Sunday, October 12, 2008
Philip and Alice Shabecoff
From the RoundTable blog
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Philip and Alice Shabecoff
The Shabecoffs are authors of "Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children," published by Random House in August.
The next president will face a Herculean task cleaning up the multifaceted mess he will inherit -- not unlike, in fact, the scouring of the Augean stables. Among other things, he will have to extricate us from the Iraq war, repair our overburdened military, lift us from our fallen international standing, begin to free us from our addiction to fossil fuels, deal with the housing crisis and shore up our shambling economy, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, solve the immigration dilemma, create a rational health care system, stem the rise of food prices, and guard the nation from terrorism without eroding our civil liberties.
These are all enormously serious problems and their solutions are crucial to the well-being and security of the country. Whoever moves into the White House will have to address them quickly and effectively
From a longer perspective, however, these are all transient problems. They are not irreversible and, with intelligent and competent leadership in Washington (please, Lord), they could be resolved in a relatively few years.
There is one over-arching, indeed transcendent, problem, however, that will not be reversible unless it is solved soon, a looming threat that will require the urgent attention of the president and the rest of our national leadership. And that is the accelerating degradation of the natural world by human activity.
In our time, we are rapidly fouling our only home. As the directors of the United Nations Millennium Assessment summed up the findings of 1,300 scientists who examined the state of the planet's health: "Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted."
Although it has taken decades, the danger of global warming finally seems to have been recognized by much of the American public -- although not by the Bush administration, which has repeatedly tried to quash scientific evidence pointing to the emerging crisis. Leaders of the industrial countries recently agreed to a goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 20 percent by 2020, a risibly inadequate response to a process that could drastically alter the conditions of life.
But global warming is only one of a series of human assaults on our planet that could make it an inhospitable place for us for many generations to come. One is the rapid extermination of plant and animal species, a development that might well compromise the future course of evolution. Others include the dwindling per capita supplies of fresh water and the rapid loss of arable land. The acidification of the landscape by the combustion of fossil fuels has slowed but not stopped and continues to take a toll on forests, buildings and human health.
Perhaps the most insidious -- and frightening -- threat to the future of life is the toxification of the environment by industrial and commercial activity. Since World War II there has been an astonishing explosion in the number, quantity and variety of synthetic chemicals produced in or imported into this country. Mercury emissions from power plants and other sources and nuclear wastes and leaks add to the growing toxic load we all bear.
There are now well over 80,000 chemicals in commerce in the United States, formulated into more than 10 million products. Just since 1980, chemical production in this country has risen by 750 percent. Many of these are poisons, but we don't know how many because only a fraction of them have been tested for their toxicity and effect on human health, and most of the testing that has been done was performed by the producers.
A growing body of evidence, however, indicates that these poisons, which are in the air, the water, the soil, in homes and schools, on foods and in hundreds of household products, are taking an increasing toll on human health. Children, whose bodies contain the weakest defenses against these poisons, are most vulnerable. In fact, the explosion of chemicals in the environment has been paralleled by a spreading epidemic of chronic childhood illness. Childhood cancer, once a medical rarity, has risen by 67 percent since the 1970s. Childhood asthma has more than doubled just since the 1980s. There is no accurate national data on birth defects such as cleft palates, but available information suggests a substantial increase in recent decades. And neurological illness resulting in learning and behavioral problems appears to be exploding. By the most recent estimate, one of every 166 children in America suffers from autism, and afflictions such as attention deficit and hyperactivity syndrome are rampant.
The Bush administration has generally abdicated its responsibility to protect children -- and the rest of us -- from toxic chemicals and, in fact, has turned its back on all environmental threats. It has virtually stopped enforcing environmental rules, has starved science research budgets, repressed government reports showing harm, packed science advisory panels with representatives of polluting industries and also appointed those representatives to key posts in federal agencies. Industry, which has claimed it can regulate itself voluntarily, has demonstrated little will or ability to do so.
Urgently needed now is a president who will lead the world in an immediate and concerted effort to rescue the planet from a downward-spiraling environment. If this sounds alarmist, it should. We need to be alarmed, to suspend disbelief about what we are doing to the planet and what the consequences will be. We hope that this will be a central issue in the presidential campaign.
