Rachel's #738: Environmental Trends--Part 2

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.. RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #738 .

.. ---November 22, 2001--- .

.. HEADLINES: .

.. ENVIRONMENTAL TRENDS--PART 2 .

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ENVIRONMENTAL TRENDS--PART 2

 

Here we continue summarizing the main points from the 327-page

report titled OECD ENVIRONMENTAL OUTLOOK[1] from the Organization

for Economic Cooperation and Development, which describes current

environmental trends in the OECD's 30 member nations.[2] (See

Rachel's #737.)

 

The OECD report forecasts environmental trends to the year 2020,

using a traffic signal to highlight major conclusions: green

lights where it's OK to " proceed with caution, " yellow lights for

important issues that are still shrouded in uncertainty and red

lights for problems that require " urgent action " because they are

likely to " significantly worsen " by 2020. (pg. 279) Notice that

even the " green light " issues warrant only a " proceed with

caution " advisory from the OECD.

 

Here we continue listing the most important " red light " problems

that the OECD has identified:

 

** Energy: Total energy use will increase 35% in OECD regions by

2020, and 51% elsewhere in the world. Oil will remain the OECD's

energy mainstay, and the share of oil supplied by OPEC

countries[3] will increase from 54% today to 74% by 2020. Only 6%

of energy will come from renewable sources (such as solar power)

by 2020, says the OECD, and even this " will depend upon financial

incentives from government. " (pg. 148)

 

The OECD report does not say so, but any such financial

incentives would be subject to challenge under World Trade

Organization rules as illegal restraints of free trade. The WTO

does not allow governments to subsidize particular industries,

such as solar energy, though of course military subsidies to keep

the oil flowing from the Middle East are allowed. By 2020, the

share of OECD energy supplied by nuclear power may decline

slightly from its current 11%, the OECD says, because the

technology lacks popular support everywhere. (pg. 148)

 

** Global warming: " Global warming is a reality, " says the OECD

report. (pg. 157) As the Earth warms, we should expect more

extreme weather in some regions (floods, droughts, and perhaps

more " catastrophic " events such as large hurricanes and

typhoons). We should also expect the sea level to rise somewhere

between 6 inches and 37 inches by the year 2100, inundating

valuable and densely-populated coastal lands. (pg. 162) Serious

human diseases carried by mosquitoes, such as dengue fever (also

called " breakbone fever " because it is so painful) and malaria,

are likely to increase in both the northern and southern

hemispheres, says the OECD. (pg. 162) " The possible effects of

climate change are a widely recognised future threat to human

health, " says the OECD. " Climate change might result in new

infectious diseases, as well as changing patterns of known

diseases, and loss of life due to extreme weather conditions. "

(pg. 252)

 

" Overall studies show that some of the most adverse impacts [of

global warming] are bound to occur in the Southern Hemisphere

where countries are most vulnerable and least likely to easily

adapt to climate change, " says the OECD. (pg. 162)

 

Humans are contributing to global warming by releasing

" greenhouse gases " -- mainly carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous

oxide. Of these, CO2 is the largest. The OECD forecasts CO2

emissions rising 33% in OECD countries and 100% in the rest of

the world by 2020. To meet the goals of the Kyoto agreement,

intended to curb the damage from global warming, OECD countries

will need to reduce their CO2 emissions by anywhere from 18% to

40% depending on what non-OECD countries do. (pg. 160) Given that

the U.S. increased its CO2 emissions 11% between 1990 and 1998,

even an 18% reduction by 2020 would require a Herculean political

commitment to reverse " business as usual. " (pg. 159)

 

** Chemicals: Although the chemical industry creates large

quantities of hazardous waste, an even bigger problem is its

products. The OECD says there are somewhere between one and two

million chemical preparations on the market today, each a mixture

of two or more individual chemicals that do not react with each

other. Each of these preparations must be considered in light of

workplace hazards, accidents involving hazardous materials, and

harmful exposures of workers in other industries, consumers, the

general public, and the natural environment, says the OECD.

Unfortunately, there is " an immense knowledge gap about chemicals

on the market, " says the OECD: governments " lack adequate safety

information about the great majority of chemicals. " (pg. 223) The

" unknown hazard " from chemicals is a " major concern, " says the

OECD. (pg. 226)

 

" Major concerns exist about the possible impact on the

environment and human health of substances produced by the

chemicals industry, which are found in virtually every man-made

product, " says the OECD. " Many are being detected in the

environment, where particular problems can be caused by

persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals. Concern is

growing, for example, about chemicals which cause endocrine

disruption and which persist in the environment, " OECD says. (pg.

223) Endocrine disruption refers to industrial chemicals,

released into the environment, that interfere with the hormones

that control growth, development, and behavior in all birds,

fish, amphibians, reptiles, snails, lobsters, insects, and

mammals, including humans.

 

Evidently the OECD does not have confidence that governments --

or the chemical industry itself -- can control the chemical

problem because the report explicitly says that vigilance by

non-governmental organizations -- the environmental movement --

will be " critical " to the success of efforts to assess the

hazards of chemicals that are already on the market. (pg. 233)

And of course assessing the hazards is only a first step --

prelude to the much more contentious question of curbs,

phase-outs, forced substitutions, or bans.

 

In sum, persistent toxic chemicals " are expected to continue

being widespread in the environment over the next 20 years,

causing serious effects on human health, " the OECD says. (pg. 19)

 

** Human Health: " The loss of health due to environmental

degradation is substantial " in OECD countries. (pg. 253) The

" most urgent issues " are " air pollution and exposure to

chemicals, " the OECD says. The " greatest cause for concern " is

the " threat of continuing widespread release of chemicals to the

environment. " (pg. 252) " This is not only a question of the

amount of chemicals that end up in the environment, but more a

question of their characteristics and effects. Unfortunately, the

latter are often unknown, as the recent discovery of the

endocrine disrupting effects of certain pesticide ingredients has

shown, " the OECD says. (pg. 252)

 

The OECD estimates that environmental degradation causes

somewhere between 2% and 6% of all human disease in OECD

countries and 8% to 13% in non-OECD countries. (pg. 250) In OECD

countries this presently translates into health-care costs

between $50 billion and $130 billion per year, the OECD says.

(pg. 252)

 

The OECD report highlights two kinds of air pollution that can

harm humans: ground-level ozone, and fine particles, both created

by cars and trucks. Ground-level ozone -- a component of smog --

exacerbates asthma, bronchitis, emphysema and other chest

ailments, and diminishes lung capacity even in healthy children.

Health standards for ozone are exceeded at 95% of monitoring

sites in the U.S. and Japan and at 90% of sites in Europe, the

OECD reports. (pg. 188)

 

Fine particles -- soot so small that you can't see it, except as

a haze -- presently kill twice as many people as automobile

accidents each year, the OECD says. (pg. 176) And particles

produced by diesel engines cause lung cancer -- in the U.S.

alone, an estimated 125,000 new cases each year, the OECD says.

 

Environment and health costs from transportation presently amount

to 8% of GDP (gross domestic product) in Europe, not counting the

costs of traffic congestion, the OECD says. (pg. 176) And motor

vehicles will increase 32% in OECD countries by 2020, and 74%

worldwide. (pg. 170) As we approach 2020, stricter emission

controls will reduce urban air contaminants in many OECD

countries, but much of the rest of the world will be driving

older cars and trucks without benefit of modern controls.

 

Environmentalists, of course, would like to add many details to

the OECD's sobering report. The most blatant omission is the

biggest killer of all -- the workplace environment. As we have

reported previously, work-related injuries and disease kill about

165 workers EACH DAY in the U.S. alone -- a mammoth, ongoing

human rights violation that the OECD report has managed to

ignore. (See RACHEL'S #578.)

 

By cherry-picking data and sometimes fudging the details, writers

like Bjorn Lomborg manage to confuse the public by claiming that

environmental problems have been exaggerated or don't really

exist.[4] But this is the wrong time to be pretending that all is

well because the trends are otherwise. The world's oceans,

forests and biodiversity are clearly in trouble. Global warming

is real and, given the political power of oil and coal companies,

intractable. Waste is immense and growing, but toxic PRODUCTS are

an even bigger problem. Toxic chemicals can now be measured at

low levels in the bodies of living things everywhere on Earth,

from the bottoms of the deepest oceans to the most remote

mountain tops. Exotic industrial poisons have been introduced

into all of us without our informed consent -- invading our

bodies even before we are born -- and new harms from these toxic

trespassers are discovered almost daily as ignorance and cover-up

give way to openness and knowledge. But we needn't wait for yet

another scientific study. We already know enough to act and act

decisively.

 

The basic problem is that " free market " ideology regards the

natural environment as an inexhaustible supermarket for raw

materials and a bottomless free toilet for wastes. Both of these

conceptions are dead wrong, and therefore " markets " must not be

free -- they must be moderated by social covenants and government

policies -- ranging from simple generosity and sharing on an

international scale, to fessing up and taking responsibility for

the consequences of our actions on a corporate scale, plus a

range of government sanctions and strictures, including

purchasing preferences, subsidies for clean technologies, green

taxes and fees, precautionary regulations and actions, guarantees

of workplace safety and health (with real teeth), stiff fines,

and even prison for repeat polluters. The key reforms must aim to

create a vastly more responsive democracy, allowing people to

make decisions by talking together about those things that affect

their lives, displacing the elitist corporate rule that both

Democrats and Republicans today call government.

 

Reversing environmental decline will require above all the

commodity in shortest supply: courageous political commitment and

democratic policy innovations based firmly and explicitly on the

principle of forecaring or precaution, to counteract decades of

" free market " theology that have left governments weakened,

democracy vitiated, and the environment inadequately protected.

If we and our unelected " leaders " can't -- or won't -- face up to

the necessary changes, the environmental outlook for our children

and grandchildren will be grim indeed.

--Peter Montague

===============

 

[1] Available at http://www1.oecd.org/env/.

 

[2] Last week we mistakenly omitted Ireland, a founding member of

the OECD. Current OECD member nations include Australia, Austria,

Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France,

Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea,

Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland,

Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,

Turkey, the U.K. and the U.S.

 

[3] OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, has

11 members: Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya,

Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and

Venezuela. See http://www.opec.org/.

 

[4] Bjorn Lomborg, THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST (Cambridge,

England: Cambridge University Press, 2001). See reviews of

Lomborg in NATURE Vol. 414 (Nov. 8, 2001), pgs. 149-150; and

SCIENCE Vol. 294 (Nov. 9, 2001), pgs. 1285-1286. And see

http://www.wri.org/wri/press/mk_lomborg.html and http://-

www.anti-lomborg.com/.

 

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