DATE: Tuesday, April 22, 1997               TAG: 9704220002

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: BY MICHAEL L. FISCHER 

                                            LENGTH:   80 lines

EARTH DAY INVESTMENTS

With all the attention currently being paid to the stock market, this Earth Day is a good time to take a look at your investments. Yes, your investments, particularly your other portfolio - the share in the giant mutual fund, called ``nature'' that you were issued at birth. Is it up or down over the past year? And is it in harmony or conflict with your traditional, more strictly financial, ventures?

The good news about your chunk of Nature's Mutual Fund is that when the last Congress adjourned, it left behind more than 50 pieces of failed anti-environmental legislation. A widespread public outcry prevented a rollback - deceptively titled ``reform'' - of environmental, public health and safety protections enacted over the past 25 years. Furthermore, faced with the prospect of an angry voter backlash, a wide majority in Congress passed a strong update to the Safe Drinking Water Act last summer. But clear-cutting of our oldest forests continues, production of ``greenhouse'' gasses that contribute to global warming remains unabated, over-fishing and ocean pollution endanger sea life, and a massive, industry-sponsored attack threatens proposed improvements in clean-air standards.

Part of the problem is that it's all too easy to take a short-term view of the environment, with corporations and politicians possessing the shortest vision of all. Companies make economic decisions based on the market, while elected officials make political decisions based on votes. But our unborn descendants neither shop nor vote, and therefore concern for the kind of world they will inherit has been sharply discounted in our society. For those focused on the next quarter's profit or the next election, the future is an afterthought.

The new proposal for cleaner air illustrates the problem. After an exhaustive examination of scientific data, the Environmental Protection Agency suggested enhanced controls on ground-level ozone, which leads to smog, plus a new standard to restrict fine particles, or soot. EPA estimates that these two measures will prevent thousands of premature deaths, as well as hundreds of thousands of cases of severe asthma and other respiratory problems, especially in children. This translates into some $120 billion worth of health and social benefits, against $10 billion in costs.

Industry has raised a smokescreen over the estimated costs, but emitters of air pollution have long exaggerated the burden of clean-air regulation. Their lobbyists have resorted to such distortions as claiming the new air standards will restrict backyard barbecues, lawnmowers and fireworks. In reality, all of these are trivial sources of smog and soot compared to power plants, petroleum refineries and big diesel engines.

In 1990, for instance, electric-utility-industry officials stated that curtailing sulfur-dioxide emissions would cost up to $1,500 per ton. Today it costs $110. And even if costs of the new proposals were higher and dollar benefits lower, it would be absurd to allow polluters to do nothing, and thus require that our lungs bear all the costs of smokestack emissions.

That's where investment comes in. Investment usually means spending money to make money. But we also speak of investing in health, education, family and community. So, too, with the environment. Yes, it will cost money to reduce airborne pollution. In reality, though, all environmental protections are investments. If we don't make these expenditures, we will never gain the greater benefits - in this case, cleaner and healthier air.

Furthermore, financial and environmental investments overlap. That's why you can also help by investing in companies that are actively trying to reduce pollution, planning for the long term and becoming environmentally responsible, while you avoid companies that treat the environment like a local dump and public concerns like a roadblock in the path to profits.

According to a recent Yankelovich poll, two out of three investors cannot name a single company in which their mutual funds are invested. Meanwhile, 81 percent of investors say they are more likely to invest in funds containing companies that do not harm the environment. Do you know what you own? Is your financial portfolio helping to destroy your stock in nature?

This Earth Day, demand strong safeguards for the shares that you hold in the environment. Also, take a good look at companies that have a broader definition of success - one that acknowledges long-term impacts on society and the natural world. Your support of cleaner air, reducing global warming and preserving the gifts of nature that you were given at birth will be investments in the future environment that your children and your grandchildren will inherit. MEMO: Michael L. Fischer is executive director of the California Coastal

Conservancy and advises the Calvert Social Investment Fund on

environmental matters.

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