ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 22, 1997 TAG: 9701220012
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN AHEARNE
OUR WATER is cleaner and our air is less polluted than in 1971, when the first Earth Day raised America's consciousness about environmental problems. But we still don't know enough about the environment to detect warning signs of serious problems, such as the sudden degradation of an ecosystem by an environmental pollutant.
Many pollutants in the environment never have been systematically measured. And past attempts to monitor environmental quality have been inconsistent, which significantly reduces the value of the data collected. In many cases, we don't even know what to measure.
Our lack of information about the environment is a major point that emerged from an important national meeting that I helped lead. With funding from the Carnegie Corp., the meeting brought together several hundred business leaders, environmentalists, government officials and other citizens to discuss what should be the most important environmental goals for the nation over the next 25 years. Out of this grass-roots approach came a compelling snapshot - which helped inform a recently released report from the National Research Council - of how science and technology can help meet U.S. environmental goals.
An important part of the report examines how best to regulate environmental problems. The traditional "command-and-control" approach, in which government specifies a goal to be achieved or a technology to be used, often is inadequate.
Economic incentives are far more effective in encouraging industries to devise cost-effective ways of reducing pollution. Approaches that rely on economic incentives could save the United States more than $1 billion a year. And as social scientists learn more about human behavior, regulations that direct the most attention to the most hazardous activities will become increasingly effective.
Many chemicals have made positive contributions to society's well-being. However, some have had extremely negative impacts - for example, the PCBs that have led to homes being abandoned, or the chlorofluorocarbons that are contributing to depletion of the Earth's ozone layer.
Much greater attention needs to be given to the basic science of how chemicals interact with living things, especially when several chemicals act together. The long-term effects of new chemicals, and their interaction with other chemicals in the environment, should be better understood before they go onto the market.
A particularly promising approach to environmental protection is life-cycle - or "cradle-to-grave" - planning. This approach considers a product from its origins, where raw materials are used, to the end of its useful life. A life-cycle perspective can reduce the use of raw materials, change the processes by which products are made, and create opportunities for the wastes of one process to be used as inputs in other processes.
The United States needs to make a much stronger effort to move away from the use of fossil fuels, which are linked to urban air pollution, acid rain and the possibility of global warming. "Defossilizing" our energy sources will require more attention to solar power, new approaches to nuclear power, and greater emphasis on energy efficiency and conservation. The competing demands of economic development and population growth also must be addressed.
These are ambitious goals. But milestones on the path to a cleaner environment are often as important as the goals. While goals can develop the political will to take action, milestones are needed to measure and reward progress toward those goals.
Continued discussions among industry, government, and concerned citizens are essential as we seek to improve the quality of our environment. In particular, they can serve as valuable input to the new administration and to Congress.
John Ahearne, a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is director of the Sigma Xi Center in Research Triangle Park, N.C., a lecturer in public policy and adjunct professor of civil and environmental engineering at Duke University, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
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