THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 16, 1995 TAG: 9507140596
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 122 lines
Pollution is declining. Nuclear power is not so bad. Nature is fiercely resilient. Man will survive. These are but several of the ``truths'' that Virginia-based environmental reporter Gregg Easterbrook wants Americans to embrace in building a new, upbeat attitude toward the state of the natural world.
In short: Don't worry, be happy.
Environmentalists are far from happy, however. Led by the Environmental Defense Fund, several national groups have started a campaign against Easterbrook's rosy appraisal, outlined in his ambitious new book, ``A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism.'' They argue that it symbolizes a naive, unscientific view of ecology that conservatives in Washington would love voters to accept.
As he has done his entire journalistic career, Easterbrook attempts to debunk environmental stereotypes about nature going down the tubes at the hands of a greedy human race.
His assessment is compelling. He notes, quite correctly, that 25 years of protest and lobbying by environmental groups have led to an impressive array of laws and programs that, for the most part, have worked.
Air is cleaner, water is safer, acres of forests are increasing, endangered species are recovering. And on and on. So why worry?
Because according to Easterbrook, New York City, with all its warts and concrete, is more environmentally healthy than the undeveloped country of Bangladesh. To him, modern technology is a friend that can save nature, not an enemy that kills it.
Easterbrook, whose contrarian reports on environmental trends have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and Newsweek, chastises U.S. environmental groups, such as the EDF, for continuing to predict impending crises at home. Their sky-is-falling rhetoric, he says, is merely intended to draw attention and money to a fading cause.
Rough stuff, for sure. But this is not why environmental groups are so upset with the book. In these days of conservative populism in Washington, when environmental protection is linked to dumb government rules that strangle business and property rights, environmentalists are used to such sniping.
The trouble, they argue, is that Easterbrook twists and even ignores certain scientific evidence that undercuts his guiding theory that the environment will continue to improve in step with technological advance.
And here, indeed, lies a big problem.
Easterbrook has compiled an impressive mountain of anecdotes, reports, studies and data. The book is almost 800 pages long and includes detailed analyses of everything from acid rain to zebra mussels.
But he seems so intoxicated by the simplicity of what he calls ``ecorealism'' - or, the pursuit of environmental protection on a common-sense, reasonable basis - that he forgets that not everything fits into this neat little package. Especially when the subject is as immense as nature.
Catastrophe can happen; protests are necessary, if only to bring attention to problems that otherwise would be dismissed; science does support some scary future scenarios about the planet.
Easterbrook also misses the point that the achievements he so warmly credits to environmentalists over the past 25 years stemmed from protests, panicky reports and doomsday studies - the same methods he now slams as hyperbole.
The Environmental Defense Fund, a particularly pugnacious group, is leading the fight against Easterbrook. The EDF just published a 52-page rebuttal that knocks down assertions in the book, paragraph by paragraph, like a shooting exhibition.
The group has mailed its retort to newspapers and journals across the country, no doubt at considerable expense.
``This is a major book on an important topic,'' said EDF Executive Director Fred Krupp, ``... its misstatements about actual scientific evidence in key areas provides a false sense of complacency about urgent problems.''
The EDF slams Easterbrook for dismissing global warming; misstating the northern spotted-owl debate in the logging forests in the Pacific Northwest; confusing a plentiful species of plant with an endangered one in a property-rights dispute; and wrongly concluding that clear-cutting is more costly than selective logging.
And that is just volume one of the rebuttal.
Given all this bluster, all this debate, one begins to wonder: Is there an answer? Is one side right or wrong?
Perhaps not. In an age of dueling studies and ``creative statistics'' and scientific uncertainties, perhaps the best answer to environmental protection is to do spiritually what Easterbrook asks the reader to do.
Sounding like a Buddhist monk, Easterbrook urges politicians and policy-makers and naturalists of all kinds to ``think like nature,'' to look at issues with a long historical frame of reference.
He argues, for instance, that age-old mountains have certainly experienced more damage from volcanos and floods and the Ice Age than any new housing development or power plant.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers may get berated for changing the course of a stream, but nature has likely changed that stream a thousand times.
Nature, Easterbrook says, is perhaps its own worst enemy, causing more devastation and change than anything man can accomplish. Consider how glaciers physically moved mountains, and even continents.
And this may be his best point. Change certainly is relative, especially as it pertains to the natural world.
Would nature even stumble a breath over ``A Moment on the Earth''? Over all the angst from environmental groups? Over political squabbles in Washington?
Probably not. MEMO: Some of Easterbrook's Assertions
-In the Western world, pollution will end in our lifetimes.
-The most feared environmental catastrophes, such as rampant global
warming, are almost certain to be avoided.
-During the same era that most people believe the environment is
getting more polluted, it actually has been getting cleaner.
-There exists no fundamental conflict between the artificial
(manmade things) and the natural.
-Those artificial forces, which today can harm nature, will be
converted into allies of nature in an incredibly short time, by natural
standards.
-There is a law of environmental affairs grounded in human paranoia
and fear: Whenever all ``respectable commentators'' believe a problem
cannot be solved, it is about to be solved.
-The phrase ``fragile environment'' is a contradiction in terms.
While individual plants and animals are indeed fragile, the
environment that contains them is close to indestructible. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo of book cover
by CNB