Fighting for Survival

...provides for a Council on Environmental Quality...

...in the last five years, over 50 cities and towns have had to be evacuated as a result of accidents involving hazardous materials...

...Similarly in Congress, members of the Senate and House of Representives, recognizing the need to expand their own understanding and coordinate their endeavors more closely, are proposing the creation of a nonlegis-lative joint committee on environmental quality...

...the people are ready-but what will the leaders do...

...It is here that scientists have a special responsibility to society...

...And second, the threshold of public patience with our failure to come to grips effectively with the problem is lower than ever before, and the level of public demand that we do what needs to be done is rising rapidly...

...is Chairman of the Senate Public Works Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution...

...Indeed, this is the single issue that cuts across economic, social and racial lines, and binds the suburbs to the cities in a common life-related problem...

...The young people understand this...

...That is why the topic is now a major campus concern, second in importance only to the Vietnam war...

...The Army Corps of Engineers shares some responsibility for pollution control of the same navigable waters it dredges and into which it authorizes the dumping of refuse...

...We have relied on science for generations to teach us more about our world and the universe, and to increase our capacity to use our planet's resources...

...At the recent 13th National Conference of the U.S...

...Until very recently the question of human destiny was related to the threat of nuclear war...

...How we cope with them will inevitably affect the organization of Federal, state and local government, as well as our systems of taxation, public works projects, support of research and development, and defense policies...

...Such preservation is still needed, but it is no longer the central issue...

...In addition, the Water Quality Improvement Act of 1969, now in House-Senate conference, seeks to complement the new measure in two important respects: It would expand the requirements for Federal compliance with water quality standards to include activities and projects supported or authorized by Washington...

...Then, too, the traditional concerns of conservation have been too closely identified with the preservation of resources separated from population centers...

...for environmental protection is not the same as conservation, although the one certainly enhances the other...

...An independent agency, charged with responsibility for developing and implementing Federal environmental quality standards, supporting basic research, stimulating investigation of control techniques, and providing technical assistance to state, interstate and local operations, would reflect the national commitment necessary to avoid ecological disaster...

...But the condition is becoming increasingly intolerable in the face of the adverse effects it has on our efforts at improvement...

...we want to live...

...Efforts on the Federal level are already under way to lay a foundation for this second-stage effort...

...This requires money and manpower, and hard decisions on where-and where not-to allocate resources...

...And there are scientists whose commitment to their own projects has been so complete they have ignored the consequences of their work...

...I am not talking about a new department of natural resources or of conservation...

...When an issue of this kind arises it attracts would-be leaders and voters looking for scapegoats, and scapegoats will not be hard to find...

...The new group is intended to develop a body of knowledge which would guide the legislative committees in their activities, and give more visibility to ecological matters on a day-to-day basis...

...From the preceding it might appear that nothing has been done to protect man from his own follies, but that world be an inaccurate and misleading appraisal...

...The object of the proposals for expanding the President's capacity to deal with Federal environmental responsibilities is in part a recognition of the past confusion that has hampered various control efforts...

...In Ponca City, Oklahoma, springs bubble refined motor oil into residential basements...

...and it would establish an office to furnish staff support to the President, the newly created Council on Environmental Quality, and the older Cabinet-level Environmental Quality Council...

...The greater part of the limited success in this area has come in the last six years, with the development of a water quality standards program, a substantial increase in our commitment to build sewage treatment plants, and attacks on such specific problems as oil, thermal and vessel pollution...

...And certain parts of the solid waste programs are lodged in the Department of Interior's Bureau of Mines, which has as its primary mission the furthering of mineral resource development and use...

...They have neither the status nor the manpower to deal with one of the most fundamental, insidious threats to our society, even with the new staff support we hope to provide the President...

...There are public officials who avoid the unpleasant encounters so necessary for change, who dismiss environmental complaints as "uninformed dem-agoguery...

...In the final analysis, the Administration, Congress, and state and local governments will move to improve the environment in direct proportion to the degree of public awareness of the problem, the determination of the people to be heard, and the amount of informed opinion brought to bear on the matter...

...The object of basic and applied research should not be to multiply man's creature comforts and to overcome the natural environment, but to free him from unnecessary hazards and to enable him to live in harmony with his surroundings...

...This is particularly true of those subtle threats to man's health and well-being that do not result in immediate death and obvious damage, but lower our resistance to diseases and accidents and interfere with our ability to live up to our full potential...

...Those who are sensitive to the implications of words have probably noted the shift from "pollution control and abatement" to "environmental quality...

...Still other threats derive from defense projects designed to protect national security...

...It is broad, and therefore subject to many uses...

...The Atomic Energy Commission supervises radiological protection from nuclear energy, use of which it encourages...

...The very next day, the national Sunday supplement magazine Parade carried the following item: "When the sulfur dioxide content of the air in New York City rises above .2 parts per million, 10 to 20 people die as a result...

...The Department of Defense does not find in the President's directive any specific prohibition to the production of toxins...

...For what determines the impact of an industrial-technological culture on the environment is not who owns the means of production but how they are managed...

...The problem is worldwide and will not give way to political code words...

...In the past five years, sulfur dioxide has reached this level at least once every ten days...

...Nevertheless, we have launched a program designed to achieve high standards of air quality in all parts of the nation by dealing with both moving and stationary pollution sources...

...and that the present deterioration may already be irreversible in some vital respects...

...The discharge of up to 4 million gallons a day would be beyond the continental shelf...

...neither is it the consequence of our particular economic system...

...Congress has assigned responsibilities for pesticide control to the Department of Agriculture, which also promotes the use of the chemicals for increased farm production...

...That menace remains, of course, but it has been joined by the specter of environmental contamination...

...Today we may well ask if science -which has contributed to much of our past and present-has prevented the future, or whether it will make possible a worthwhile future for man...

...But pollution is not the fault of a small band of men...

...And an entire new generation, disturbed by what we are doing to their world, is demanding that steps be taken now to protect and enhance the environment, to safeguard and improve man's health, to restore the balance in man's relationship to other species...

...The goal is to reduce the volume of refuse in our society and encourage the more efficient use and reuse of materials and energy...

...Bureaus, divisions, and administrations housed in separate departments cannot marshal the forces required to combat the interlocking assaults on our air, water and resources...

...There are managers of public programs, civil and military, too "mission-oriented" to admit any responsibility for protecting the surroundings...

...There are those in business and industry who reject any liability for pollution or its clean-p...

...Because pollution control cannot be isolated from other concerns, membership would be drawn from the several legislative committees whose activities affect our natural surroundings...

...Some projects developed and promoted by the Soil Conservation Service, the Bureau of Reclamation or the Corps of Engineers, though, are not at all consistent with broader societal needs: Consider what we have done to southern Florida and the Everglades with our conservation measures in the south-central part of the state...

...I am not the first to note that pollution control and abatement programs are scattered through several departments and agencies...

...that having made the world smaller through population increases and advances in transportation, we contaminate the very land we use, the air we breathe, with wastes of our own making...

...These programs all deal with the obvious, straightforward problems of pollution: the physical by-products of our activities and production, the first stage, if you will, of environmental protection...

...Merchant Marine and Fisheries and Interstate and Foreign Commerce in the House...

...It is, rather, the special product of any society that places the consumption of goods and services high on its scale of values, and which has the means to provide them in abundance...

...Jensen and all others of like mind in both his generation and mine to our continuing struggle...

...Most important, the plan is organized to stimulate the gathering of scientific data, to build upon it and apply it to public health...

...Establishment of such an agency must in turn be backed up by a commitment to employ all available assets to eliminate the discharge of municipal and industrial wastes into our public waterways, to reduce drastically air pollution emissions, to prevent the distribution of materials and products which threaten man and other species, and to insure the reconstruction and development of our metropolitan areas...

...In the Executive branch, a more formal reorganization is required to insure proper status for environmental protection...

...These include Public Works, Agriculture, Interior, Government Operations, Banking and Currency, and Labor in both Houses...

...National Commission for unesco, Pennfield Jensen, a graduate student at San Francisco State College, made the following apt remarks: "We don't want to merely survive...

...Above all, it means making environmental protection and improvement much more than a conventional political issue...

...We have gone past the point where the question of conservation is limited to those who want to protect a stream or forest or stretch of shore...

...We have so misused the fruits of scientific endeavor, we now imperil our own existence...

...It is imperative, then, for us to adapt our scale of values, our approach to the uses of technology, to the long-term survival of the species...

...Touching as it does the lives of the young and the old, the rich and the poor, it is deeply and strongly political...

...Again the Washington Post of December 20: "The President's statement [on germ warfare] has not ruled out the production of toxins...

...This is an outgrowth of my own recommendation for a select committee on technology and the human environment...

...As we look to the future, the so-called policy-makers are confronted by two realities...

...Like so many other control programs, it proposes to dump the load on someone else, downstream...

...We must, therefore, create an independent, watchdog agency to exercise the regulatory functions associated with environmental protection...

...It is real, and therefore susceptible to emotional appeals...

...Although many of them may be inclined to believe that someone else's behavior is at fault, and that the problems can be licked if someone else makes the appropriate sacrifices, most, I am sure, can be persuaded to accept restraints upon their own activities and share the necessary costs...

...Texas alone has 30,000 such wells...

...Our primary interest must be man where he lives, and the interrelationship between natural and manmade environments...

...It would, moreover, provide a forum and clearinghouse for those who question, those who want change, and those who have ideas for the betterment of man's place in the universe...

...Work on air contamination came later, because its threats were not as evident and we did not make the ready connection between it and public health...

...This scheme, to be sure, would reduce pollution in the Delaware basin-but at the expense of the ocean...

...Increasingly, too, these matters will influence our relations with other countries, not just in this hemisphere, but in Europe, Africa and Asia...

...Finally, we are in the process of converting the solid waste control program from a mere exercise in disposal...

...Since the latter part of the 1940s, we have been chipping away at the indisputable municipal and industrial sources of water pollution...

...Commerce in the Senate...

...A third source of contamination is the result of efforts to dispose of waste from the conversion of materials and energy...

...The next stage will involve the more subtle and pervasive questions of land and resource use, hazardous substances, population distribution and industrial location, noise and esthetic pollution, ecological balances and urban design...

...that the continuation of his current behavior patterns means a daily reduction in the prospects for healthy life on this planet...

...The Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, for instance, is housed in the Department of Interior, while the Air Pollution Control and Environmental Control administrations are part of the Consumer Protection and Environmental Health Service program in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare...

...Outside Denver, for example, a farmer's well emits the weed killer 2,4-d, while his neighbor's well flows gasoline...

...It is one we must win if science is to be worth advancing and man is to have a future...

...and requires the President to submit to Congress and the people an annual pollution report...

...Proliferation of activities and overlapping of responsibilities are not, of course, unique to environmental protection programs in the Federal government...

...We have also given authority to the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Farmers Home Administration in the Department of Agriculture to make grants and loans for the construction of sewage systems...

...The culprit in these cases is called deep well disposal, a system that continually pumps billions of gallons of salt water mixed with oil and other liquid wastes back into the ground...

...To put it bluntly: The crisis is here...

...Thinking Aloud FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL BY EDMUND S. MUSKIE Eighty-six years ago, the physicist Henry Augustus Rowland observed that "American science is a thing of the future, and not of the the present or past...

...Now we have found that in exploiting this knowledge and the secrets it has unlocked, we have been exploiting ourselves...

...Thus on January 1, President Nixon approved the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which presents a statement of policy and directs all Federal agencies to comply with it...

...It can be exorcised only through intelligent public action based on understanding of its causes, an appreciation of its constantly changing aspect, and a comprehension of its implications...

...The central issue today is the health of man, wherever he lives and whatever his station...

...Edmund S. Muskie (D.-Me...

...On the East Coast, one scientist has proposed the construction of a 48-inch, 80-mile-long pipeline to carry municipal and industrial wastes from the lower Delaware River basin out into the Atlantic Ocean...

...Some dangers come piecemeal, the by-products of our industrial economy, as noted by the Nobel prizewinning geneticist Joshua Lederberg in the Washington Post of last December 20: "The modern industrial economy is dependent upon hazardous materials that are shipped throughout the country...

...We are learning, however, that there is no one else downstream from us...

...First, it is clearer than ever before that man's ability to survive depends upon what he himself does to and about his environment...

...I welcome Mr...

...Despite all obstacles, I think the current prospects for victory are excellent: The goal of a healthy environment is an idea whose time is come...

...When I say that the people are ready, I mean that they are aware of the danger and receptive to a call to action...

...There is only one place in which to live and that is on this planet, and we must live here together...