The century’s
top environmental health leaders
By Francesca Lyman
MSNBC © 1999
Dec.
22 — As the countdown to the millennium builds, it’s time
for a look back. MSNBC asked a couple dozen Your Environment
readers — editors, journalists, physicians, lawyers, food
and nutrition specialists, environmental policymakers and
grant makers — to cast their nominations for the most
influential figures in the field of environmental health.
HERE’S THE RESULT — a wide array of
thinkers, writers, scientists and activists who have
influenced policy and public opinion, and who have, in turn,
influenced a generation of other influential individuals.
They come from all walks, but many of them
became activists following careers in specialized disciplines
— science, medicine, law and agriculture. For example, Helen
Caldicott was a pediatrician who became an antinuclear
activist; E.F. “Fritz” Schumacher was an economist whose
questionings of the economic system led to the concept of
“sustainable” development; and Rachel Carson was a marine
biologist who became the premier spokesperson for the dangers
of chemical pesticides.
These were the forerunners. They inspire us
not only by who they are and what they did or continue to do,
but as a reminder of what we all can do and be.
SOUNDING THE FIRST ALARMS
Rachel Carson (1907-1964), a trained
biologist and ecologist, is credited with catalyzing the
modern environmental movement with her popular book “Silent
Spring” (1962), about the dangers of chemical pesticides.
She wrote a number of books on marine
biology, including “Under the Sea Wind,” “The Sea Around
Us” and “The Edge of the Sea,” before changing her
focus. Disturbed by the long-term effects of misusing chemical
pesticides, she “challenged the practices of agricultural
scientists and the government, and called for a change in the
way humankind viewed the natural world,” writes Carson
biographer Linda Lear.
SEX, LIES AND BIRTH DEFECTS?
Theo Colborn has been called the
Rachel Carson of the 90s. A senior scientist at the World
Wildlife Fund, Colborn discovered that animals in the Great
Lakes exposed to dioxins and PCBs were found to have decreased
fertility, birth defects and impaired metabolism, raising
concerns about the long-term effects of these chemicals on
human reproductive systems. In “Our Stolen Future” (1996),
Colborn, a zoologist, with two co-authors, hypothesizes that
these industrial chemicals could be wreaking havoc on the
human endocrine system.
Colborn, like Carson, has riled the chemical
industry with her theories about commonly used synthetic
chemicals as “endocrine disrupters;” although evidence of
adverse health effects in humans is still suggestive, abundant
evidence associating these chemicals with problems in animals
has made for a lively debate.
PIONEERING PATHS
Robert
Rodale was a founder, with his father J.I. Rodale, of the
organic farming movement in the United States, helping lay the
foundations for the burgeoning market for organic food today.
He developed the Organic Gardening Experimental Farm in
Emmaus, Pa. (still the home of The Rodale Press and Prevention
Magazine), “living, working, and personally experiencing the
connection between soil, human and environmental health,”
writes his son Anthony. “They were able to persevere and
succeed during these challenging years because they found
strength in each other — strength came from an
understanding, love and respect for the soil and for nature
itself,” he writes, quoting his father remembering his
grandfather.
BRINGING FOOD TO OUR TABLES
Cesar Chavez (1927 - 1993), a union
organizer, was described by Robert F. Kennedy as “one of the
heroic figures of our time.” The son of a migrant farm
worker, he worked as a community organizer, then went on to
found the United Farm Workers. In 1962, he organized
nationwide boycotts of grapes, wine and lettuce to bring
pressure on California growers to sign contracts with the
union and to draw public attention to dangerous working
conditions, like chemical sprayings.
Chavez died in 1993, with more than 40,000
mourners attending his funeral and in 1994, “became the
second Mexican-American to receive the Presidential Medal of
Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States,”
wrote The Bakersfield Californian.
Chavez once wrote: “It’s ironic that
those who till the soil, cultivate and harvest the fruits,
vegetables and other foods that fill your tables with
abundance have nothing left for themselves.”
THE EARTH IS A LIVING ORGANISM
James Lovelock, a British atmospheric
scientist, ecologist and author of the book “Gaia: A New
Look at Life on Earth” (1979), put forth his theory of the
Gaia Hypothesis, stating that the biosphere is a “diffuse
super-organism” composed of living matter, air, oceans and
land that together form a complex system capable of keeping
the planet fit for life. However, if we continue to “pollute
and destroy for narrow self interest, we could bring about the
end of the Pleistocene and the dawn of a new hot Earth,” he
warned in a recent essay. “The future depends on decisions
made now on the supplies of food and energy. We must moderate
our passion for human rights and begin to recognize the rest
of life on Earth.
“Individual risk, such as of cancer from
exposure to nuclear radiation or to products of the chemical
industry, are to be prevented, but they are no longer the most
urgent concern. First in our thoughts should be the need to
avoid perturbing Gaia and exacerbating its present natural
instability. Above all we do not want to trigger the jump to a
new but unwanted stable climate.”
THE NATURAL STEP
Dr. Karl Henrik Robert, one of
Sweden’s leading cancer researchers, launched a national
strategy called “The Natural Step,” which gives business,
government and individuals the principles for a shift to
“sustainable” processes that reduce energy, use of
resources and the like. The process, which has been endorsed
by everyone from Sweden’s king to many of the country’s
corporate leaders, uses a checklist based on four basic
principles. These are actions that would 1) reduce use of
finite mineral resources; 2) reduce use of long-lived
synthetic chemical products; 3) preserve natural diversity;
and 4) reduce consumption of energy and other resources.
Today, the national debate over the environment, says Robert,
has “the character of monkey chatter amidst the withering
leaves of a dying tree — the leaves representing specific,
isolated problems.” Instead, there should be a systemic
approach to the underlying problems, he believes, so that
“if we heal the trunk and the branches, the benefits for the
leaves will follow naturally.”
CONSUMER ADVOCACY WITH ACCENT ON
CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate who began his career
in the mid-1960s with campaigns to raise safety standards in
cars. He went on to monitor many branches of the government,
notably the Federal Trade Commission, and started several
consumer watchdog groups, including Public Citizen and the
U.S. Public Interest Research Groups, many concerned with
public health issues. Recently he came to the protests of the
World Trade Organization in Seattle, and voiced his objections
to unlabeled genetically modified foods. He ran for president
in 1992 and 1996.
FIGHTING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
Lois Gibbs is the famous “housewife
from hell” who led the effort in the late 1970s to evacuate
and relocate more than 900 families living in the toxic waste
dumps surrounding New York’s Love Canal. Her organizing
helped lead to the creation of the national hazardous waste
law, the Superfund. She now heads the Center for Health,
Environment and Justice (formerly the Citizen’s
Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes), a group that has,
according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, “helped
thousands of grassroots groups form strong local organizations
and acquire the technical expertise to press for environmental
justice.”
PROGRESS AS IF PEOPLE MATTERED
According to The London Times Literary
Supplement in 1995, “Small Is Beautiful” by E. F.
Schumacher ranks among the hundred most influential books
published since the World War II, putting him in the ranks of
such writers as Simone de Beauvoir, André Malraux, Albert
Camus, George Orwell, Hannah Arendt and Carl Gustav Jung. In
it he espoused his belief in decentralism, preserving human
scale and encouraging a spirit of community. According to
Nancy Jack Todd, it “foreshadowed with extraordinary
accuracy many of the major issues we would be struggling with
at the end of the century,” from excessive material
consumption and meaningless growth to corporate domination and
the WTO-controlled global economy.
Prophetically, Schumacher wrote, “A
civilization built on renewable resources, such as the
products of forestry and agriculture, is by this fact alone
superior to one built on non-renewable resources, such as oil,
coal, metal, etc. This is because the former can last, while
the latter cannot last. The former cooperates with nature,
while the latter robs nature. The former bears the sign of
life, while the latter bears the sign of death.”
HAZARDS OF THE NUCLEAR AGE
During the early years of her career as a
pediatrician 30 years ago, Helen Caldicott specialized
in the treatment of children afflicted with cystic fibrosis.
But since then the Australian-born physician has devoted her
career to an international campaign designed to raise
awareness of the medical and environmental hazards of the
nuclear age. After moving to the U.S. from Australia in 1977,
she founded Physicians for Social Responsibility, an
organization of 23,000 doctors that was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1985.
At present she is very worried about nuclear
weapons production and potential Y2K failures at nuclear
facilities around the globe.
“Instead of sipping champagne in
celebration at the millennium we may well be glued to our
battery-operated radios listening for news about how the rest
of the world is coping with massive system failures,” she
wrote in a recent article. “For of all the emergency
situations that could arise at the turn of the millennium and
the months following, the most severe and unforgiving will
involve nuclear technology.”
OTHER NOTABLE NOMINATIONS
Theron Randolph, a pioneer in the
field of ecological illness and multiple chemical sensitivity;
Paul Hawken, author of The Ecology of Commerce, who is
carrying out the Natural Step in the United States; Sherwood
Rowland, the scientist who first identified
chlorofluorocarbons as depleting the ozone layer; green
architects William McDonough and Randall Croxton; Julia
Butterfly Hill, the “tree-sitter” who recently secured
protection for certain old-growth forests in northern
California; Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute,
tracking global ecological trends; Winona LaDuke, the Native
American activist; Herman Daly, the ecological economist;
Theodore Roszak, the history professor who helped launch the
“ecopsychology: movement; and Frederick Law Olmsted, one of
the first landscape architects, who recognized the value of
open space in cities, and created New York’s Central Park.
By Francesca Lyman
MSNBC © 1999
Francesca Lyman is an environmental and
travel journalist and editor of the American Museum of Natural
History book, “Inside the Dzanga-Sangha Rain Forest”
(Workman, 1998).
Special thanks to Barbara Brenner,
Randall Denker Lehrman, John Hunting, Byron Kennard, Marc
Lappe, Michael Maria, Mark Ritchie, C.S. Prakash, Rhonda Roff,
Byron Kennard, William Shutkin and Saran Van Gelder for their
suggestions and contributions.
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