The century’s top environmental health leaders

[Guest guest]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/349058.asp

The century’s top environmental health leaders

By Francesca Lyman

MSNBC

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

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

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 Lear.

SEX, LIES AND BIRTH DEFECTS?

Theo Colborn has been called the 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

Rodale

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 . “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

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

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 , 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 , 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

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, 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 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; 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 McDonough and Randall Croxton;

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.

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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,

Hunting, Byron Kennard, Marc Lappe, , Mark Ritchie, C.S.

Prakash, Rhonda Roff, Byron Kennard, Shutkin and Saran Van Gelder

for their suggestions and contributions.