highly interesting monograph dted above. 12. Florentin Krause, cited above, p. 4. 13. Amory B. Lovins and Hunter Lovins have evaluated energy systems from this viewpoint in their thought-provoking book, Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security (Andover, Mass.: Brick House Publishing Co., 1982). The Lovinses advocate moving 60 The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 the U.S. away from brittle, centralized power sources, which are subject to sudden price rises, embargoes, terrorist attacks, melt downs or other technical failures, and to other interruptions. The principle of error-friendliness in development is reportedly described more fully in a book I have not yet seen; Ernst and Christine von Weizsacker, How to Live With Error: On the Evolutionary Powers of Errors (Bonn, Germany; Institute for European Environmental Policy, 1986), cited in Thijs de la Court, as above, p. 139. 14. This viewpoint is argued persuasively by Vandana Shiva in Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (London, and Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Zed Books, 1989). See also Carolyn Merchant, 77ie Death o f Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1980, 1983). [I am citing a Harper and Row paperback edition dated 1990.) Describing the sustainability of traditional Indian agriculture, Shiva (p. 105) quotes a 1940 statement by Sir Alfred Howard, whom she refers to as 'the father of modem sustainable farming'; "In the agricul ture of Asia we find ourselves confronted with a system of peasant farming which, in essentials, soon became stabilized. What is hap pening today in the small fields of India and China took place many centuries ago. The agricultural practices of the Orient have passed the supreme te st-- they are almost as permanent as those of the primeval forest, of the prairie, or of the ocean." Chapter 5 of Ms. Shiva's book describes how modern "scientific" methods of farming have destroyed the sustainability of traditional practices. -15. Andrew Goudie, T h e Changing Human Impact," in Laurie Friday and Ronald Laskey, The Fragile Environment: The Darwin College Lectures (Cambridge, England: Cambridga University Press, 1989), p. 16. 16. Norman Myers, "The Future of Forests," in Friday and Laskey, 77?e Fragile Environment, pp. 24-25. Species extinction is not just a problem of tropical forests, as a recent story in the New York Times makes clear: "Fish and other animals that live in North American waterways are disappearing much faster than land-based fauna, survey data indicate. And without broad measures to protect water-dependent creatures from such threats as pollution, unnatural competition, and draining and damming of habitats, the rate of aquatic extinctions is likely to accelerate.... '"The health of aquatic habitats in North America continues to decay,' [said Jack Williams, fisheries pro gram manager for the federal Bureau of Land Manage ment in Washington, D.C.] adding that the trend was not likely to be reversed without `a major commitment to conservation of entire ecosystems.'... "Indeed, while few were looking, many aquatic species recently disappeared, sometimes leaving gaping holes in the food chain and always diminishing forever the biologi cal diversity that keeps the earth genetically healthy.... between 1979 and 1989,10 species of freshwater fish are believed to have become extinct. An additional 139 species have become endangered, threatened, or listed as 'of special concern' for their survival.... "`We've spent most of our resources on fishes, but* clams, snails, crayfishes and even aquatic insects are in equally bad straits,' Dr. James Williams said in an inter view. `These lowly invertebrates, which really support the entire system, have not received proper attention.'" -- Jane E. Brody. "Water-Based Animals Are Becoming Extinct Faster TTian Others." New York Times, April 23, 1991, p. C4. 17. Norman Myers, cited above, pp. 27. 29, 30. 18. Quoted in John Atcheson, "Editor's Comer: Where We've Been, What's Ahead," EPA Pollution Prevention News, NovV Dec. 1990, pp. 1 ,8 . [Published by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Pollution Prevention, 401 M St. (PM-291), Washington, DC 20460.] 19. Czeck Conroy and Miles Litvinoff, eds. 7he Greening o f Aid: Suitable Livelihoods in Practice (London: Earthscan Publications, 1988. [3 Endsleigh S t, London, England WC1H ODD.] An excellent resource on sustainable development in theory and practice. Available for $18.95 from Inland Books, P.O. Box 120261, East Haven, CT 06512; (800)243-0138. 20. See, for example, Donald Dale Jackson, "Around Los Ojos, Sheep and Land Are Fighting Words," Smithsonian Vol. 22 (April 1991), pp. 37-47. 21. Lisa Bunin and Lisa Finaldi. "Draft Clean Production Fact Sheet* Amsterdam, Netherlands: Greenpeace International [Keizersgracht 176 DW 1016, Amsterdam, Netherlands], March 15, 1991. Much innovative thinking about clean production has been done by Bev Thorpe, Greenpeace Ireland, 44 Upper Mount Streeet, Dublin 2, Ireland. 22. Adding chlorine to drinking water as a disinfectant creates an array of cancer-causing compounds in the water. See, for example, Kenneth Cantor and others, "Bladder Cancer, Drinking Water Source, and Tap Water Consumption: A Case-Control Study," Journal of the National Cancer Institute Vol. 79 (Dec. 1987), pp. 1269-1279. Ozone treatment of water for disinfection is widely used outside the U.S. and should be considered for adoption here as chlorine is phased out. 23. Many studies of the Great Lakes ecosystem have revealed damage to wildlife and humans from chlorinated compounds and from toxic heavy metals. See Theodora E. Cotbom and others, Great Lakes, Great Legacy? (Washington, D.C.: The Conservation Foundation, 1990). The Science Advisory Board of the Internationa] Joint Commission [on the Great Lakes] has called for the phase-out of chlorine and, in fact, all organohalogens. See Jack Vallentyne, "The Case for Phasing Out Organohalogens," testimony presented by Dr. Vallentyne, Canadian co-chairperson of the International Joint Commission Great Lakes Science Advisory Board, before the Alberta-Pacific Environmental Impact Assessment Review Board, Dec. 1, 1989. Available as a reprint from Greenpeace, 185 Spadina Ave., Suite 600, Toronto, Ontario M5T 2C6; phone (416) 345-8408. 24. Michael Merrill, "No Pollution Prevention Without Income Protection: A Challenge to Environmentalists." New Solutions Vol. 1 (Winter 1991), pp. 9-11. 25. See, for example, Steve Wall and Harvey Arden, "Oren Lyons, Onondaga," Wisdomkeepers; Meetings With Native American Spiritual Elders, (Hillsboro, OR: Beyond Words Publishing, 1990), pp. 64-70. $39.95 from the publisher at Pumpkin Ridge Rd., Rt. 3, Box 492B, Hillsboro, OR 97123; phone (800) 284-9673. 26. Gro Harlem Brundtland, cited above. 27. The need for a 5- to 10-fold increase in industrial output appears in the Brundtland Commission report, cited above, p. 213. A good critique of the Brundtland Commis sion's assumptions is Thijs de la Court, Beyond Brundtland: Green De velopment in the 1990s, translatedby Ed Bayens and Nigel Harde. (New York: New Horizons Press, 1990. No one should read the Brundtland Report without reading de la Court as well. 28. Gandhi quoted in Thijs de la Court, cited above, p. 15. 29. Alternatives to high-chemical ag riculture are available today and are successful. See National Research Council Alternative Agriculture (Wash ington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1989). A more recent study was described recently in the New York Times: "American farmers have long main tained that using fewer pesticides would result in greater crop losses and increased food prices. But a comprehensive analysis of the benefits and costs of the present heavy dependence on chemical methods of pest control suggests otherwise. "Yields would not decline and food prices would rise less than 1 percent if half the chemicals now applied on crops were replaced by other control techniques, Cornell University researchers have concluded after reviewing data on crop yields and pesticide use from hundreds of scientists at university laboratories and Government agencies. "[The study was directed by Dr. David Pimentel of Cornell University.] Dr. Robert Metcalf, an entomologist at the University of Illinois, said, `if anything, Dr. Pimentel's estimates are conservative,' adding 'large-scale pest management studies have shown that pesticides could be reduced by half, three-fourths, even 90% on some cases without adversely affecting yields or the cost of food.'... "Currently... about 45,000 people each year report accidental poisonings by pesticides and, the [U.S.] Environmental Protection Agency estimates, 6,000 Americans, most of them farm workers, are afflicted with pesticide-induced cancers.... "Furthermore, the findings suggest, heavy dependence on chemicals to control weeds, crop diseases and insect infestations ^ |ong ago reached the point of diminishing returns. Since the 1940s, there has been a 33-fold increase in the amount of pesticides used and at least a 10-fold increase in their potency, but 37% of crops are now lost to pests, up from 31 percent in the '40s. " In 1945, when all com was grown in rotation and no insecticides were used, only 3.5% of the crop was lost to insects,' Dr. Pimentel said in an interview. `But today, com is the largest user of pesticides in the nation and 12 percent of the crop is lost to insects, which indicates that the loss of crop rotation has been counter-produc tive.'... -- Jane E. Brody, "Using Fewer Pesticides Is Seen As beneficial," New York Times, April 2,1991, p. C4. 30. Jonathan Porritt, "Seeing Green: How We Can Create a More Satisfying Society," Utne Reader (Nov7Dec. 1989), pp. 7077, a reprint of an article that first appeared in One Earth (Winter 1988), the magazine of Scotland's Findhom Foundation [The Park, Forrest, Scotland IV36 OTZ]. Mr. Porritt heads the British Green Party. This particular issue of the Utne Reader, pp. 69-98, contains many useful perspectives on the transformations necessary for human survival. 31. These issues of transformation, and the necessary spiritual basis, have been discussed in some depth by William Ophuls, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman. 1977); in particular, see chap. 8. 000033 The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 ] 32. J.E. Lovelock, GAIA: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). 33 This is a point worth elaborating briefly because it goes to the heart of the environmental crisis, which has now -- at least in eastern Europe -- become a crisis of legitimacy for governments. Risk assessment pretends to evaluate the risks of any new project (particularly chemical-related projects such an incinerator or a discharge pipe re leasing chemicals into a lake). Here is how it works: a few "representative" chemicals are se lected from the many chemicals involved in a complex project; their known ability to cause can cer is noted; the number of people to be exposed to the chemicals, and the heaviness of their exposure, are taken into account. Then a mathe matical calculation is performed, intending to show how many people will be killed each year by the proposed project. If the number to be killed is less than one out of every million people exposed, the project is deemed to present "acceptable" risks. Sometimes the government says it is acceptable to kill as many as one out of every 10,000 people . exposed, at other times one out of 100,000 is deemed acceptable. Risk assessments for differ ent projects have declared it "acceptable" to kill differing numbers of citizens. The key point is that the government assumes that it is acceptable to kill citizens. Think of it this way: if the "science" underlying risk assessment were to improve to the point where we could name the one-in-a-millionth individual to be killed, we could publish that individual's name and address in the newspaper and everyone would see instantly that this was a planned murder by the state. It is only the victim's anonymity that allows the murder to proceed under the guise of "accept able risk." 35. Florentin Krause, cited above, in his first footnote says, "Industri alism as a social system can be described by the following character istics: dependence on growth; separation of production and consumption; segregation of needs and their satisfaction through separate, one-purpose commodities; dissociation of manual and mental labor; division between those who plan and those who merely function; proliferation of markets in which commodities are ex changed; concentration of control over society's surplus in the hands of small elites; and an increasing trend in all of these.' 36. Keith Schneider, 'Interior Dept. Backs New Drilling For Oil and Gas at Offshore Sites* {New York Times, February 10, 1991, pp. 1, 24) says Interior has called for new lease sales along the East Coast, Florida Panhandle, southern California, and "vast areas of Alaska.* And see Keith Schneider, 'Bush's Energy Plan Emphasizes Gains in Output Over Efficiency' {New York Times, Feb. 9. 1991, pp. 1, 41), where we read, "Oil industry executives, who were made aware of its details today, applauded the administration's aggressive plan to take restraints off the domestic oil industry. `If this is as described, it certainly sounds very positive, not only for the industry, but for the consumer,' said Douglas G. Elmets, a spokesman for ARCO in Los Angeles.* 37. According to recent reports, the National Academy of Sciences is about to endorse further study of what is being called "geo-engineer ing.' These are quick-fix schemes comparable to those from the late 1950s when scientists wanted to explode nuclear bombs to excavate a harbor near Point Hope, Alaska, blast a road and railway tunnel through the Bristol Mountains in California, and dig a canal to link to river systems in Alabama and Mississippi. These were serious proposals by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which named the program Project Plowshare -- a kind of bombs-for-peace plan. See Catherine Caufield, Multiple Exposures: Chronicles o f the Radiation Age (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), pp. 149-150. Current manifestations of the quick-fix mentality include schemes to `fix* the global warming problem by (a) launching a fleet of Boeing 747s to crisscross the sky, releasing dust or soot to block sunlight, thus cooling the planet; or (b) using naval cannons to shoot dust into the stratosphere; or (c) to loft billions of aluminized balloons, as mentioned in the text, or (d) to send 50,000 enormous mirrors, each 39 miles square, into space to reflect sunlight away from Earth. To 'solve" the problem of ozone depletion, a Princeton University physicist has proposed 150 enormous infrared lasers placed on mountainsides to blast CFC molecules into bits before they can float upward and damage ozone; just the electricity to power the lasers would cost $10 billion each year. The shallowness and danger of the quick-fix mentality is obvious to most ordinary people, but many technical experts have difficulty grappling with the common-sense concepts of conservation and prevention rather than production and remediation. See Sharon Begley, "On the Wings of Icarus,' Newsweek, May 20, 1991, pp. 64-65. See Mary O'Brien, 'Quantitative Risk Analysis: Overused, UnderExamined,' Journal of Pesticide Reform Vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring 1988), pp. 7-12, and Myra Karstadt, 'Quantitative Risk Assessment: Qualms and Questions.' Teratogenesis, Carcinogenesis, and Mut agenesis Vol. 8 (1988), pp. 137-152, and Paul Merrell and Carol Van. Strum, 'Negligible Risk or Premeditated Murder?' Journal of Pesticide Reform Vol. 10 (Spring 1990), pp. 20-22. See also Peter Montague, "Questions to Ask About Risk Assessment,' an unpub lished draft available from the author at Environmental Research Foundation, P.O. Box 73700, Washington, DC 20056-3700. 34. Quoted in Lynda Taylor and others, "The Importance of CrossCultural Communication Between Environmentalists and LandBased People." The Workbook W<A. 13. No. 3 (July/SepL 1988), p. 92. The Workbook, Vol. 16. No. 2. Summer 1991 Reprints of Workbook feature articles are available for $2.00 from SRIC, P.O. Box 4524, Albuquerque, NM 87106 Sources of Information agriculture The Harvest: State Strategies for Sustainable Agriculture Anne Hoskins and Jeffrey Tryens Washington, D.C.: Center for Policy Alternatives, 1990 41 pp. and appendixes, $15, booklet A farmer who plants com continuously instead of rotating it with another crop like soybeans -- a strategy that would actually bring higher profits and also lower soil depletion -- gets $69 per acre from the government to subsidize his efforts. His neighbor, who sustains his soil by alternating com, oats, and meadow growth, gets only $19 per acre. Federal price incentives like these and other kinds of support payments also encourage the excessive use of pesticides and nitrogen fertilizers to attain high crop yields. U.S. farmers spend $10 billion a year for fertilizers and pesticides. What happens to all that chemical fertilizer and pesticides encouraged by the government to produce highyield crops? -- Easily one-third of all fertilizer applied to crops is washed away unused into surface and ground water; -- Six of ten pesticide applications are more than 10 percent off their intended rates (the cost of these errors of $1 billion a year); -- Consequently, ``America spends $40 million a year just to discover how many rural wells have been contaminated with agricultural chemicals"; -j- In Iowa, 18 percent of all wells have been contaminated with nitrates in excess of safe drinking water levels. -- 20 percent of water wells nationwide show pesticide pollution. Contamination from nitrates --- linked to cancer, birth defects, and heart disease -- has been found in 48 states. The Harvest; State Strategiesfo r Sustainable Agriculture, by. Anne Hoskins and Jeffrey Tryens, offers an agenda for states' policy makers to lake the initiative in meeting the economic needs of farmers while protecting the long-term environ- mental and human health in their communities and states. There is a noticeable move on for states to establish agricul tural policies that support sustainable agriculture -- that is, a system that does not degrade and erode soil, pollute water, or endanger public health. Everybody seems to recognize the crisis, although big agriculture insists that high-yield de mands require heavy use of chemicals. If stales don't lake the lead, Hoskins and Tryens warn, they may lose the right to local control of pesticides and agricultural chemical use. The federal government has already proposed establishing an international body to determine "scientifically-based sanitary standards," a plan that would effectively supercede local, state, and even national legislation; the Bush administration would be "bargaining away the rights of communities and states to make their own risk assessment and chemical use decisions." After a good review of what sustainable agriculture is, the report sets forth the "agri-chemical problem" -- largely the fault of federal incentives for farmers to overuse chemical fertilizers and pesticides, exacerbated by the widespread inaccuracy of soil tests. The consequences to soil and water from this overuse include the loss of 3.1 billion tons of topsoil each year and the abandonment due to severe degra dation of more than 100 million acres of U.S. cropland. The authors place the total costs to environment and to human healLh at $46 billion a year. The core of the report is devoted to making the case for sustainable agriculture's economic benefits -- in increased yield, lower actual expenditures and, of course, long-term investments in soil saved from depletion. Lest anyone think that reducing chemical use means reduced yield and reduced ,, profit, consider this: by reducing agricultural chemical use by 25 percent, say Hoskins and Tryens, U.S. fanners can actually increase farm income by $2.5 billion. A not incidental fact; studies by the Central Platte Natural Resources District in southern Nebraska found that due to past applications of fertilizer it made little difference in the test plots whether nitrogen fertilizer applications were zero or |pfi*T iC iO E FU N P A 6 T 6 * ' ALTV!OU a W O U T W A S & A N N E D IS flT Z ./ IT W A S T U S M O S T com m on R e lo u e - fo u n d o s F R E S H P R O D U C E IN A 1 ^ 6 1 SAN FR .A N C ISC O S U R y g - r : crjop t o s s e s ou& t o in se c t * HAVE D O U bL E D SINC&- T H E H A O 'S IN S P IT E O F A T E N - FO LD INCREASE- IS IN SECTlClO E U S E # N W COALITION FOR, ALT1RNXTW&5 TO PWTlCIOfcVAOx 5 1 5 - H J 0 6 N , OR 17440 000034 The Workbook, Vol.-16, No. 2, Summer 1991 / 185 pounds per acre; com yields remained essentially the same. In these areas there was enough stored fertilizer in the soil from past over-applications to allow farmers to discon tinue fertilizer altogether the next season. What the report doesn't have, which came as a surprise considering the title, is any information of substance about the strategies of particular states. A few details are learned but only in passing. The focus is, instead, general, with the emphasis on providing state policy makers with solid recommendations to consider. Nobody seems to believe chemical-dependent fanning can be sustained; the question is, what will states do about it, and when? Tryens and Hoskins ask: .* As farmland is depleted and rural tax bases are undermined, how will communities support them selves? As chemicals leach into ground water and water wells are polluted, how will municipalities provide safe, clean drinking water? As farmers, farm workers, and consumers continue to be inflicted with pesticide-induced health problems, who will pick up the tab for health care and loss of productivity? With its policy recommendations, The Harvest outlines the possible sources of state funding, including the use of oil overcharge funds, taxes on chemical industries, and taxes on fertilizers and pesticides to support research into sustainable farming practices. Within the appendices are briefly summarized findings from organic and "low-input" fanning methods studies; alternative practices for pest management, weed reduction, and cultiva tion; contacts on sustainable agriculture; a pledge by a major supermarket to buy pesticide-free produce; and a discussion of the 1990 Farm Bill's impact on sustainable agriculture. Among the several recommendations, states should: Monitor ground water contamination and soil depletion Monitor testing procedures of private soil testing labs that arc used to guage fertilizer use According to the Rodale Institute and university studies, some soil testing firms have misled farmers about their fertilizer needs, proposing that they apply more than was necessary. In 1986, the University of Minnesota showed that the difference between following the university's fertilizer recommendations and those of private soil testing firms could amount to almost $30 per acre in excess fertilizer expense. This amount exceeded the net profit per acre before federal subsidy for American farmers in 1986. Research done at Kansas State University has included documentation of excessive fertilizer recommendations by nonuniversity laboratories (Howell 1989). -- The Harvest Provide funds for applied research and development Develop programs to assist farmers to make the shift to sustainable farming practices; and aid in financing a Assist in the promotion and marketing of organically grown agricultural products, supporting farmers' markets and market research. The Harvest may not offer many new revelations about the disastrous consequences of chemical-dependent agriculture or about the desirability of sustainable systems of agriculture. But it is excellent as a briefing book that highlights the negative consequences and costs to the economy of the massive overuse of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, encouraged by a federal policy in which farmers are trapped, and it persuasively articulates boLh the short- and long-term benefits of sustainable agriculture to land, human health, and farm economy. State policy makers and concerned citizens are offered a sound, logical, reasonable course of action. -- KCN Order from: Center for Policy Alternatives 2000 Florida Ave., N.W., Suite 400 Washington, DC 20009 consumer affairs Breaking Down the Degradable Plastics Scam A Greenpeace Report Anita Glazcr Sadun, Thomas Webster, Barry Commoner Flushing, N.Y.: Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, 1990 97 pp., $5 donation, bound manuscript When I brought home my last box of garbage bags, what it said made me feci a little more environmentally responsible, and that felt good. It said: SAFE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT GLAD Garbage Bags: Are degradable in sunlight. Act as a non-contaminating inert material in a landfill. Can be incinerated safely, providing more fuel value than wood or coal. GLAD has a continuing commitment to the environment. This package is made from recycled paperboard. It's great they're degradable in sunlight. Um, oh, I guess my bag will have to stay on top of the pile. (Or will it happen waiting on the curb for the trash men?) Hm m ... non-contaminating.. . Well, I guess this bag won't put any toxic chemi cals into the landfill, or bother any of Lhc other trash. Inert material... Docs that mean nothing will happen to it? Is that supposed to be a good idea? You mean it will stay just like it is? But what about degradablel I thought when you put something in the compost pile to degrade it just ` merged with everything else, finally, j you know, birlh-life-death-rebirth... everything turns out fine in the end___ Can be incinerated safely-- hey, but. I didn't know tliey.were going to burn them! Who wants all that stinking plastic in the air? More fuel valuell -- An: they kidding? Have you ever stoked up your old Franklin vith plastic milk jugs? Or your sister-in- law's kid's dispos ible diapers? No, thanks, I'll just stick with good old ced itand pine. Greenpeace's repnt on degradable plastics won't surprise very many people who were skeptical about claims by manufacturers of trash bags and disposable diapers that their new "biodegradable" products were safe for the environment. What Breaking Down the Degradable Plastics Scam does is to thoroughly bre: ikdown those claims by offering a detailed explanation of ho v various plastics are constructed, the process of biologi cal degradation or composting in nature, and the chemistry used in attempting to make plastics -- an inorganic, synthci ic polymer construction -- do the same. "Nearly a quarter of all plastics sold in the U.S. (14.1 billion pounds in 1989) is used for packaging -- products that are designed to be thrown away as soon as the package is opened It simply isn't possible, the report shows. At most, what happens is that starch combined with the plastic molecules does decompose, leaving "holes" in the plastic material so that, eventually, the sheets of plastic material turn into tiny pieces -- assuredly taking up less space in the landfills but retaining their non-decomposable character all the same. In some cases, the plastic material is reduced to what the promoting manufacturers blithely call "plastic dust," (!) as if this substance wouldn't blow about in the wind and find its way God-knows-where. Betsy James A further problem is the uncer tainty about the effects from additives used as break-down agents, which also end up as free agents, so to speak, in the environment They may be toxic, likely carcinogenic, and this report says what little testing has been done on these chemi cals hasn't begun to be compre hensive. Rats, for example, have been injected with doses of such additives (typically metals or halogens, for example, chlorine and fluorine), but observed for only two weeks, demonstrating only that the substances may not be immediately toxic-- but in no way precluding longer-term carcinogenic consequences. Apparently the marketing strategy is to convince consum ers that they can have their plastic without endangering the environment-- though they may have to pay extra for the privilege. This is borne out by the comments of a Mobil Chemical Company spokesman, quoted in the Tallahassee, Florida, Democrat shortly after Mobil began marketing photodegradable Hefty trash bags. Noting that the degradable bags "are not an answer to landfill crowding or littering," he said, "Degradability is just a marketing tool___ We're talking out,of both sides of our mouths because we want to sell bags. I don't think the average consumer even knows what degradability means. Customers don't care if it solves the solid waste problem, h makes them feel good." 000035 i -- Breaking Down the Degradable Plastics Scam The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 65 The report is a thorough technical discussion of the essential chemistry of plastics that doesn't condescend to the layper son. (If high school chemistry texts were written this well, we'd have more people pursuing chemistry -- maybe more people willing to explore alternative plastics materials produced from natural polymer substances [as is cellophane from wood pulp], which would naturally and completely biodegrade, as the report recommends.) Included here are explanations of biodegradation, plastics manufacture; of what "degradable" plastics do and don't do; how they're made, how they break down; of the differences between photodegradable plastics and their polymer make-up and starch-containing plastics. A case study of the biodegrading of ecolyte plastics is Offered; a section on toxicity refutes manufacturers* safety claims and outlines the dangers of plastics additives, and another several pages discusses the implications of "de gradable" plastics for litter and solid waste management. The conclusion to the report sums up all of the evaluations and looks at manufacturing's lack of accountability for environ mental consequences, and it makes strong and explicit recommendations for public policy. -- KCN Order from: Greenpeace 1436 U St., N.W. Washington, DC 20009 Green Business: Hope or Hoax? Christopher Plant and Judith Plant, eds. The New Catalyst Bloregtonal Series Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1991 136 pp., S9.95 plus $1.75 postage, paper In the opening chapter of Green Business: Mope or Hoax, Christopher Plant and David Albert question the possibility of "green business" at all. Can concerns for nature and genera tions of people ever be compatible with marketplace values? Under the present system of free market trade, with giant international corporations and the biggest producers of goods . receiving the greatest rewards, can their newly proclaimed "environmental responsibility" be anything more than a hoax? The so-called free market, always associated with the word democracy but never in truth remotely democratic, say Plant and Albert, is the original hoax from which all claims that business can become "green" follow. that aim to genuinely revise the way business is conducted -- land trusts, co-ops, community-based currency systems that lean to the principles of accountability and community solidarity. Greg Logsdons's look at the fanning practices and community-supported economy of the Amish provides a textbook lesson in the efficacy of shared labor, husbanded resources, and wise spending. And Randy Hooper's lively offering, "Bursting the Bottle," is a dramatic cost breakdown MODERNE MAN The first group of essays in the collection, then, speaks to the issue of "light green" business-- that is, the superficial attempts by corporations to ride the bandwagon of environ- mental responsibility -- actions that are, in the view of most of the writers, at best a diversion from the real task before iis of rethinking and reordering the very structure of money making. Wayne Ellwood entertains the question, "to what extent do environmentalists cooperate with corporations?" in "Endorsing Green Capitalism: Should Environmentalists Get into Bed with Business?"; Lynn Dadd and Andre Carothers explore the willingness of business to exploit "the green label" through their public relations campaigns instead of making genuine changes in their production practices and marketing in "A Bill of Goods: Green Consuming in Perspec tive," a chapter that also profiles the "Glad Bag" biodegrad able hoax and other companies* ad claims for "dolphin-free" tuna. (The authors say Starkist, and now Chicken of the Sea, arc currently the only companies that can be trusted to meet their claims that no dolphins have been caught with the tuna they buy.) The second group of essays brings more optimism and faith in change, as the contributors write about authentic strategies 6 6 Tho Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 XT (O ; ` J j .i c \ of the differences to consumer, environment, and local economics between buying bottled or bulk household cleaner. His clever illustration brings home the logic of buying in bulk; aside from the more obvious benefit of less packaging going to landfills, the greatest portion of the consumers cost stays in the local economy. Does buying a bottle of Hcover Toilet cleaner in a one-shot plastic bottle, imported from Belgium, really make any difference at all?" asks Hooper. The surprise answer may be yes -- for a little while, anyway, for some people who have just discovered they want to help improve the environment Hooper's next questions reflects the collective stance of the book: Will people-- consumers and business -- "be able to take the next step in the trans formation?" In all, 19 perspectives exploring the roles of corporations and individuals in taking authentic measures to protect the environment and the quality of life for human beings. These are engaging, well written and well considered pieces, excellent reading, in one or several sittings. -- KCN Order from: Mew Society Publishers P.O. Box 582 Santa Cruz, CA 95061 or P.O. Box 189 Gabriola Island, B.G, CANADA VOR 1X0 We can hardly hope for societal transformation from recycled toilet paper. In fact, the record shows that if everyone in the United States recycled 100 percent of what now constitutes their personal solid waste, 99 percent of the nation's solid waste would remain. Industry would still be dumping upwards of 4.6 million pounds of toxic chemicals a year into the air, water and soil; the military would still be producing more than 500,000 tons of hazardous wastes a year; plants would still be emitting more than 281 million pounds of known carcinogens into the environment. The solution does not lie with individual consumers changing their individual habits. We should also emphasize that environmental groups have no business making deals and trade-offs with large corporations, nor accepting their tainted money, if they want to continue receiving our support. Social transforma tion will not emanate from nefarious enviro-corporate alliances, either. furthermore, because the commodity spectacle is so allengaging, "light" green business tends to merely perpetu ate the colonization of the minds, sapping our visions of an alternative and giving the idea that our salvation can be Qarned through shopping rather than through social fuggle and transformation. In this respect, green Js,ness is at worst a danger and a trap. -- Green Business: Hope or Hoax? economy & taxes Working Parents: Get the Money You've Earned! The Earned Income Credit Campaign Washington, D.C.: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 1991 free Information packet It's been estimated that one in every four families eligible to receive the Earned Income Tax Credit-- about three to four million families -- doesn't ever get it. Why not? Many of the families, eligible to receive up to $953 in a cash payment, don't earn enough money to file a tax return -- the only way to claim the benefit. Welfare agencies have been reluctant, too, to promote the EIC to their clients because, before 1990 legislation, a family's EIC benefit counted as income that would determine eligibility for Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Social Security benefits, Medicaid, or food stamps. And language and other information obstacles get in the way; the largest proportion of eligible working families earning the lowest wages (and thus the least likely to file a tax return) are Spanish-speaking and/or live in rural areas. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities organized a campaign, now in its third year, involving advocacy, labor, business, social service and religious organizations, along with some state and local officials, in a concentrated effort to get information out to eligible working families. This year they have put together an "outreach kit" to aid people in these helping organizations. The kit contains a fact sheet on the EIC and updated information about the 1990 legislation that makes it easier to collect: families can now apply to receive EIC in installments with paychecks; they can also let the 1RS compute their benefits by simply writing "EIC" on a desig nated line of the 1040A. There are instructions for the advanced payment option, a run-down of state participation and benefits paid, and information (and encouragement) for state agencies working to help families make the transition from welfare to work, as well as eligibility information, telephone resources, posters and flyers printed in both Spanish and English, and an eight-page booklet outlining strategies for promoting EIC within the community. In short, everything needed. The EIC Campaign has so far helped two million families collect benefits.-- KCN Order from: The 1991 EICC Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 777 N. Capitol Sl, N.E., Suite 705 Washington, DC 2000(2 nnnnn 000036 The Workbook, Vok 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 67 "The answer is Four, Carlos, not Qtiatro' Didn't they even teach you how to add over th ere?! education Not Only English: Affirming America's Multilingual Heritage Harvey A. Daniels, ed. Urbana, 111.: National Council of Teachers of English, 1990 135 pp., $8.95 ($6.95 to NCTE members), paper "We have roomfor but one language here and that is the English language,for we intend to see that the crucible turns out people as Americans and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house." -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1919 I love the United States of America. I love my country's flag. I love my country's language. I promise: 1. That I will not dishonor my country's speech by leaving off the last syllable of words. 2. That I will say a good American "yes" and "no" in place of an Indian grunt "um-hum" and "nup-um" or a foreign "ya" or "yell" or "nope." 3. That I will do my best to improve American speech by avoiding loud rough tones, by enunciating distinctly, and by speaking pleasantly, clearly, and sincerely. 4. That I will learn to articulate correctly as many words as possible during the year. -- Schoolchildren's pledge, circa 1925 Supporters of the English Language Only amendment (ELA) argue that we should eliminate bilingual education from our schools. Our language is suffering a decline, they say, because of the influx of non-English-speaking people to this country, whose children we coddle in the schools by offering them special language instruction and allowing them to study some subjects in their native languages for a time. We spend a lot of money on English programs for foreign kids, and it 6 8 Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 obviously doesn't work. We've got a whole segment of immigrant population now that refuses to learn proper English, even expects voting ballots to be printed for them in Spanish. Not Only English, a collection of essays by teachers of English, is a powerful rebuttal of these and other ELA arguments. Collectively, these essays show ihe English Language Only movement for what it is: a reaction bred of fear of differentness, a simplistic and also misplaced nostal gia for an image of a past America where everybody spoke the same language and believed the same thing, and a thinly veiled scapegoating of immigrants as the cause of the country's domestic ills. (Even our metaphors reveal our negative attitude toward immigration and "foreigners," Elizabeth Frick points out: we speak of them characteristi cally in images of inundation, the words "flood," "deluge," "spills over," "swamped," "wave," "tide," "influx," "ero sion," the inevitable modifiers.) The ELA amendment probably won't pass at the federal level, but many states have drafted their own versions of it. Although these state laws are considered by many to be innocuous and merely "symbolic," they foster anti-immigra tion sentiment and xenophobia. In Arizona, an English-only statute now threatens 25 years of civil rights gains in legisla tion, says Roseann Ducnas Gonzalez. Voting ballots, now printed in English only, have reverted to prc-1975 status. Ironically, non-English speakers must vote without needed information, precisely fulfilling the ELA advocates' worst fears of an uninformed voting group. Duenas-Gonzales argues that the largest threat to non-English speakers -- in Arizona this means Native American as well as Spanish speaking residents -- is disenfranchisement; with a federal law in place, workers would have no recourse to employer . discrimination based on language use. A person could be fired, for example, for speaking Spanish or Navajo while on the job, with absolutely no protection from the federal government (such a case has already presented its ugly face, but was redressed in federal court). 1 Not Only English, as its title suggests, goes beyond support ing merely bilingual education in schools; affirming America's multicultural heritage, it argues not only against restricting bilingual education, but for a long-overdue expansion of foreign-language instruction for Englishspeaking students. James Sledd's eloquent piece exposes with irony, skill, and verbal adroitness the perceived threat to Americanism by multilingualism as the simple fear of "them" versus "us" and in the process manages to reduce the ration ale for ELA legislation to utter nonsense. English does and will continue to prevail in America, he rightly insists; to legislate our insistence upon it is dangerous nonsense, isolating, dividing, disenfranchising, with the sure end of creating a permanent underclass. Two final essays include proposed public and personal action strategies to stop the ELA and to educate the public about the need for broader and deeper language instruction. The book is a highly accessible and enlightening discussion of the English Language Only issue from legal, educational, linguistic, social, and teaching profession perspectives that cumulatively expose the motives behind it: our society's deepening antagonism toward "differentness" and the intent "to deprive one group of Americans their rights." -- KCN Some uses of non-English that U.S. English (advocates for English Only legislation) and others will try to termi nate under new statutes: translators In public hospitals 911 emergency service voting materials, instructions, and ballots bilingual education in public schools school materials, parent conferences, report cards drivers' license regulations and examinations non-English radio and television broadcasting non-English holdings in libraries street signs, park names, commemorative naming of public sites directory assistance telephone books and yellow pages tourist information public housing listings and information bus and train schedules and signs general advertising, business signs, billboards, menus . . As the above list further demonstrates, some . English-only advocates feel that death is not too severe a penalty for an immigrant's failure to speak English." -- Harvey Daniels, Not English Only energy Thousands of good-hearted, patriotic, loyal Americans -- often consciously honoring their own immigrant ancestry -- have voted in large majorities to support officialEnglish referenda recently appearing on the ballot in many states. By now, 16 states have passed some version of an official-English law___ What have been the outcomes of these state official-English statutes? The laws passed in the last few years have had a largely symbolic outcome. But from each of the new officialEnglish states come reports of uncivil confrontations: in Colorado, a bus driver orders Hispanic children to stop speaking Spanish on the way to school; in Denver a restaurant worker is fired for translating the menu for a Hispanic customer.. . in Texas, Spanish-language radio stations are subject to FCC petitions; in Coral Gables, Florida, a supermarket checker is suspended without pay for speaking Spanish on the job; in Huntington Beach, California, court translators are forbidden to use Spanish in personal conversations. -- Harvey Daniels, Not English Only Investing in Solar Energy Recommendations for the U.S. Department of Energy's Research and Development Budget for Renewable Energy Technology, 1992-1994,2d. edition Jonathan Becker, ed. Washington, D.C.: Public Citizen, 1991 48 pp., $10 (free to the media), booklet The recommendations published in this report and delivered to Congress in March present a detailed alternative to the Bush administration's proposed renewable energy budget for fiscal year 1992. While the Bush administration proposes $164.1 million in funding for renewable energy research and development (with no recommendation for the following years), the Public Citizen Critical- Mass Energy Project calls for $462 million. That sum is to fund research on wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, biomass, and hydrogen energy technologies for 1992, to be increased to $652 million by fiscal year 1994. If that sounds like a lot -- it's more than triple what Bush proposes -- it is only a fraction of what was spent during die Carter administration. It's also worth remembering that the Bush administration wants to spend, according to Public Citizen, twice the money on nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, and clean coal than on all renewable technologies combined. 00003*7 The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 ' Many foreign governments are spending far greater shares of their energy R & D budgets, and more dollars per capita, on renewable energy technologies than is the U.S. Even in terms of actual dollars the U.S. is being outspent. For example, West Germany spends 65 percent more , and Japan 40 percent more, than the United States does on photovoltaics. Seven European countries are spending as much or more on wind energy development than is the U.S. . . . The long-lived, highly toxic radioactive waste gener ated by commercial nuclear power plants has nearly tripled in volume since 1980 and the volume Is expected to triple again by the year 2000. -- Investing in Solar Energy The "cornerstone" of the proposal is funding for a series of joint government-industry ventures to develop technologies already laboratory-proven but not yet demonstrated commer cially. These would include renewable energy technology manufacturing processes, commercial-scale power facilities, building construction techniques, and methods of information transfer for energy-saving passive solar building design and energy storage techniques. Public Citizen calls the Bush administration's proposal on renewable energy not merely inadequate, but "a betrayal of public trust," following a clear citizens' mandate expressed during the last two years (and also Bush's own public promises) for energy conservation and renewable energy sources. The White House even cut the Department of Energy's own request for renewable energy research and development by 26 percent. Despite widespread belief fostered by fossil fuel and nuclear power industries that renewable energy technologies like wind, solar, geothermal, and other alternative power re sources are developed to an insignificant degree -- and are' prohibitively expensive -- Public Citizen points out that they account for fully 10 percent of the nation's domestic energy production-- far more than nuclear power plants and "socalled `clean coal facilities'" -- in spite of negligible federal support. "If the President thinks he is saving money by slashing the renewable energy budget," says the Public Citizen group, "then we say he is pennywise and pound foolish." Investing in Solar Energy is an excellent source for first hand, bottom-line information about various alternative energy characteristics and costs, as it includes a discussion of each renewable energy technology's current energy contribu tion, cost, and potential, a detailed break-down of the proposed funding level for each, and a line-by-line justifica tion for spending. -- KCN Order from: Public Citizen 215 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E. Washington, DC 20003 Vi ' *<. ) 7 Q The Workbook, Voi. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 Energy Survey Says... In a December 1990 national poll, a vast majority of Americans ranked renewable energy and conservation as their #1 or #2 priority for government funding (75% and 67%). Nuclear power ranked last (25%). Renewable Sources: Research/Strategy/Management, Greenberg-lake: TheAnalysis Groin Safe Energy Communication Council Global Warming and Energy Choices CONCERN Community Action Guide Series Washington, D.C.: CONCERN, 1991 38 pp., $4 plus $1.50 postage, booklet Eighth in a series of community action guides, Global Warming and Energy Choices addresses the phenomenon of global warming and the changes in U.S. energy policy that are needed to stop the damage to the global atmosphere and limit global climate change. A great deal of material is presented .here in attractive format and clear language, from a comprehensive discussion of the causes and consequences of global wanning, kinds of greenhouse gases, climate and sea-level rise predictions and their effects, to a call for a new national energy strategy that emphasizes cutting carbon emissions, increased energy efficiency, and pollution reduction --requiring a turning away from fossil fuels toward alternative and renewable energy sources. Several pages outline the actions that should be taken toward energy conservation, developing wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass energy and water power, transporta tion alternatives, reform of utility policies, sustainable agriculture, forest preservation and restoration, land-use planning, and reducing population growth. Some compelling facts: The United States, representing 5 percent of the world s population, produces 20 percent of the world's carbon dioxide (C02), the largest contributor to global warming-  Eight of the wannest years of the century have occurred in the last 11 years. The amount of C 02in the atmosphere has grown 25 percent since the Industrial Revolution. Deforestation currently accounts for about 20 percent of all COz in the atmosphere. Most of the clearing of land in the tropical rainforests of developing countries for agricultural and cattle ranching is largely for beef export to developed countries. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, proposed by ihc government for oil exploration and drilling, is estimated to contain roughly 3.2 billion barrels of oil -- less than the U.S. uses in seven months. Over 33 percent of C 0 2emissions in the U.S. come from utilities that bum fossil fuels, primarily coal and gas, to produce electricity. If nuclear power produced all of the electricity needed in the U.S. it would replace only five percent of current oil use. From 1980 to 1988 Japan's share of the world's pho tovoltaic market increased from 15 percent to 37 percent In the U.S. it dropped from 75 percent to 32 percenL A section called "Reforming Utility Policy" urges citizens to put pressure on utilities through state control by legislation to make profits dependent on reduced costs to consumers, a step that would provide incentives for conservation of energy and thus reverse the current system of protecring company profits against costs of fossil fuels through rate adjustments and subsidies. The guide also summarizes existing federal legislation that relates directly or indirectly to global climate change, stressing that although we need new laws, existing ones can do much to reduce global wanning if properly enforced. Several regional, state, and local initiatives are profiled, including New England's regional energy approach, Califor nia's comprehensive energy conservation and efficiency measures (which have saved $23 billion between 1973 and 1985 by reducing by 35 percent the amount of energy required to produce a dollar of California goods and serv ices), and Portland, Oregon's visionary city transportation plan, which has dramatically reduced air pollution and innercity congestion while it has reduced carbon dioxide emis sions. These provide models as well as sources of informa tion on innovative state and city programs to reduce green house gases and encourage research into alternative energy sources. While the guide is an excellent source of information about global wanning and about the many strategics for slopping it by rethinking our energy policies, it disappoints as a "com munity action guide." The emphasis is heavily on personal action, the apparent premise that "change begins at home." The section "Guidelines for Action" relies on individuals to reduce their own energy consumption by improving house hold heating, lighting, and appliance efficiency, but offers little help for citizen action in the public arena. Community involvement here means, mainly, get your own community to recycle, plant trees, develop local food supplies through farmers' markets and coops, get local media to carry "energy tips" and the library to display energy-related literature. The advice to "urge developers to incorporate energy-saving design and technologies" doesn't really tell how. There is encouragement and a sample letter for writing members of Congress, but more information is needed to get the govern ment to enforce the existing laws and to press effectively for changes in the current administration's energy policy; and there ought to be blueprints for forming effective citizen action coalitions with the weight and power to force apathetic city governments, utilities, businesses, and manufacturing facilities to take the needed changes seriously. US CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS By Energy Source -1988 i% 18% By Sector -1988 12% 33% 43% O il Co*] Q N a tu ra l g u O th ff 24% i \ \ \ \ xx f / * VV ? X#XV X / XV X / XV X /X\ Xv X^ XV X /*VV r \ x x x x x x x x x \ Xr 3 l H E le c tric U tilitie s Q T ra n sp o rta tio n In d u stry Q B u ild in g s Source: OaV Ridge National Laboratory. The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Trends '90: A Compendium o f Data on Global Change. (August 1990). Source: James J. Mackenzie, Breathing Easier: Taking Action on Climate Change. Air Poiiution. and Energy Insecurity (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute). The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 y J GLOBAL TEMPERATURE 1880-1938 Building a Brighter Future: State Experience in Least-Cost Electrical Planning Nancy Hirsh Washington, D.C.: Energy Conservation Coalition, 1990 73 pp., $10 individuals, $20 libraries, paper Source: WorldWatch/NASA. Global Warming and Energy Choices just doesn't quite satisfy, even though it does a first-rate job of creating awareness of global warming's causes and solutions and informing readers with solid, authoritative detail. The information comes from a wide range of resources -- Public Citizen, Worldwatch, the Solar Energy Research Foundation, Sierra, Scientific American, the National Resources Defense Council, and others -- and it is presented effectively and without overstatement The pages listing national organiza tions devoted to energy concerns and related readings may be able to provide some of the information the guide lacks. Others in the Community Action Guide scries are Hazardous Waste, Ground Water, Pesticides (new editionfall 1991), Drinking Water, Farmland, Waste: Choicesfo r Communi ties, and Household Waste: Issues and Opportunities.-- KCN Order from: CONCERN 1794 Columbia Rd., N.W. Washington, DC 20009 Electricity is essential to modem living -- from lighting to transportation to computers -- and electric utility companies therefore play a central economic and political role in our society. The environmental effects of electricity production and transmission also arc great but often unquantified. Since state commissions regulate utility companies, the rates charged for necessary electricity vary widely from slate to state and from utiliLy company to utility company. During the last decade an increasing number (now about 20) of state public utility commissions have begun to require utilities to use "least cost planning" as a procedure to cut costs and to plan for future generation needs. Building a Brighter Future summarizes some of the experiences and lessons learned in four different states -- Connecticut, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Washington. The author notes that "least-cost energy planning is a concept with many identities." Generally, "least-cost planning process examines all electricity-saving and electricityproducing options to select a mixture of options that mini mizes total customer cost and considers environmental costs and other societal considerations." An increasingly important aspect of utility operation is "demand-side management" (DSM) that emphasizes conservation and other alternatives to building new generation plants. This booklet provides an overview of how the four states have approached major issues, including the planning process, public participation, and implementation of the concept. Most of the booklet consists of individual case studies that describe how the process started in that state, giving some specifics on how it operates, and listing key players (utilities, regulators, and government and non government participants) and documents. The overview describes several important lessons that have been learned. A clear goal is critical (such as increasing Alternative energy sources can be competitive with conventional fuels when all govern ment subsidies, either direct or indirect, to the fossil fuel industry are reduced or elimi nated. Tax incentives, loan guarantees, and federal agency expenditures all mask the real costs of producing, converting, and using energy from fossil fuels. Examples include depletion allowances for fossil fuel extraction; use of tax-exempt pollution control bonds to help finance construction of utilities; and deduction of oil and gas development costs for businesses and investors. A study by the Rocky Mountain Institute found these subsidies in 1984 came to $44 billion, of which $30.1 billion were tax-related. This does not include the cost of clean-up. r f f ( nx.i -7 2 Workbook, Voi. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 -- Global Warming and Energy Choices conservation or better coordinated comprehensive planning). Public participation is essential and the less adversial planning forums are more conducive to public involvement than normal lawyer-dominated regulatory proceedings. DSM has short- and long-term benefits even when local utilities have excess capacity. Regulatory commissions that establish financial incentives make least-cost planning attractive to utilities. A clear definition of least-cost planning is vital. A variety of DSM programs is essential so that residential, commercial, and industrial consumers are involved. Al though DSM planning affects rates, so does building new generation plants; a "total resource test" must be used to determine cost-effectiveness. Because of its many benefits to ratepayers (and utilities), least-cost planning should be adopted throughout the nation. The author points out that "other states can look at the long and hard road traveled by Connecticut, Nevada, Washington, and Wisconsin and find many lessons and points of guidance to make their own journey smoother." This well-organized booklet will help utilities, regulators, and ratepayers identify some of the important issues in least-cost planning. Order from: Environmental Action Foundation 1525 New Hampshire Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20036 -- Don Hancock N uclear Power Opposition Continues to Rise Over the past 14 years, public opinion against more nuclear power has risen with every new survey, reach ing an all-time high of 62 percent in 1989. Sources: Louis Harris Polls, Research/Strategy/Management O Safa Energy Communication Council government & military Mobilizing Democracy: Changing the U.S. Role in the Middle East Greg Bates, cd. Monroe, Maine; Common Courage Press, 1991 218 pp., $12.95, paper Noam Chomsky says in a dialogue with Eqbal Ahmad: "Now the fear of confrontation with Lhe Soviets is gone, so there is no deterrent to U.S. forces. It means we can expect more violence." This pessimistic perception is surely accurate given the status quo of U.S-Middle East relations and the global political, economic, and social structures in place. An articulate and intelligent collection of essays, Mobilizing Democracy: Changing the U.S. Role in the Middle East, examines the background of the Gulf War along with the history of our relations with the Arab world and with Israel, and the faclors-- including the dismantling of the Cold War-- that led us into the war. with Iraq. The consensus of the book's several authors is that the principal U.S. motive for using force to resolve the conflict with Iraq was oil -- not to assure the supply of oil, as much popular sentiment and alternative energy advocates have argued, but to assure the control of oil and, thus, of the Middle East. Central also to the discussion of the U.S. role in the Middle East is the issue of "linkage," the relationship oflsrael's occupation of Palestine and Gaza to Saddam Hussein's actions, and to the balance of power among Arab nations. In "Congress and the Creation of a Just Middle East Policy," Nancy Murray, who directs the Middle East Justice Network, argues for a U.S. policy that includes linkage and the resolution of the Palestin ian question as well as strategies to force what has been a recalcitrant Congress to adopt and enforce those resolutions. The book's emphasis is on preparing strategies for permanent global peace by changing the social and political mechanisms that bring about conflict and war. The arrangement of the essays suggests this forward movement roughly half, collected under the heading, "The Road to War," are devoted to background, the other half, grouped under "Seizing Opportunities for Change" and "Short and Long-Term Tasks for Peace," to proposals for changing the U.S. role in the Middle East and the global conditions that foster wars. Two narratives by former American Marines -- one of whom awaits court martial at Camp Lejeune for organizing his company to disobey orders to go to war, are eloquent testimonies to the economic pressures and inequities in the United States and the pull of the military for poor and minority young men and women. Cynthia Enloe's contribu tion (originally published in The Village Voice) caustically The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 __________ 000039 attacks the way governments, assisted by the media, exploit women as emotion-evoking symbols used to justify patriarchal wars: "If there's an image that defines television's Gulf Crisis," Enloe writes, " it's a disheveled white woman coming off a 747, an exhausted baby on her shoul der. States exist, this media story implies, to protect womenandchildren." Robert Irwin's concluding essay, "Beyond Crisis Response," explores the tasks required to change the social and political power structures that engender conflicts such as the Gulf War and reiterates the proposals for a peace system outlined in his recent Building a Peace System (ExPro Press, 1990). Irwin is visionary but ultimately practical. Yes, we must respond to the immediate crisis of a war to be fought and won; but at the same time we must be able to envision a strategy for peace -- that is, alternatives in government policies that can prevent war. What are these? Changes within global politics and international laws. There must be self-govemance at the global level, Irwin maintains; the United Nations, potentially an effective body, is "severely hampered" by the veto power of its Security Council, held by the United States, the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain, and China. Along with reform of the voting system within the U.N., there must be an effective system for enforcing international law. Secondly, there must be alternatives to the economic and ecological status quo. "Capitalism," says Irwin, "is destroy ing its own basis." A sustainable economic system must be found, and a sustainable economy is dependent on a protected ' environment, including natural resources. Further, a high priority must be given to reducing global inequality: basic subsistence worldwide is crucial Copreventing wars, says Irwin. And international aid programs to bring about a subsistence standard must support participatory development Third, perhaps more elusive and abstract, is the cultural dimension: we must "incorporate the feminist ethic ofearing and concern for life" in order to bring about a human, multicultural world of tolerance and mutual respect based on mutual understanding. Irwin, who truly believes that people united by vision can effect change, outlines how this may be done: through clear, strategic thinking, through nonviolent struggle, through the deliberate conception and building of a system for.world peace. "It is essential," Irwin believes, "that .people opposed to U.S. military interventionism and nuclear arsenals devote energy to exploring the nature of the institu- . tions, policies, practices, economics, and culture of a world handling its conflicts without war and oppression." 7 4 The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 ^^ : - , *I*> .1 Contributors are Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad, Rabab Hadi, Abbas Nasrawi, Naseer Aruri, Jeanne Butterfield, Sheila Ryan, Cyrus Bina, Manning Marable, Cynthia Enloe, Howard Zinn, Slephen Zunes, Denis Doyon, Nancy Murray, Hady Amr, Michael Marsh, Erik Larsen, Sam Lwin, Randy Kehler, and Robert A. Irwin. Editor Greg Bates took on a formidable task in ordering the anthology and getting it printed on short schedule, and he contributes useful brief prefaces to the essays. It is worth noting that of the 21 contributors, five are women, all Middle East issues experts ---a slightly belter ratio than was seen in the television coverage of the Gulf War, when the average viewer might have assumed there weren't any women who knew anything about the subject. The collection in its entirety is impres sively coherent, rich and compelling reading. -- KCN Order from: Common Courage Press P.O. Box 702 Monroe, ME 04951 Ever since Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's August 2 offer to withdraw from Kuwait if Israel would withdraw from the lands it conquered in 1967 and Syria and Israel would withdraw from Lebanon, this "linkage" of the region's occupations has been a specter haunting Bush's Guff policy. Why has the administration been so swift to put the lives of hundreds of thousands of U.S. servicemen and women in jeopardy after Iraq invaded Kuwait, while we make allies with another Middle East occupier, Syria, and we refuse to use the $11 million per day we give in grants to Israel as leverage over its twenty-three-year-long occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem? -- Nancy Murray and Hady Amr If the United States did not get one drop of oil from the Middle East it would still pursue the same policies. In fact, until 1968 the United States dominated the Western Hemisphere, where the major producers of the world are. At that time it was an exporter of oil yet it followed exactly the same policy as it does now when it imports some oil. The point is: whoever has their [sic] hand on the spigot that controls the flow of oil can influence the rest of the world. If the United States had all the oil it needed it would still want to control Middle East oil, because that is the way you control the rest of the world. -- Noam Chomsky Eight years of the Reagan administration and two years of Bush have gutted federal financial assistance programs for college and job training. At the same time, the military recruitment budget went from $500 million to the current $2.5 billion. Recruiting techniques became more sophisti cated and more focused on offering job training. There was no one standing with a gun pointed at people's heads and saying "either you go into the military or you go to jail." But people were having college tuition bills ran somed: "If you want to go to college you have to go into the military." -- Michael Marsh -- Mobilizing Democrat/ A remarkable volume o fpublished commentary on the Gulf War appeared almost as the ceasefire was called. The publications mentioned here are especially noteworthy because, although the war was technically over, their content remains timely and significant. From examinations of how the U.S. media handled their responsibility, to the impacts upon women o f many nationalities and classes in the Middle East, to the long-term environmental consequences o f the bombings by both sides, these publications contain coherent and provocative observations on the causes and effects o f U.S. Mideast policy. -- ed. The Political Ecology Group (PEG) has published an action paper, "W ar in the Gulf: An Environmental Perspective," a 24-page magazine format that includes a background of environmental impacts from the Vietnam and Iran-Iraq wars, an examination of the elements of environmental destruction accompanying Operation Desert Storm -- oil, chemical and biological warfare and the threat of attack on nuclear power plants. This is followed by a discussion of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, the costs both in terms of the expense of waging war and th inattention to domestic problems in the United States, and the U.S. energy policy and its impacts upon national security, our addiction to oil as an energy source, and the pressure to turn to nuclear power; finally, the paper includes an "Environmentalists' Platform for Peace in the Persian Gulf." All this material continues to be relevant despite the cease fire. `Designed for activists, students, and the press as an educa tional tool, the paper includes advice on taking action. PEG is self-described as "an action-oriented research and public education group making the link between ecology, milita rism, and social justice." (One to four copies are $ 1.50 each; 5-49 are SI; 50-99 are $.75; 100 are $.50 each.) | Order from: Political Ecology Group 519 Castro, Box 111 San Francisco, CA 94114-2577 (415) 861-5045 Women and the Guff War focuses needed attention on the impacts of the war on women in the Middle East, who are, along with their children, the principal victims of the war's hardships. It also gives space to the social inequities in the United States that drive many women -- predominantly black, Latina, and Native American -- into the U.S. armed forces. They are women who have succumbed to an "eco nomic draft," opting for the military "as a road to work and education." The 12-page booklet published by Church Women United gives voice to the organization's position against the war and its call for "a just peace for all the peoples of the Middle East and for those facing joblessness, poverty, or limited opportu nity at home." Copies are $.50 each or $.25 for 100 or more. Order from: Church Women United Resource Department 475 Riverside Dr., Room 812 New York, NY 10115 -- See also Cynthia Enloe's acerbic and astute commentary, "`W omenandChildren': Propaganda Tools of Patriar chy " among the essays collected in Mobilizing Democracy (see above), an analysis of the role of women in a male rationale for the Gulf War. Her words speak to much of the same perceptions that inform Women and the Gulf War: "To make sense of the Persian Gulf crisis, one has to listen to the different groups of women on whom the various govern ments are depending to help them implement their foreign . policies. We are living in a world that is more understand able if we picture it as an artifice constructed out of unequal, fragile relationships between different groups of women and men. In the Persian Gulf this means not only European and American hostages, but also domestic servants, Arab femi nists, women consumers and workers, diplomatic wives, military wives, and American women soldiers. It is taking considerable efforts by male officials to make each group of women play their conventional parts." An extensive resource on the Gulf War is the Data Center's Persian G ulf War Series. The first of the three-part scries is a 64-page reprint collection, Background and Analysis of the Gulf War, treating U.S.-Iraq long-term relations, arms sales to the Midle East, Kuwait's financial empire, the environment, and the media. Iraq Under Fire, the second of the series, reprints collected material centered on U.S, bombing, additional historical perspective,, gays and minorities in the military, Bush family oil interests, and early coverage of the crisis by the media. The most recent in the series is a comprehensive look at media coverage during the Gulf Crisis, The Media and Our Right to Know. "Why did the mainstream media become cheerleaders for the Pentagon? How did `collateral damage', `smart bombs', and `human remains pouches' become acceptable terms?" arc questions addressed in this 90-page collection of book excerpts and news article reprints. (TO0 0 4 0 The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 '7 C As the media conglomerates have become larger, they have been integrated into the higher levels of American banking and industrial life, as subsidiaries and interlocks within their boards of directors. Half the dominant firms are members of the Fortune 500 largest corporations in the country. They are heavy investors in, among other things, agribusiness, airlines, coal and oil, banking, insurance, defense contracts, automobile sales, rocket engineering, nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Many have heavy foreign investments that are affected by American foreign policy. It is normal for all large businesses to make serious efforts to influence the news, to avoid embarrassing publicity, and to maximize sympathetic public opinion and government policies. Now they own most of the news media that they wish to influence." -- Ben Bagdikian, T h e Endless Chain, " (From Media Monopoly, 1990.) booklet divides ihe subject into ownership and control of the media, media myths and disinformation, the acquiescent voices of the media mainstream, and resources for action. It includes a substantial excerpt from Ben Bagdikian's The Media Monopoly; and titles such as "All the Congressman's Men: How Capitol Hill Controls the Press," "Gulfspeak II," "Hyping the Iraqi Bomb," How the Army Is Marketing the Gulf War to a `Soft' Public," "Camouflaging Reality with Faux News, Clever Decoys," and the Project Censored-cited "U.S. Military Gags Acquiescent Press," reflect the range of content. The series will save inquisitive people, hungry for penetrating discussion about the Gulf War, a lot of legwork. Tke Media and Our Right to Know is S7.50acopy; the others are S6 each, postpaid; or you can order all three for SI6. The Data Center has provided public interest in formation focused on domestic and international politics and economic issues for 13 years. -- KCN Order from: The Data Center 464 19ih St. Oakland. CA 94612 (414) 835-4692 tw i . . \ t . . * 7 The Workbook, Voi. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 The U.S. Military's Toxic Legacy: A Special Report on America's Worst Environmental Enemy Lenny Siegel, Gary Cohen, Ben Goldman; Edited by Peter Diamond and Sanford Lewis Boston, Mass.: National Toxic Campaign Fund, 1991 127 pp., $15, paper "The U.S. military is the nation's largest polluter. Virtually every major military installation in the U.S., as well as former bases and bases overseas, is responsible for extensive environmental contamination," according to this new report from the National Toxic Campaign Fund. The report is a foundation document for the Military Toxics Network's on going organizing to make the military more accountable and to promote better environmental practices by the military. (Problems with the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons facilities are not included in the report but have been well documented elsewhere.) The report describes the Pentagon's inadequate cleanup program, the lack of authority to enforce environmental laws by the states and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the role of contractors in creating pollution, examples of contamination at overseas bases, and the solution: toxics use reduction and "citizen watchdogs." Included in the information -- most of which is from the Department of Defense (DOD) -- is the fact that there are 14,401 possible contamination sites at 1,579 military facili ties. Almost 100 of the sites have been designated as "Superfund" sites for the most contaminated areas in the nation. The problem is not under control because of the large amount of waste created annually by the bases: 900 million pounds of hazardous wastes in 1989, along with 17 billion pounds of wastewater, and 658 oil and toxic waste spills requiring cleanup. Several case studies of specific sites describe particular problems and tell how citizen activists have made a difference in those locations. A 35page appendix lists military installations in 50 slates, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Trust Territories. Weapons production and testing and other military "national security" activities have created thou sands of serious contamination sites in every state. Depending on the same people to clean up the mess and to prevent further contamination will not solve the problem. People must get invlvcd, government officials must make those problems priority attention, and laws will have to be changed. The NTC report provides a good basis for getting started! -- Don Hancock Order from: National Toxic Campaign Fund 1168 Commonwealth Avenue Boston, MA 02134 CONTAMINATED MILITARY INSTALLATIONS AND SITES KEY 1,579 Contaminated Military Installations 14,401 Contaminated Sites on Installations from 7bo U.S. Miliaiyb ToxicLogocy The following steps are being taken by locally based activists to eliminate the military toxics threat: 1. Demanding a right to know exactly what poisons are released into their neighborhoods, how much, and when.. 2. Demanding that genuine grass-roots leaders, as well as local public officials, are represented on each base's official environmental advisory committee or Technical Review Committee. By placing one or more community representatives on such committees, organizations are gaining access to both officials and information, as well as added legitimacy. 3. Demanding the right to inspect and monitor bases with their own experts. Citizens are checking contamination data directly, either by sampling water or soil independ ently or by requesting split samples from official testers. . . . NTCF calls upon the Defense Department to formally recognize the right of base neighbors to inspect facilities and take water or soil samples. While sensitive national security interests must be protected, the public has a legitimate interest and right to review and inspect hazard ous materials management practices at all areas of local facilities where military secrets are not involved. 4. Evaluating facility behavior through the National Toxic Campaign Fund's "Grass Roots Environmental Evaluation. of Federal Facilities" (GREEFF) Report Card to help citizens rate local bases and contractors for their perform ance on Right-to-Know, base cleanup, waste management, and pollution prevention. 5. Demanding the right to negotiate with base officials and contractors about environmental protection. In the long run, DOE public relations efforts will have little value unless the military is willing to listen and act on informed advice from people most affected by military pollution. 6. Applying for EPA Technical Assistance Grants, which supply funds to community groups for their role In monitor ing Superfund cleanups. Since most of the DOD toxic facilities are not on the Superfund National Priorities List [NPL], NTCF also recommends the Defense Department offer similar grants of up to $100,000 to community groups at military toxics sites, whether or not they are listed on the NPL 000041 -- The U.S. Military's Toxic Legacy The Workbook, Voi. 16, No. 2, Summer 199.1 y y minorities & Third World Nicaragua: A Country Guide Kcnt Norsworthy, with Tom Barry Albuquerque: The Interhem(spheric Education Resource Center, (1989), revised 1990 226 pp., $9.95, paper Like many others accused by the Schultz State Department of being "duped," I visited Nicaragua in the 1980s to attempt some understanding of how people and nations live through revolutionary periods. The group sponsoring my study seminar, Augsburg Col lege's Department of Global Education, made sure that we spoke with Sandinistas and Contras and a U.S. ambassador, mem bers of the business community and labor unions, students and campesinos, priests and newspaper editors of both persuasions. As one who enjoys experiential learning as much as reading books, I was pleased with the widebased introduction to a complex culture and have often wished that there was a systematic way of keeping up with the developments in Nicaragua over the years. Like your hometown, mine doesn't have a newspaper with much interest in in-depth reporting on Latin American issues. Norsworthy and Barry's Country Guide is a welcome and insightful overview of the Sandinista Revolution and the FSLN's subsequent defeat in one of the most closely moni tored elections in history. Inevitably most North Americans 1 want to skip the details and just know if Nicaragua "cried Uncle" in response to the Reagan Administration's Contra War. Norsworthy replies with a factual analysis of the fabric of Nicaraguan culture, including.chapters on politics, the military, economics, social structures, and foreign influence. Through them all is critical analysis of the Sandinista tenure ' that lakes note of both accomplishments and the failings that ultimately led to their defeat Most important is the larger framework within which Norsworthy discusses the historic relationship between the United States and Central America. Is the region composed of sovereign states or is it an area to be controlled by the political whims of the White House? It would seem that the latter is the case, though, ironically, the Sandinistas didn't "cry Uncle." It was their faithfulness to the Esquipulas peace process, never taken seriously in North America, and the internal failures of the FSLN to adjust to changed realities in Nicaragua that contributed to their fall from power. They gave up power willingly when they were defeated at the polls 7 A ' 7ft Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 because the principle of freedom, which they had won in the revolution, was too important to do otherwise. In spite of defeat, they are seeing many of their policies upheld and in some cases even strengthened by the UNO government of Violeta Chamorro. What a surprise to Washington when she refused to drop the celebrated World Court ruling concerning the mining of Nicaraguan harbors in 1984! The most amazing reality of all in the election is that the Sandinistas were able to gather the largest vote of any party on the ballot when the economic boycott and war caused by the United States had occasioned so much suffering among the Nicara guan people. Nicaragua; A Country Guide speaks of these issues in depth, at the same time taking a close look at the challenges facing the UNO government now that the billions of dollars readily available for a surrogate war and the propping up of neighboring countries against the "Nicaraguan threat" have dried up. The end of North America's short attention span has been reached and replaced with more pleasant business, such as cele brating our high-tech victory in the Middle East The tortuous union of small parties into a coalition strong enough to topple the Sandinistas has resulted in an enormous challenge for Chamorro. Unfortunately, the seeds of future problems in Central America have been resown by our refusal to take the masses of Latin American poor seriously as fellow travelers on a planet, people who also have desires for freedom and independence on their own terms. Order from: The Resource Center P.O. Box 4506 Albuquerque, NM 87196 -- James Schmidt James Schmidt is Pastor o f the Old Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbus, Ohio. pollution & environment Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality Robert D. Bullard Boulder, Colo.: Wcstvlew Press, 1990. 165 pp., $29.95, paper Whether one is a battle weary veteran of the war for environ mental justice or a young novice trying to find a place in the environmental movement, Bob Bullard's bodk,Dwnping in Dixie, is a must-read handbook for the next environmental decade. Bullard has pul a face on the old but only recently labeled phenomenon of environmental racism, the placing of a disproportionate burden of the world's environmental problems upon people of color and the poor. Bullard attacks the myth that people of color are not environ mentalists, going far to redefine a term that has mainly been shaped by the white mainstream environmental community. No longer is it acceptable for the well-educated, rich, and politically affluent to dominate environmental advocacy, says Bullard; the environmental "haves" must recognize and incorporate the contributions of the environmental "havenots" if we are serious about making the environmental movement a true grass-roots effort. Beyond policies to promote preservation, resource conservation, and population control, Bullard argues, the issues of homelessness, fair housing, health care, and other environmental civil rights must be added to the mainstream environmental agenda. There can be no environmental justice without social justice. Bullard devotes an entire chapter to the themes of race, class, and politics, observing that while the civil rights movement was bom in the South, it did little to give blacks environ mental rights. Along with other southern historians, Bullard believes there is a direct connection between the exploitation ofland and the exploitation of people of color in the South. Muchdiscussion is given to the pattern of siting undesirable, hxally unwanted land uses, one that follows the path of least resistance. While middle-class and upper-class households ;anmove away from such toxic hell-holes, low-income families are forced to adapt to a high-risk environment -- *ihoui air conditioning, curbside recycling, or bottled water. Mureaffluent communities have greater resources at their Kposal to fight the toxics war, such as better communication Dorics, easy access to the environmental community, large of potential volunteers, and "their own" elected - rcials. In a chapter entitled "Dispute Resolution and . 'llcs' Allard offers five case studies of southern commu- ^ vc suffered such environmental degradation and ^ave characterized as "national ,n<ioR7"3nCS" "mass*vc human experiments," and "cancer *** Houston's Northwood Manor ncighbor- ind ? *as' *nsl*lule. West Virginia; Alsen, LouisiC'^ umler bounty, Alabama, all predominantly Cascs nearly exclusively -- black communities. Bullard strongly criticizes the so-called "Big Ten" environ mental organizations for the lack of racial diversity within their own staff and also the lack of diversity in issue develop ment Bullard cautions that while hiring more people of color will improve the current situation within these organizations, it will take more intensive surgery than the we-have-aminority-person-on-our-staff fix to remedy historically racist patterns within the environmental who's-who camp. The Big Ten environmental organizations have focused their attention on tightening a few regulations, seeking funding for the Environmental Protection Agency, forcing a few court decisions, and lobbying against corporate efforts to weaken environmental standards. In the view of people of color, the TABLE 2,2 Operating Hazardous-Waste Landfills in the Southern United States and Ethnicity of Communities (1987) Facility Name Current Capacity in Acre-Feet* Percent o f Population in Zip code Area Minority Blade Hispanic Chemical Waste Management (Emelle, AL) CESCO International, Inc. (Livingston, LA) Rollins Environmental Services (ScotlandvHe. LA) Chemical Waste Management (Carlyss, LA) Texas Ecologists, Inc. (Robstown, TX) GSX Services o f South Carolina (Pinewood, SC) US Pollution Control, Inc. (Waynoki, OK) G ulf Coast Waste Disposal Authority (Galveston, TX) Rollins Environmental Services, Inc. (Deer Park, TX) 30,000 22,400 14,440 5,656 3,150 289 * 111 110 103 79.5 78.9 0.0 23.8 21.6 1.8 94.7 93.0 1.5 6.8 4.6 1.7 78.2 1.6 76.6 71.6 70.5 1.1 37.3 23.2 12.3 4.3 0.0 3.1 7.3 0.3 6.2 'Acre-feet is the volume o f water needed to fill ooe acre to a depth o f ooe foot. The total capacity of the nation's 27 hazardous-waste Landfills was 127,989 in 1987. Sourer. Commission for Racial Justice, Hazardous Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics o f Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites (New York: Commission for Racial Justice, 1987) Table B-10. 000042 The Workbook, Voi. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 79 -.j. Few residents knew that they were about to become the host community for the nation's largest hazardouswaste dump. Rumors circulated throughout the community about a "new industry" coming to town. The Sumter County Record, a Focal newspaper, touted the economic benefits of the industry with a banner headline that read "Unique New Industry Coming: New Use for Selma Chalk to Create Jobs." Local residents mistak enly thought the new job-generating industry moving into the area would be a brick factory. It was more than two years after the site opened that residents learned that Alabama Governor George Wallace's son-in-law acquired the 2,400 acres of land, obtained necessary permits with surprising ease, and immediately sold the package to Chemwaste. The deal is estimated at $15-$30 million over the lifetime of the agreement. Chemwaste has subsequently purchased additional parcels of land, bringing its total to 3,200 acres in Sumter County. -- Dumping in Dixie working-class, and Bullard himself, they are not the champi ons of the poisoned many. Bullard does more than just name the problem of environ mental racism and includes an extensive bibliography certain to spur more reading on this controversial subject as well as an indispensable appendix of individual, local, state, regional and national contacts working on environmental diversifica tion issues. -- Richard Regan Order from: Wesiview press 5500 Central Ave. Boulder, CO 80301 Richard Regan, SR IC 's W ashington representative, has led training seminars on environmental racism. Site Unseen: The Politics of Siting A Nuclear Waste Repository Gerald Jacob Pittsburgh, Pa: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990 234 pp., $29.95, cloth Siting of nuclear waste disposal facilities, once considered to be easily achievable, has proven to be virtually impossible. In Site Unseen, Gerald Jacob provides an academic analysis of why the federal government high-level nuclear waste disposal program has proceeded without major changes for the last 20 years but yet has been unable to successfully develop a disposal facility. The fundamental support for the continued development of nuclear power and for the federal government's program of geologic disposal for nuclear waste is ascribed by Jacob to the power of the "nuclear establishment" The author points out that similar to the military-industrial complex, the nuclear establishment includes the utility companies with nuclear power plants and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and their "allies within Congress, industries participating in the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear scientists and engineers, contrac tors, industry organizations, and promoters of nuclear power within state, local, and federal institutions." Nuclear waste politics has been developed and carried out by that establish ment Although the nuclear establishment has maintained control of the levers of power, it has been unable to overcome three crises: lack of credibility of its decisions and expertise, lack of legitimacy of its institutional authority, and lack of financial viability. According to the author, "members of the nuclear establish ment came to demand that federal legislation resolve these crises, restore a predictable course to federal waste manage ment programs, and bring order and stability to the nuclear economy. National legislative action was required because it alone could resolve the fundamental conflict between the nuclear establishment's demands for reassertion of its authority and control, and opponents' demands for new institutions and patterns of relations among the state, econ omy, and civil society." ' 'What's a lt thla fuss about nuclear waste? We're not wasting any!' 8 0 Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 i i Tht (N\ 149 crc; inn* ma: and the null was xtro Pub 'on nnc enct The and "Km UOt t*!i *cvi The nuclear hiel cycle. The federal legislation was the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) of 1982 (see The Workbook, July-OcL 1983, pp. ' 149-172). Jacobs says that legislation "was an opportunity to create a more open decision-making process within which innovative and more credible approaches to nuclear waste management could be explored. -Inpractice, it left the goals and course of past waste management programs unaltered and the authority of the nuclear establishment largely intact." The author faults the NWPA because it failed to change nuclear waste management policy in four areas: it did not provide a strong role for states to promote environmental protection and public health, it failed to change DOE's control over deci sions, it did not provide for technological and institutional innovation, and it did not stop federal subsidies for nuclear energy. The failure of the NWPA became readily apparent by 1986 and the program was put on hold by Congress as more and *more states, Indian tribes, and citizens successfully opposed DOE's program. In 1987, Congress again supported the nuclear establishment by designating Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the only site for DOE to consider. (An office of nuclear waste negotiator was established to look fora "volunteer" site.) In a classic understatement, the author concludes: "little evidence suggests that the Yucca Mountain, Nevada, site was the outcome of a systematic site selection process. Rather, it should be seen as the product of historical precedent and political-economic expediency." Although the nuclear waste establishment has been able to maintain its control in the Reagan and Bush administrations and in Congress, it has yet to produce a credible, legitimate disposal site. During the past decade, the author concludes, "a broad range of U.S. citizens became sensitized to the problem of toxic and radioactive waste disposal and the ineptness of DOE to address those problems. It will now be even more difficult to convince the public of the value of any technology, nuclear or otherwise, that prompts such conflicts over the disposal of its by-products." While that conclusion indicates an awareness of the crucial role of citizen action -- which is a principal reason for the nuclear establishment's inability to carry out its disposal program -- the book is woefully lacking in description or analysis of that citizen involvement. That glaring omission is disappointing and somewhat unexplainable since the author worked for the State of Utah when a site near Canyonlands National Parie was being considered by DOE and citizen groups played a major role in developing widespread opposition to that site. It is unfortunate that Jacobs did not look into how citizens in Utah and other states were able to build broad-based alliances to blunt the power of the nuclear establishment That important story remains to be written. . Nonetheless, the book provides useful analysis and conclu sions that are well supported. It should be in many public and university libraries. -- Don Hancock Order from; University of Pittsburgh Press Pittsburgh, PA 15260 Green Revolutions: Environmental Reconstruction in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union Hilary F. French Worldwatch Paper 99 Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, Nov. 1990 62 pp., $4, booklet The political changes of the past two years mark the begin ning of a "brave new world" for the central and eastern Europeans who grew up under the control of centrally planned economies. This new era begins, however, with a substantial burden of widespread environmental damage and associated health risks resulting from the development strategies of the old regimes. Worldwatch Institute has characterized the range and extent of these problems and The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 19^ q q ^ -Q J identified opportunities to remedy them in ways that "leap frog" the energy inefficiencies and technology fixes of western European and North American societies in its Worldwatch Paper 99, Green Revolutions: Environmental Reconstruction in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The Worldwatch Paper format is well-suited to the introduc tion of the complex subject of environmental damage and resource management in central and eastern Europe. This format, a brief readable snapshot of a problem and opportuni ties for solution, offers readers a mix of technical data and overview material sufficient for a preliminary understanding of the dimensions of a problem, and it identifies sources for further investigation. As so little was known about environ mental conditions behind the iron curtain before its collapse, Worldwatch has performed an important service by summa rizing environmental issues and identifying major players among the non-govemmental organizations that were active prior to and immediately after the political revolutions in the region. The severe and pervasive nature of environmental damage in central and eastern Europe is nonetheless difficult to capture in the short, 62-page, pictureless framework of a Worldwatch Paper. The smell of untreated brown coal smoke and open sewage ditches one encounters in central Europe is a strong indication of the extent of emissions and waste management problems facing people in the area. The poorly constructed and uninsulated housing blocks visually demonstrate both inefficient energy use and the extreme difficulty of applying less wasteful energy systems and energy conservation to what passes for modem architecture in central and eastern Europe. As Worldwatch reports, the recognition of the severity of these problems and the lack of Table 3: The Environmental Movement at a Glance remedial action by govern ments, emboldened people in the region to face the personal Bulgaria Ecoglasnost, which played a role in unseating Prime Minister Zhivkov, now active as both environmental group and political party. Another Green Party, and at least 18 other groups. risks that resulted in the dramatic overthrow of the post-World War II regimes. People came to recognize that their health, and their chil Czechoslovakia dren's, was directly threatened Official environmental groups from old era, such as Brontosaurus and Czech and Slovak unions of nature protectors, now independent and being joined by many small groups. The Green Circle is umbrella organization for three major groups and 30 smaller ones. Also a national Green Party. and that community action was needed to prevent the risks from being realized in the form of disease and shorten lifespan. Eastern Germany The network ARK, which developed before the revolution under auspices of the Lutheran Church, merged with other groups in 1990 to form the Green League. Green Party established in late 1989. With political union, environmental movements and Green parties merging. Hungary In Budapest, environmental movement emerged out of battle against the Danube Dam. Environmental research institute called ISTER established, along with the Inde pendent Ecological Center serving as a resource group for many local groups. Several small Green parties. P o la n d Polish Ecological Club grew out of Solidarity in early eighties. Several Green parties and more than 40 groups, including the Green Federation and the Franciscan Ecologi cal Movement. Romania MER (Ecological Movement of Romania), which operates as both environmental group and Green Party, has taken on leading role. Several small Green parties outside of MER. By one estimate, 112 groups with some 100,000 members. USSR Four umbrella organizations -- the Social Ecological Union, the Ecological Union, Ecology and Peace, and the Green Movement -- attempting to link numerous local groups into national movement. Viable Green parties in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldavia, Byelorussia and the Ukraine. Source: Worldwatch Institute, based on various sources. Non-govemmental organiza tions active in these social and political changes are listed in a table (see box). These groups are just a sampling of the many organizations that lead the movement for change in central and eastern Europe. Along with the communities they represent, these groups may be isolated from many of the big-govemment and bigbusiness environmental programs currently descending upon the region. Government institutions, such as-the U.S.backed Regional Environ mental Center in Budapest, may be a base for corporate entry into the environmental clean-up market, as opposed to grass-roots, community-based environmental strategies. In environmental matters in Europe as well as the U.S., -2 The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 local watchdogs and local advocates for environmental protection are essential to the establishment of programs that effectively protect communities. But those locally based efforts will have a tough time competing for resources with corporate-level actors in eastern and central Europe, just as they do in western Europe and North America. We hope Worldwatch, and others, will continue to monitor develop ments in the region so that we in the U.S. can continue to learn about this part of the world, which was so hidden for ihe past 45 years. -- Paul Robinson Order from: Worldwatch Institute 1776 Massachusetts Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20036-1904 science & technology Chemical Sensitivity Nicholas Ashford and Claudia Miller New Jersey State Department of Health Voorhecs, N.J.: National Center for Environmental Health Strategies (NCEHS), 1990 168 pp. plus appendices, $15 for members of NCEHS, $17 for nonmem* bers According to the National Academy of Sciences, 15 percent of the American people -- some 37 million individuals -- may experience "increased allergic sensitivity" to chemicals. A recent report, Chemi cal Sensitivity, issued in 1990 by the New Jersey State Department of Health, concludes that "chemi cal sensitivity docs exist as a serious health and environmental problem" and that "public and private sector action is warranted at both the state and federal levels___ Our review of the existing evidence suggests Lhat chemical sensitivity is increasing and could become a large problem with significant economic consequences related to the disablement of productive members of society." The New Jersey report, by chemist and lawyer Nicholas Ashford of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and by physician Claudia Miller of the University of Texas, has two aims: (1) to clarify the nature of chemical sensitivity and (2) to identify ways the New Jersey Department of Health can assist those who are affected. Different people who suffer from multiple chemical sensitivity exhibit a bewildering variety of symptoms and behavior captured by the following "fords: distraught; excited; agitated; panicky; circuilous or ne-track thoughts; muscle twitching and jerking of exlremi- ties; convulsive seizures; aggressive; talkative; clumsy (ataxic); anxious; fearful; apprehensive; alternating chills and flushing; ravenous hunger; excessive thirst; giggling or pathological laughter; tense; jittery; "hopped up"; argumenta tive; overly responsive; sweating and chilling; insomnia; alcoholism; obesity; running or stuffy nose; clearing throat; coughing; wheezing; asthma; itching (eczema and hives); gas; diarrhea; constipation (colitis); urgency and frequency of urination; various eye and ear syndromes; tired; dopey; somnolent; mildly depressed; edematous with painful syndromes (headache, neck ache, back ache, neuralgia, myalgia, myositis, arthralgia, arthritis, arteritis, chest pain); cardiovascular effects; confused; indecisive; moody; sad; sullen; withdrawn or apathetic; emotionally unstable; impaired attention, concentration, comprehension, and thought processes (aphasia, mental lapse, and blackouts); unresponsive; lethargic; stuporous; disoriented; melancholic; incontinent; paranoid orientation; delusions; hallucinations; amnesia and coma. Of course any one individual suffers from only a few of these symptoms, but the baffling spectrum of problems associated with sensitivity to chemicals has made many doctors wary of treating patients who think they may suffer from the disease. Indeed, many doctors have traditionally refused to acknowl edge the existence of a single disease called "chemical sensitivity" or "multiple chemical sensitivity." As a conse quence, a person who exhibits a cluster of debilitating symptoms'will visit, on average, six or seven physicians before he or she finds one who will take the problem seri ously and will try to unravel the causes -- or at least look for things that trigger the symptoms. Most doctors simply say, "I can't help you" or "it's all in your head -- take this tranquil izer." One of the worst aspects of this mysterious condition is the sense of loneliness and abandon ment patients feel; rejected by doctor after doctor, patients begin to believe it is somehow their own faull if they have gotten sick. The situation is complicated by ongoing professional turf battles between tradi tional physicians, allergy specialists, and a group of specialists called clinical ecologists. They argue about definitions, diagnoses, causes, and appropriate treat ments. The patient becomes a double victim -- first to the disease itself, then to the medical profession that doesn't do well in the face of complex problems that may come and go, ' symptoms that encompass multiple organ systems, and vastly different medical training that causes doctors in different specialties to "sec" different things when ihey look at the same patient. Medicine is not an exact science and nowhere is this more clear than when a person responds strongly -- even violently and dramatically -- to mild odors of perfume or paint, or to faint smells from a new rug or a new sofa, or from exposure to some new detergent or solvent in the workplace. The chemically sensitive are victims of the 000044 The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 gg modem nHiwtrini pnvirnnmenii their inalienable right to the " pursuit of happiness has been taken from them by corporate production and marketing decisions made without their votes or even their opinions being sought or considered. Unfortuniiiely, until the New Jersey report was issued, there was no really good single book or report that tried to put these problems into perspective and tried to sort out what was really known from what was merely suspected or assumed. -- Peter Montague Order from: National Center for Environmental Health Strategies (NCEHS) 110 Rural Ave. Voodices, NJ 08043 This review is reprinted fro m Rachel's Hazardous Waste News, published weekly by Environmental Research Foundation, P.O. Box 73700, Washington. D C 20056-3700. Telephone (202) 328-1119. Subscription rates: $40 per year fo r individuals and citizen groups; $80fo r government agencies; $15 fo r students and seniors; $400fo r businesses and professionals. 1- Synthetic organic chemical production United Staiti. 945--1985. Semree: U.S. Intern, Trade Commission. transportation The New York City Cyclist Charles Romanoff, editor New York, Transportation Alternatives, 1991 Bimonthly, 16 pp., free with membership For people committed to bicycle-commuting in New York, City and elsewhere in the country, there is an entertaining and inspiring bi-monthly newslelter. The New York City Cyclist (the masthead logo plays down the "New York"), which has been around awhile, is a high-spirited, energetic 16-page publication full of articles, how US's (Figure out where to park, get your apartment building to provide bike parking and storage, be prepared for all kinds of weather, and so on), letters, classifieds, announcements of protests and cycling activities; there is even a ``Commuter of the Month" on the model of ``My scotch is Dewar's." Many short pieces, cartoons, drawings and ads make the design (or non-design) a liule busy, but the exuberance makes up for it. (They invite articles, photos, letters, and artwork.) City Cyclist is published by Transportation Alternatives, "The Voice of the New York Cyclist," a network and advocacy for *cyclists' rights, which has been working since 1973 for cleaner air, to reduce motor vehicle traffic, expand bikeways, curb bike theft, and promote bicycle commuting. Although based in and focused on New York City, it offers a model for other city grass-roots alternative transportation advocates. 0 4 Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 This organization successfully protested Mayor Koch's ban on bicycle couriers in Manhattan, organized a "Bike Ride Peace" in February, and won full-time bike lanes in Cenirai and Prospect Parks and ramped paths on ihc Brooklyn and George Washington bridges. Their ultimate goal is auto-free streets. They want members: membership costs S20 for individuals, $10 for students and low income, $30 fora family; privileges include discounts in New York-areaM* shops, a year's subscription to City Cyclist, and acalci"* information about bike trips. To join Transportation tives and get City Cyclist, Order from: Transportation Alternatives 494 Broadway New York, NY 10012 i w( ta / f h ft a hi ir ex T i fili it : USt U Ci pu bo am eri - the wo per roo col sia, cdii live *Ol colt and ! women Women, AIDS, and Activism The ACT UP/NY Women and AIDS Group Cynthia Chris and Monica Pearl, eds. Boston: South End Press, 1990 295 pp., $7, paper A lot of HIV-positive women and women with AIDS, heterosexual, bisexual, and lesbian, are angry. They're angry at the lack of medical research and health care for all people but especially women with AIDS, and they're especially angry to be left out of the already meager benefits and medical treatment that men g e t One lesbian AIDS activist complains that one reason women have been "invisible" in the AIDS crisis is because the medical and media mainstream think lesbians don't have "serious" sex. (They also overlook the fact that most women in lesbian relationships have had heterosexual ones in the past, often with bisexual men.) But women with AIDS die six times sooner after being diagnosed than men, because of late diagnosis they have less access to treatment and other benefits, and they have far less access to information about preventing AIDS and to experimental drugs for treatment. Some readers of Women, AIDS, and Activism, a collection of articles and essays put together by the women's caucus of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), are going to find the book extremely refreshing; some will find the tone too strident and too angry and some of the content uncom fortably detailed. Better education about AIDS for women and safer sex, the contributors to this book argue; mean honest acknowledgment of lesbian sex practices. Visibly impatient with evasion and vagaries, they are insistently explicit on that score. i The book isn't only about lesbian sex and AIDS; it covers the whole range of virtually every aspect of the AIDS issue as it affects women. Much of the book's content was originally used for a "teach-in" about women and AIDS held at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in New York City in 1989; the object in publishing the material as a book is to advance research by and about women in the AIDS crisis, give needed exposure to the impact of AIDS on women's lives from a feminist perspective, and promote grass roots activism. The book is a collective effort (no one gets star billing here, not even the editors), a gathering of perspec tives: HIV positive women, women with AIDS, women of color. Chapters cover AIDS and HIV statistics on women, Jr . . We knew there was too little known about women in the crisis, particularly from an activist perspective. Some of us were already experts on some topics (like health care or drug use or safe sex), but none of us knew the specific answers to questions that were taking shape in our minds. Why do women die six times faster than men* do after receiving an AIDS diagnosis? Why are women dying of HIV-related illnesses without receiving an AIDS diagnosis that would qualify them for certain treatments and benefits? How does HIV present itself differently in women's bodies? How have racism, sexism, and heterosexism prevented people from receiving adequate prevention information or adequate treatment? Why, a decade into the epidemic; do we still not have adequate information and services? --Women, AIDS, and Activism 000045 The Workbook, Voi. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 85 how AIDS may be transmitted between lesbian partners as well as heterosexuals, I.V drug use, women and HIV, prostitution, prison issues, reproductive rights, preventive "safe-sex" measures, conventional and alternative treatments for AIDS, and the legal questions involved in testing for HIV antibodies. Principle sections cover grass-roots activism and issues of race. Women, AIDS, and Activism offers a comprehensive, utterly candid, multifaceted discussion, from intimate autobiographi cal accounts to the academic. Iris de la Cruz draws a memo rable brief, tough and arresting self-portrait of drug use, prostitution, AIDS illness and ultimate activism. There is a profile of the South Carolina AIDS Education Network (SCAEN) that operates out of DiAna's Hair Ego, the direc tor's hair salon, where "condoms are piled next to curlers and clients view AIDS videos while getting their hair done, [I]n a state with one of the most restrictive and punitive HIV laws and a reactionary climate." The book also contains an extensive bibliography and a resource list of organizations concerned with women and AIDS. For any woman concerned or involved with AIDS issues -- which probably means all women -- the book is a primary source of information. -- KCN Order from: South End Press 116 Su Botolph St. Boston, MA 02115 Walking to the Edge: Essays of Resistance Margaret Randall Boston: South End Press, 1991 220 pp., $25, cloth; $10 paper Long before Margaret Randall came to feminism the seeds of her resistance to racism, classism, and capitalism had been sown. That resistance and its connection to the feminist movement come together in this collection. Her essays are observations of the 1980s from this perspective, sometimes passionate, moving, or critical, always political. Her approach throughout is "the personal is political," a familiar maxim of the women's movement. In this book (she has published more than 50) she speaks openly about her art and her personal life and with benevolence about their inextricability. All of the pieces in this work are previously published and/or revised except for two; one is in the form of a letter to her family regarding her newly remembered incest experience, "Some of You Are Saying We Are Both Wrong" and another, "All the Different Characters that Populate My World: Some Notes on the Teaching Experience," in which she comments on her approach as having been influence by her Cuban and Nicaraguan experience and her experience with feminist psychotherapy in this country. Her resistance here is to "the manipulative `educational' experiences" and 3 6 ' The Workbook, Vol., 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 family or relationship abuse that oppresses. In much of the essay she shares the insights from excerpts of student journals from her course, Women and Creativity. Randall's experience in teaching reflects what she mentions later in the essay, "Woman to Woman, Our Art in Our Lives," when she speaks of "communal creativity." It is not surprising that similar teaching techniques occur in Women's Studies courses across the country and in writing courses that strive for unity and shared creativity. She speaks here of the resistance to the conditioning that is male-defined: promot ing competitiveness, exclusiveness, and art that is "pure" and beyond politics. "Down Desperate Roads" is an example of just this kind of activity she exhorts for others. Here she describes her collaborative work with writer Judith McDaniel, author of Sanctuary, A Journey. Of her learning through that collaboration, Randall says, "we must risk in order to make the connections. We must no longer be afraid to reclaim and honor memory -- in its most terrifying as well as its most gratifying forms. Let every battlefield become a sanctuary, where the rewards of political and personal truths may flourish." In another on the 16 essays contained in the work, "Some thing About My Pictures," she describes her photography and writing as a "marriage" that no longer offers her a choice to pursue just one or the other and (as in a previous work, Sandino*s Daughters, where she combined photography and oral history about the women involved in the Nicaraguan revolution) in the current volume she includes nine photo graphs to punctuate the essays. The "Coming Home" essay may be one that is better known because of the national attention focused on Randall's struggle to retain her U.S. citizenship. Her account of the legal fight for her rights reveals her courage and pcrsistancc and that of many others who abhor the McCarrcn-Wallers Act as it is interpreted to exclude aliens because of their ideologies. This essay focuses on the ongoing fight against censorship and for the constitutional right of freedom of expression in this country, and is one of her best both in terms of the writing and in the impact of the message. Her "Notes on the Female Voice" essay speaks of a valid literary voice that is not only "women's writing," but one that is "qualitatively" and "quantitatively" different. That voice jncludes the breaking of the silence of women's lives to include "the stories told outside literature, for years," the multi-genred, multicultural voices of African-American, Asian-American, Latina, Native America, lesbian, elderly, disabled, ones that speak in the first-person, unafraid of their anger and aware of their strength. She reminds us that we need to reclaim the ordinary voice, "a new creative vision: one that insists on a world with everyone in it." In this essay, rich with tribute to a variety of women writers, she quotes poets, science fiction writers, and even the Boston Women's Health Collective's Ourselves, Growing Older. - i,S Personal or political, Randall never cloaks her views; they are decidedly socialist feminist; but above all, they are about taking risks. Among the innumerable ones are the admission of the failures of socialism and the declaration of her lesbian identity. The assertion of her own female voice is clear throughout, mosL effective when she is more than polemic. --Kate Lincoln Order from: South End Press 116 Sl Botolph SL Boston, MA 02115 Kate Lincoln is afem inist who writes and teaches in New Hampshire. work New Solutions A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy Charles Lcvenstcln, editor Lowell, Mass.: Work Environmental Program of Lowell University, 1991 $40 per year for Individuals, $60 for Institutions and foreign subscrib ers The new quarterly journal New Solutions makes an impres sive debut as a forum for discussion on environment and the workplace, offering both an international and domestic focus. It is published by the Work Environmental Program of Lowell [Massachusetts] University, in association with the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union of the AFL-CIO. Along with an editorial, regular sections include "Comments and Controversies" (in the Winter 1990 issue this included Richard Grossman's "The Song and Dance of the 1990 Clean Air `Act'"); "Scientific Solutions," (in Spring 1991 "A New Review of the Dioxin Literature," with implications for Vietnam veterans, by Richard Clapp and James Olson); "Movement Solutions," articles focused on activism and grass-roots organizing, such as the Spring 1991 issue's "Fighting Environmental Racism," an attack on the "Big Ten" environmental groups and other forms of environmental injustice to minorities by Louis Head and Michael Guerrero of the Southwest Organizing Project; "Voices," interviews with trade union members, activists, and others. Feature articles in the third and fourth issues have included "The Military Toxic Legacy" by Lenny Siegal and Gary Cohen (a preview of the Military Toxics Network's February report-- see Workbook review on page ) and an examination of risks to women in non-traditional jobs by Karen Messing, Julie Courville, and Nicole Vezina, A "Documents" section covers recent reports such as the "Health and Safety Agreement between General Motors and the United Auto Workers," and the "Resolutions on Workers' Health from the XXIII Pan American Sanitary Conference" (Spring '91), and a review of environmental protection in Hungary (Winter '91). The articles are authoritative, scholarly without being pedantic, and aimed toward a broad base of readers. It's a handsome, thick magazine (about 100 pages), without photographs or graphics, whose looks reflect its straighforward content A minor detail that made a good first impres sion is the cover's modest announcement, "partly recycled," a more honest claim than the now ubiquitous and getting-to-bemcaningless "printed on recycled paper." Indexed in Environmental Abstracts and BIOBUSINESS data base. -- KCN Order from: New Solutions P.O. Box 2812 Denver, CO 80201 Tho Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1 Southwest Research and Information Center PUBLICATIONS R eprints of feature articles from The Workbook: THE THE WORK] WORKBOOK Thefollowingfive articles deal with thefederal highlevet and military nuclear waste disposal programs: Getting Rid of the Nuclear Waste Problem: the WIPP Stalemate. Don Hancock. How the world's first reposi tory has been delayed and a program for solving the problem. 1990.11 pp., $2.00. The Wasting of America: Target/Nevada -- Target/New Mexico. Don Hancock. Problems at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, proposed site of the first high-level nuclear waste repository, and implications for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a military waste repository in New Mexico. 1988,11 pp.t $2.00. Nuclear Waste: Another Washington Scandal. Don Hancock. The Department of Energy's (DOE) policies and practices in developing WIPP explain the agency's troubles as it tries to develop a second repository. 1987, 5 pp., $1.00. How Not to Find A Nuclear Waste Site. Don Hancock. Why the DOE chose unsuitable sites as candidates for the high-level nuclear waste repository. 1986,10pp., $1.00. The Nuclear Legacy: How Safe Is It? Don Hancock. Problems with implementing the federal nuclear waste repository program. 1983,23 pp., $2.00. Uranium Mining at the Grand Canyon: W hat Costs to Water, Air, and Indigenous People? Cate Gilles, with Lena Bravo and Don Watahomigie. Uranium development near the Grand Canyon threatens indigenous people. 1991,16 pp., $2.00. In the Hands of the People: Establishing Planning Power for a Community. Paul Robinson, Julie Stephens, and Ka.hy Cone Newton. Citizens planning for their own water supplies. 1990,14 pp., $2.00. At War in the Oil Patch: Citizens Push for a National Oil and Gas Waste Policy. Chris Shuey. How a national citizens network is working for controls on oil and gas exploration and production wastes. 7990, 77 pp., $2,00. 88 ; The Workbook, Voi. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 Moly Waste in Questa, Coal Gas in Cedar Hill: Citizens React to M ineral Development. Paul Robinson & Chris Shuey. How communities in New Mexico are dealing with mining wastes. 1990,16pp., $2.00. Earth Day Every Day: Taking Personal Political Action. Lynda Taylor. People participating in legislative and political action can make Earth Day the beginning of an environ mental decade. 1990,10pp., $2.00. W hat We Must Do -- A Grass-roots Offensive Against Toxics in t h e '90s. Peter Montague. A grass-roots program to reduce toxic chemicals and to promote government policies aimed at reducing pollution; and examples from New Mexico. 7959.31 pp., $350. NIMBY: Nukewaste in My Backyard? Diane D'Arrigo. Why the nuclear industry wants to put low-level radioactive waste in local landfills. (Cited by Project Censored, "10 Best Censored Stories o f 1989") 1989,10 pp., $2.00, Revitalizing Hispanic and Native American Communi ties: Four Examples. Maria Varela, Luis Torres, Yin-May Lee, et al. Locally based, small-scale economic development in rural New Mexico and elsewhere. 7959.11 pp., $2.00. Is Environmental Decline Inevitable? Solid Wastes & the Search for Solutions. Kevin Bean, Sylvia Bagge. How to reform our "disposable society." 7958,70 pp., $1.00. Food Irradiation: Its Environmental Threat, Its Toxic Connection. Judith H. Johnsrud. Why consumers should say no to irradiated foods. (Cited by Project Censored, "10 Best Censored Stories o f 1988") 1988,12 pp., $1.00. Back issues of The Workbook: 1975-1989, SI50 pc* year; 1990, $10.00. Single copies, $2.50. Write for complete list of feature articles.  The Importance of Cross-Cultural Communication between Environmentalists and Land-Based People. Lynda Taylor, el al. How different cultural groups can leam to work together to protect natural resources. 1988,11 pp., $ 2.00. Title III: Bhopal's Baby. Lynda Taylor. Communities* new rights to make sure Bhopal can't happen here. 1987,10 pp., $ 1.00. Indian Tribal Governments Look to Take Control of Reservation Environments and Indian Tribes Enter the Nuclear Waste Debate. B. Kevin Gover. Why Indian reservations may enjoy better environmental conditions; new environmental activism by Indian tribes. 1987,10pp., $1.00. Ground W ater Contamination in New Mexico: "Seeing" What IPs AH About. Chris Shuey, Susan Rich, Kevin Bean. Extent of ground water pollution in New Mexico and new maps that show "hot spots." 1957,10pp., $1.00. / . l, Changing Forest Plans: A Way to Do It Outside the Courts. Paul Robinson. Using mediation to settle differ ences with the U.S. Forest Service in New Mexico. 1987, 5 pp., $1.00. Worker Right to Know: For the Many or for the Few? Lynda Taylor. Protecting yourself from hazardous chemicals, in the workplace. 1986,10 pp., $1.00. "We Can't Be Against Growth...": An Environmentalist Looks at Rhetoric about Economic Development in the Rural Intermountain West. Alison P. Monroe. Endorses locally based rural economic development. 1986,10 pp., $ 1.00. The Puerco River: W here Did the W ater Go? Chris Shuey. Finding new sources of water to replace an old source ` .* -- the contaminated Puerco. 1986,10 pp., $1.00. , i- : The Health Effects of Radiation: The Controversy Continues. Lynda Taylor. Weak radiation standards put workers at risk. 1985,13 pp., $1.00.' The "Costs" of Uranium. Chris Shuey, Paul Robinson, Lynda Taylor. Uranium industry wants the public to pay for cleaning up its wastes. 1985,16 pp., $2.00. The Four Corners: A National Sacrifice Area? Resource Guide. Toby McLeod, Randy Hayes, Glenn SwitIces. Ways to save what's left of the ecological wonders of the Colorado Plateau. 1985,24 pp., $2JO. The Jemez Mountains: Purposeful Destruction of a National Treasure. G. Theodore Davis. The race to save the beauty and the archaeological legacy of the Jemez Mountains in New Mexico, 1985,10 pp., $1 00. Oil and W ater Still Don't Mix: Oil and Gas Wastes Pollute the Nation's Ground W ater. Chris Shuey. Toxic wastes from oil and gas field operations are showing up in drinking water. 1984, 16pp., $2.00. Coal in New Mexico and the West. Alison Monroe. Citizen Involvement in federal coal leasing decisions. 1984,15 pp., $1.00. The Uranium Legacy. Lynda Taylor. The health effects of uranium mining and milling on workers and neighboring populations. 1983,16pp., $2.00. Other SRIC publications: The Acequia Bylaws Handbook. Luis Torres. A guide for community ditch associations in developing their bylaws and internal rules. 1986, 4 pp., $2.00, paper. Better Ways to Use W ater: A Handbook on Technolo gies to Improve Rural W ater Use in Northern New Mexico. Wm. Paul Robinson. Resources and examples of available technologies that can be used by local community ditch associations. 1985,23 pp., $2JO, paper. How Safe Is New Mexico's Atomic City? Radiation Control at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. Phil Niklaus and Dede Feldman. History of radiation control and contamination at Los Alamos. Originally published in Hat Albuquerque Journal; updated and revised by the authors. 1980,64 pp., $3JO, paper. The Interstate Solid Waste Dilemma. Wm. Paul Robinson. Current issues in transferring solid waste from one place to another. 1989, 7 pp. & 60 pp. appendixes, $6.00, manuscript. Southwest Research and Information Center 000047 P.O. Box 4524, Albuquerque, NM 87106 890 The Workbook, Voi. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 Networking Notes National Minority Environmental Leadership Summit The first minority environmental leadership summit will be held on October 25-27, 1991, in Washington, D.C. Spon sored by the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice, the summit will provide a forum and venue for minority leaders of national, regional, and local organizations involved in challenging environmental injustice, and will create the opportunity for dialogue between racial and ethnic leaders and the heads of national environmental organiza tions, "from the perspective which is to be framed by racial and ethnic leadership." The meeting is also intended to influence public policy on the environment at all levels of government. The Summit will be committed to multiracial participation and diverse public opinion on the issue of environmental justice. Watch for further information, or contact Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., Executive Director, United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, 475 Riverside Dr., Room 1948, New York, NY 10015. Pow Wow Highway -- Hands United to Stop WIPP The New Mexico Alliance, a network of grass-roots, environ mental, and social justice groups, will hold a "Gathering in the Spirit of Community" at noon on Saturday, June 22, at the Rolling Hills Ranch along New Mexico Highway 84. The Pow Wow is being held to protest the transport of hazardous nuclear waste through New Mexico to Carlsbad, and in particular to protest the route selection of the hazard ous waste transport through traditional rural communities. along Highway 84. A campout begins June 20 at Rolling Hill Ranch; RV and tent sites, boating and fishing are available. A ceremony for the Inti Raymi, or Summer solstice, will be held on Friday June 21. To make contributions and reservations, contact New Mexico Alliance/Tides, P.O. Box 26105, Albuquerque, NM 87125; telephone (505) 268-5376. 90 The Workbook, Voi. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 AIDS Forum to Feature Lesbian and Gay Health Conference. The National Lesbian and Gay Health Foundation along with George Washington University Medical Center will sponsor the 13th National Lesbian and Gay Health Conference July 24-28 in New Orleans. Entitled "Foundations of Care," the program will carry a special emphasis on HIV. Speakers at the conference will be professional and grass-roots partici pants from government and non-governmental agencies as well as private practices and service institutions. Seminars on the first day of the conference will address AIDS and people of color, lesbian health, youth, and other topics; July 25 through 27 will feature workshops on volunteer management, HIV, lesbian and gay health, mental health, and substance abuse. Plenary sessions will present topics of major interest to the lesbian and gay community. A booklet detailing the conference format and registration information and materials is available from NLGHF Registration, Office of CME/ GWUMC, 2300 K S i , N.W.Washington, DC 20037. Callfo r Articles: Feminist Teacher seeks contributions dealing with "Feminist Education and War." Possible topics include the sexual, racial, and cultural implications of the Gulf War; war and feminist ethics; women in war; descriptions of pedagogical efforts to address the war in the classroom; personal teaching experiences from different stages of the war. For further information, contact Feminist Teacher, 442 Ballantine Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. Feminist Teacher is a nonprofit, "multidisciplinary magazine commit ted to publishing articles that challenge traditional teaching practices" and believes that "politics and teaching do mix." Published three times a year. $12, individuals; S20 institu tions (add $5 for outside U.S). New Directory The new Human Rights Organizations and Periodicals Directory (6th ed., 1990), published by Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, contains more than 700 groups and publications addressing peace issues from racial discrimina tion to protesting to environmental rights. It contains organization addresses and phone numbers as well as subject, federal agency, and geographical indexes. It comes in a standard loose-leaf binder that makes it easy to copy pages or add personal notes. Updates will be published continually; subscribers can place a continuous order or reorder the updates every two years. Cost is $23 plus S5 shipping and handling, prepaid. Send to Legal Publications, Box 673, Berkeley, CA 94701. # Dialogue Dear Editor, It saddens us to write this letter because we share The Workbook's stated aim of "helping people to gain access to vital information that helps them assert control over their own lives" and its commitment to economic justice and a safe and sustainable environment It seems to us that the reviewer (unfortunately anonymous) of Abuse o f Power-- Social Performance o f Multinational Corporations: The Case o f Union Carbide (Summer 1990, pp. 63-64) hs neither been fair to us nor served these Workbook goals. Some of the reviewer's criticisms are matters of opinion, and reasonable persons may differ. But of the half dozen reviews that have appeared so far, only The Workbook has character ized the book as "crowded with badly constructed, often unreadable sentences and illogical cliches... and a steady stream of inflated diction and wordy phrases," not to mention "overstatement, emotionalism, and moral pronouncements." As proof of the charge of using "illogical cliches," the reviewer offers the following: "Bhopal was not an accident It was a disaster waiting to happen." We cannot recount here all of the facts that substantiate this assertion (in a 15-page chapter in our book, backed up by a 200-page book by one of us specifically on the Bhopal disaster), so a few examples will have to suffice: 1) Carbide's U.S. management overruled a senior official of its Indian subsidiary when he pleaded for storage of the deadly gas that escaped from the Carbide plant in Bhopal (methyl isocyanate) only in small tanks to minimize the possibility of a runaway reaction. 2) Three major safety systems did not begin to have enough capacity to handle the runaway reaction that occurred because of storage of MIC in a large tank. 3) At least two of these safety systems, and perhaps more, were inoperative at the time of the disaster and had been for many weeks prior to it. 4) Carbide's operations manuals state that MIC storage tanks should not be filled over 50 percent to allow room for expansion in case of a gas-producing reaction. The MIC tank in Bhopal was filled to over 70 percent capacity. 5) The Bhopal plant was losing money, and in an effort to stem losses management had cut the work crew for the MIC unit in half and the maintenance crew by two-thirds between 1980 and 1984. 6) The Bhopal plant had long been plagued with serious accidents, involving severe injuries and at least one death (documented in our book). These accidents were reported to the U.S. management and to a safety audit in 1982 by a team sent from the U.S. Unfortunately, the recommendations of the team were never adequately followed up and were unimplemcnted at the time of the disaster. We leave it to your readers to decide whether, given these (and many more) facts, the characterization of the situation in Bhopal as "not an accident but a disaster waiting to happen" was reasonable or an "illogical cliche." (continued) Express your opinion effectively! Free advicefrom The Progressive: The editors of The Progressive want to help you get your opinions in print in local, regional, and national newspa pers. Not only are they willing to send you a list of more than 200 newspapers around the country, they will respond to your op-ed as editors-at-Iarge. They'll send you a revised draft of your op-ed within the day{\) at no cost. ThcyTl even send out your op-ed by FAX. But first, The Progressive's 11 rules for clear and persua sive writing, worth reprinting here: 1. Choose a current topic, or a current "peg" to hang your opinion on. 2. Write 600-750 words. 3. Express your point of view clearly and boldly in the first paragraph. 4. Boil your argument down to three -- or at most, four-- major points. Enumerate the points as you go along. 5. Use simple, short sentences. Avoid fancy words. Lop off dangling clauses. 6. Eliminate passives. Example: "The bill was written by Senator Blowhard" should be changed to "Senator Slowhard wrote this bill." 7. Write in short paragraphs. No more than three sen tences apiece. [!] 8. Shun leftist jargon. 9. Close on a strong note. A short, powerful last para graph should drive your point home. 10. Identify yourself in one or two sentences of biographi cal information at the end. 11. Proofread. Typos and ungrammatical sentences turn editors off! Write the editors at Th Progressive, 409 East Main St., Madison, W I53703 The Workbook, VoL 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 eeoo48 Let us take another example -- not specifically cited by the reviewer but presumably the kind of situation he or she had in mind when we were accused of "overstatement, emotional ism, and moral pronouncements." On page 97 we make the statement that "Union Carbide engaged in another deceitful maneuver by claiming that the gas leak from its pesticide plant was caused by 'sabotage' by a disgruntled employee." On pages 109-110, we examine this issue further, including reactions from six industrial safety experts, all of whom cast doubts on the veracity of Carbide's theory, which one of them characterized as "absurd" and as a "sorry tale." Fur thermore, one of us heard one of the senior lawyers defending Carbide in the Bhopal-related litigation admit, in a talk at the Yale Law School, that the sabotage theory was without legal merit as a defense in this litigation and was devised primarily for public relations purposes. We ask your readers again to judge whether our characterization of this event was exagger ated or fair. The melancholy reality is that Carbide did engage (and continues to do so) in "outrageous misconduct" (to borrow a phrase from Paul Brodeur's study of asbestos litigation in the United States). Your reviewer asserts that "words or whole lines are fre quently missing or repeated." As far as we have been able to tell, one line was repeated in the entire book. We do not think this justifies the use of the adverb "frequently" in a book of 160 pages. We are also accused of employing "empty statistics and vague references," the one specific example cited referring to the death toll in the Bhopal disaster. The question is briefly raised on page five and more fully discussed on page 86 in the chapter on the Bhopal disaster, where we cite two other sources on the whole issue of body count, as well as a passage in our own earlier book on the Bhopal tragedy, where there is a fuller discussion of a quite complex subject. The reality is indeed that "we shall never know the precise number" who died. But we do cite sources for different estimates, including a senior U.N. official who has placed the death toll dose to 10,000, the figure we think is most plausible___ , We challenge your reviewer to corroborate Carbide's charge (in a statement on our book released at its annual meeting last April) that the authors "had to manipulate, distort, or err with misinformation on almost every page." Carbide's critique was itself full of misinformation and distortion in virtually every paragraph, as our rebuttal of that statement indicated. Finally, your reviewer asks readers to "take on faith the facts about Union Carbide as presented" in our book. We wonder why he or she uses the gratuitous qualification "on faith" while conceding that they are indeed facts. These facts come from a wide range of sources as reflected in the 329 citations in the book -- congressional hearings, court records, pro ceedings before government regulatory agencies, major general interest and industry media . . . Union Carbide's own 92 'The Workbook, Vol. 16, No.2, Summer 1991 documents and reports (both internal and external), even a doctoral dissertation at Yale University (on the worst industrial disaster in the U.S., for which Carbide was also responsible). Indeed, we went to considerable pains to research the subject of this book and to document it fully___ David Dembo Ward Morehouse Lucinda Wykle The Workbook currently identifies the editor's reviews by initials; in the past all unsigned reviews were by the editor. The Workbook welcomes lettersfor the "Dialogue" page, which may be editedfor length and grammatical style. --KCN The Editors The Workbook Dear People, Thanks for reviewing my book Building a Peace System (Winter 1990, pp. 163-164). I'm glad the reviewer found it "well-organized and clearly written," "useful," and "a resource-lover's paradise." But my jaw drops at the criticism that the book's "fundamental assumption is that nuclear weapons are the most important threat to peace." The book rebuts precisely that assumption. Beginning on page one, I argue that the destructiveness of "non-nuclear conventional wars" and "chemical and biological warfare" make "war" no longer acceptable (not just nuclear weapons). The later half of the introductory essay addresses "war" and "ecological and economic security," with no mention of nuclear weapons, Later I quote authors who state that "the nuclear postures of the superpowers hardly matter" and that "the essential problem i s . . . conventional militarism" (pp. 23-24). Part One ends with a chapter entitled "Redefining the Issues," in which I question labeling our era "the nuclear age," suggesting that "perhaps the distinctive characteristic of our era is not its nuclear bombs" (p. 25), and again cite facts that "challenge the common assumption that nuclear weapons are the core of humanity's predicament" (p. 28). This repeated de-emphasis of nuclear weapons contrasts with the systems approach -- concerned, for example, with the violence exerted by economic structures (pp. 27-29) -- that informs the rest of the book. I hope your readers will examine Building a Peace System for themselves to judge whether it is "distressingly narrow (your reviewer [Alan Lonstein]) or if instead it "may be the mos* comprehensive manual to date on the interwoven issues peace, ecology, and social justice" (The Nonviolent Acttvts Robert Air* i advertisements n ?A c o ^ M t y jo b s Tbr Cntploymtot Ncmapr for the Noa-iiofit Sector. 50 Beacon Street Boston/ MA 02108 (617) 720-5627 * Fax (617) 720-1318 $25.00/lndMdual for 1 year (12 issues) - $20.00/lndividual for 6 months (6 Issues) iVe enclosed an extra $20 per year for if . ; overseas delivery IVe enclosed an extra $10 per year for first class delivery f $5.00 sample copy v:" at ! BebM m AnHbte NAME:. ADDRESS:. CTY:. STATE:. ZIP:. ACID RAIN, PESTICIDES, TOXIC WASTES, OIL SPILLS, GLOBAL WARMING... DON'T GET MAD, GET E. THE ENVIRONMENTAL MAGAZINE A new magazine marks the dawn of the 1990s - the Decade of the Environment! 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Decorniwithihit od, $25/8 um (fagUarty S27) YES, Sign m e up for E M agazine. 1 year/$20 2 years/$36 3 years/$50 N am e____________________________________ A d d re s s ___________________________________ C ity ______________________________________ S tate________ Z ip ____________ 4NLTRX Payment enclosed Please bill me Mail to: E Subscriptions, P.O. Box6667, Syracuse, NY 13217 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------. MAKE PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT YOUR JOB The Job Seeker specializes in environmental and natural resource vacancies nationwide. Two issues per month list employment opportunities from private, local, state, and federal employers. A three month trial subscription is only $15.00. Subscribe today! Send check or money order to: The Job Seeker Dept C, Rt2 Box 16, Warrens, W1 54666 V__________________________________________ J 000049 The Workbook, Voi. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991' 9 3 Index The final cumulative index for Volume 15 of The Workbook was published in the Winter 1990 issue. This issue contains the cumulative index for Volume 16. Vol. 16, No. 1 Spring Vol. 16, No. 2 Summer pp.1-49 pp. 50-97 advertising, (18-19) / agriculture, (37-39), 61,63-64 AIDS, 85-86 air pollution, (2-17), 58, 69-71 America's Third Deficit: Too Little Investment in People and Infrastructure, (21-23) Being a Player: A Guide to the IRS Lobbying Regulations for Advocacy Charities, (33-34) bicycling, 84 ... Breaking Doym the Degradable Plastics Scam, 65-66 Briefing Book on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty,. (32) Building a Brighter Future: State Experience in Least- Cost Electrical Planning, 72-73 cancer, 59 Center for Science in the Public Interest, (18-19) Center Notes, (49), 96-97 Central America, (37-41), 78 Chemical Sensitivity, 83-84 children, (46), 60 citizen participation, (27-28,34-36, 39-41,47), 50-62, 76* 77, 87 civil disobedience, (39-41 ) consumer activism, (36-37) Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings, 1991, (25-26) * consumer affairs, (18-19, 25-26, 28-30), 65-67 corporations, (19-20), 66-67 Cry of the Beluga, The, (44) Dialogue, 90-91 Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality, 78-80 94 Th& Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 Earthly Necessities: A New Environmentalism for the 1990s, 50-62 Eastern Europe, 81-83 economy, (19-23) education, (23-24), 68-69 electric power, 72-73 energy, (25-28), 69-73 energy conservation, (25-26), 69-73 environment, (2-17,19-20, 36-37,44). 50-62, 65-67, 78 83 Feeding the Crisis: U.S. Food Aid and Farm Policy in Central America, (37-39) foreign policy, U.S., (37-39), 73-75 forests, 60-61 fundraising, (46) Global Dumping Ground: The International Traffic in Hazardous Waste, (42-43) Global Warming and Energy Choices, 70-72 government, federal, (33-36), 69-70, 80-81 government, state and local, 63-64, 68-69,72-73 Grand Canyon, (2-17) Green Business: Hope of Hoax? 66-67 Green Revolutions: Environmental Reconstruction in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, 81-03 Greenpeace, (30-32,43-44,46-47), 65-66 Greenpeace Action Garbage Prevention Plan, (43-44) Harvest, The: State Strategies for Sustainable Agricul ture, 63-64 health, 58-60, 83-84 How to, (33-36) information, (36) Investing in Solar Energy: Recomendations for the U.S. Department of Energy's Research and Development Budget for Renewable Energy Technology, 1992-1994, 2d edition, 69-70 Marketing Booze to Blacks, (18-19) media, (18-19), 75-76 Media and Our Right to Know, The, 75-76 Middle East, 73-76 military, (30-32), 75-77 minorities, (18-19, 41) Mobilizing Democracy: Changing the U.S. Role in the Middle East, 73-74 Native Americans, (2-17) natural resources, (2-17) Naval Safety 1989: The Year of the Accident, (30-32). Negawatts: A Gold Mine of Opportunity, (26)Networking Notes, (46-47), 92 New Solutions, 87 New York City Cyc//sf, The, 84 ^ Nicaragua: A Country Guide, 78 nonprofit organizations, (33-34) Not Only English: Affirming America's Multilingual Heritage, 68-69 nuclear power, (27-28) nuclear waste, (49), 80-81 nutrition, (28-30) Our Sustainable Table, (28-30) Persian Gulf War Series, 75 plastics, 65-66 pollution, (42-44), 78-83 poverty, (21-23) Public Citizen, 69-70 Public School Choice: An Equal Chance for All? {23-24) recycling, (43-44) Relentless Persistence: Nonviolent Action in Latin America, (39-41) Resource Center, The, (37-39), 78 risk assessment, 55, 62 Rocky Mountain Institute, (26) science and technology, 83-84 Seabrook Station: Citizen Politics and Nuclear Power, (27-28) Site Unseen: The Politics of Siting A Nuclear Waste Repository, 80-81 Sites for Our Solid Waste: A Guidebook for Effective Public Involvement, (34-36) solar power, 69-70 SRIC publications, 88-89 "Sustainable Manufacturing: Saving Jobs, Saving the Environment," (19-20) television, (18-19 ) toxic chemicals, (42-44), 76-80, 83-84 transportation, 84-85 uranium, (2-17, 49) Uranium Mining at the Grand Canyon: What Costs to Water, Air, and Indigenous People?, (2-17) Urban affairs, 84 U.S. Military's Toxic Legacy, The: A Special Report on America's Worst Environmental Enemy, 76-77 Walking to the Edge: Essays of Resistance, 86-87 waste management, (34-36,43-44) water pollution, (2-17) We Speak for Ourselves: Social Justice, Race and Environment, (41) Whole Earth Ecolog: The Best of Environmental Tools & Ideas, (36-37) women, (47), 75, 85-87 Women, AIDS, and Activism, 85-86 Women and the Gulf War, 75 "Womenand Children": Propaganda Tools of Patriarchy, 75 work, 87 Working Parents: Get the Money You've Earned! 67 Worldwatch Institute, 81-83 Rlnl Templeton The Workbook, Voi. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 Center Notes This special issue of The Workbook marks the 20th anniver sary of "The Workbook folks" -- Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC). The special focus includes the feature article by Peter Montague, a founder of SRIC, this expanded Center Notes, and the publications list of materials available (see pages 88-89). The anniversary is in recogni tion of what has been done during the past two decades but, more importantly, it is to note what is happening today and to look toward a vision of the future. As the feature article em phasizes, the movement for environmental justice is growing and forging alliances with other people. SRIC intends to con tribute to that movement for environmental and social justice. At the core of all its activities, SRIC will continue to offer information and technical assistance to citizen groups and individuals, diverse participants in that movement. Thus, we want to use the anniversary to provide more information about the organization and its activities so that our readers can effectively make use of our services. SRIC AND THE WORKBOOK SRIC was founded in 1971 to provide technical assistance and analysis to the public on various environmental and natural resource issues. SRIC is based in New Mexico, a unique state with a history that predates colonization by Europeans and with a diverse culture strongly shaped by Hispanics and Native Americans (Anglos are not the majority population). While much of SRIC's original focus was on problems in New Mexico -- proposed coal gasification plants and inadequate sewage treatment facilities -- the organiza tion's vision always included communicating and sharing information with people in other places working on similar problems. Accurate information is power. The Workbook was initiated in November 1974 as a regular publication to make that information more accessible to people throughout the country. For thousands of readers in all 50 states, the magazine is the public presence and image of SRIC. While many readers of The Workbook do not have direct contact with other aspects of SRIC's work, thousands of people throughout New Mexico and the Southwest have received the technical assistance that SRIC provides to community groups or are familiar with SRIC's involvement in local, state, and national public policy development. For them, SRIC is not known as a publisher, but as an active participant in major issues regarding water, forests, wastes, energy, and toxics. Indeed, some people are surprised that SRIC publishes The Workbook and wonder what it has to do with other SRIC activities. The board and staff see the magazine as an integral part of the organization's activities and mission. The Workbook serves as an important resource for local people. The magazine provides a platform for the issues and communities that we're actively involved with. It brings much useful information 96 The Workbook, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1991 about what's going on in other parts of the country into the organization. And, of course, the "credo" on the inside front cover describes some of the principles that guide both the magazine and the organization. Regular readers of the magazine, perhaps unknowingly, are familiar with many of the issues that SRIC is actively involved with because virtually all of the feature articles during the past eight years have been written by staff mem bers or people from citizen groups that work with the organization. Many of the features, available as reprints, are useful as a source of information and analysis of an issue for people who do not subscribe to the magazine. They also serve as an introduction to The Workbook. SRIC has "grown up" in, and is part of, the Southwest, and most members of the staff and board of directors live in New Mexico or Arizona. What happens in the Southwest is important nationally -- the region provides much of the nation's oil, natural gas, uranium, and coal, as well as important metals and electricity. And because the federal government and corporations control so much of the land and resource decisions, what happens in other parts of the country greatly affect the area. But we also recognize the interrelatedness of issues, and are frequently providing information to, and sometimes "on the scene" in, other parts of the country. In all its activities, SRIC seeks to promote citizen participation so that local people speak for themselves and become effectively involved in the decisions that too often are made by government or corporate officials with little regard for those most affected. SRIC also provides technical analysis for citizens, policy makers, and regulators on the impacts of various projects as well as alternative technologies or strategies. Recognizing the importance of a continuing source of information and assistance, SRIC maintains a long-term commitment to specific issues and supports a professional staff with a long history of work on those issues. Several of the current staff have been with the organization for 10 years or more and provide "institutional memory" of issues and activities, while newer staff bring new expertise and ideas into the organization. SRIC does not plan to dramatically increase the size of the staff, but instead encourages the efforts of local organizations to develop and grow. Nonethe less, as local organizations develop and the movement for environmental justice expands, the demands for SRIC's technical assistance and information are also increased. WHAT ISSUES DOES SRIC FOCUS ON? In addition to The Workbook, in recent years SRIC has maintained five other major programs -- Community Water Quality; Nuclear Waste Safety; Resource Management jCy; K adia non, to x ic s, and Health; and Citizen Action, itaff members specialize in particular issues and work [M ?ollegially on major projects. The Community W ater Quality Program assists local people to reverse water pollution threats and to promote policies that provide safe, dependable water supplies. The Technical Assistance and Health Information Project pro vides site-specific information on water pollution problems and their impact upon health to dozens of communities, primarily to low-income people throughout New Mexico and parts of Arizona and Colorado. The Puerco River Education Project helps Navajo communities along the river in New Mexico and Arizona to develop new water supplies to replace those polluted by past uranium discharges. The National Citizen's Network on Oil and Gas Wastes, a joint effort with the Alaska Center for the Environment to coordinate a nation wide network of citizen groups from more than 30 states, is promoting the first-ever regulation of oil and gas production wastes. The Nuclear Waste Safety Project promotes scientifically sound, publicly acceptable policies in three areas -- the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), high-level waste manage ment, and Department of Energy (DOE) facilities. WIPP in southeastern New Mexico is proposed as the world's first underground disposal site for nuclear wastes from nuclear weapons production, despite the fact that there are major problems with the site including brine, rock fracturing, and known mineral resource deposits. DOE's plans for high-level waste disposal call for the opening of the Yucca Mountain, Nevada, site in 2010, even though volcanoes and faults are known threats to repository integrity. SRIC works with the Military Production Network, composed of citizen groups and national organizations concerned about DOE nuclear weapons facilities, to support independent regu lation and citizen involve-, mcnL mines require site-specific action as well as implementation of national and state standards to minimize negative effects. SRIC supports solid waste reduction and recycling. Forest planning efforts emphasize community-based involvement and local forest products development programs. The Radiation, Toxics, and Health Project emphasizes uranium compensation, right-to-know, and Below Regulatory Concern (BRC) issues. Now that Congress has passed a law to provide compensation to uranium miners and their families for some of the diseases caused by working in the mines in the 1950s, SRIC assists the miners and their families to obtain those funds. Toxic chemical right-to-know is man dated by federal law, but enforcement and use of the data must be done locally. BRC has been temporarily suspended, but new government proposals arc being developed to allow some radioactive wastes to be deregulated and disposed in local landfills or sewers. The Citizen Action Project provides training in crosscultural relations and in regulatory and legislative involve ment. SRIC's FINANCIAL SUPPORT Financial support comes primarily from foundation grams and from hundreds of individual donors (and subscribers to The Workbook). As a charitable organization, the Internal Revenue Service allows tax deductible contributions to SRIC. Contributions can be designated for Workbook sponsorship, for particular projects, for general support, for the Building Fund, for the 20th Anniversary Fund, or for the Designated Fund io provide for long-term needs. The Resource Manage ment Policy Program focuses primarily on mineral extraction, solid waste, and forest planning. The environmental effects of uranium, molybdenum, coal, and other hard-rock 2 0 YEARS That's some of what we're cur rently involved in. While we will keep working on those issues, SRIC stands ready to take on others in response to community needs and requests. -- Don Hancock Southwest Research and Information Center 1971-1991 a continuing tradition of effective citizen action The Workbook, Vo!. 16, No. 2. Summer 1991 97 000050 Help Us Celebrate SRIC's 20th Anniversary! Each issue of The Workbook includes a feature article on a citizen action topic, a variety of small press book reviews, news of social action groups, and a convenient, cumulative index. Subscribe to TH E W O R K B O O K ! Please / renew my subscription / enter my new Subscription / To The Workbook. Individual (1 yrj$12.00, 2 yrsJ$22.00) Name. Institution (1 yrJ$25.00, 2 yrs./$45.00) Student/Retlred (1 yrJ$8.50, 2 yrsJ$15.00) Address One Year Two Years City l want to be a Sponsor of The Workbook and enclose an extra _____ $25 _____ $ 5 0 ______ $100 _____ Other ($. State .) ZIP Please check here if you do not want your name listed as a Sponsor of The Workbook. Please make checks payable to Southwest Research and Information Center and mall to P.O. Box 4524, Albuquerque, NM 87106. THE WORKBOOK Southwest Research and Information Center P.O. Box4524 Albuquerque, New Mexico 87106 ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED nonprofit organization U.S. Postage PAID Albuq., N.M. Permit No. 553