The environmental future

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This book contains the proceedings of the first International Conference on the Environmental Future held in Finland from 27 June to 3 July 1971. The object of the meeting was,

“to bring together for free discussion in a stimulating atmosphere, as complete a range of leading experts as possible, covering between them all the main aspects of environmental study and implications. Their chief tasks were, (a) to give specialist accounts of the global situation in their fields, (b) to prognosticate what in their considered opinion was most likely to happen in the foreseeable future and (c) to suggest what can and should be done to alleviate environmental degradation and to avoid concomitant catastrophes to Man and Nature.”

This was a particularly useful undertaking since the United Nations conference on the Human Environment, due to take place in Stockholm a year later, was very much a governmental affair and provided no opportunity for the free expression of views by scientists specialised in environmental problems.

The meeting appears to have been remarkably well organised; the Prime Minister of Finland himself, H. E. Dr. Ahti Karjalainen, took on the Chairmanship of the Finnish organising committee. The participants were drawn from among the leading figures from all those fields associated with the environmental problem.

The proceedings were edited by Nicholas Polunin, editor of the journal, Biological Conservation. The resultant book is possibly one of the best source books I have come across both for detailed and up to date information on practically all aspects of the present environmental crisis as well as for high calibre debate on how this information should be interpreted. It is divided into 17 sections on different subjects plus a final section on education and legislation. Each subject is dealt with in a Keynote paper, in each case presented by a leading authority on the subject, followed by a discussion.

The Background Paper was very appropriately written by Sir Frank Fraser Darling. Professor Bryson presented a particularly interesting article on Climatic Modification, in which he emphasised the frightening reality that man is “so numerous, and so profligate in the use of energy, that he can now change the climate of the world.” This was followed by a heated discussion on the effect of contrails from jet aircraft, during which Bryson pointed out the already important effect of jet planes on particulate pollution. He remarked that in Iowa City, for instance, the condensation trails,

“are the equivalent of twenty overcast days per year. This is significant when you consider that the total number of overcast days per year in the vicinity is only 120 or something like that—to which should now be added another 20 due to condensation trails.”

During the debate on the possible effect of SST’s on the ozone layer, Professor Polunin read the following extract from a letter from Professor Johnson:

“Oxides of nitrogen are a very important variable in this problem and they have been either overlooked or incorrectly discounted by SST planners. Ozone is very strongly reduced by NO and N02; but there are many technical questions, as, for example, how fast are NO and N0₂ converted to nitric acid in the stratosphere? I think it is clear that if stratospheric ozone were reduced almost to zero (a most unlikely prospect), then the radiation between 240 and 300 nm would destroy most living things on the surface of the earth. However, what would be the biological effects of reducing the world-average ozone from 100 per cent to 98 per cent, to 95 per cent, to 90 per cent, to 75 per cent, to 50 per cent, to 33 per cent? The absorption spectrum of ozone is such that these reductions of ozone would greatly increase the radiation between 280 and 300 nm at the earth’s surface.”

The conclusions reached by Dr. Vallentyne in his paper on Fresh Water Supplies and Pollution were particularly pessimistic.

“As a result of power struggles during rapidly changing times, one can expect increasingly serious breakdowns in countries with a relatively rapid technological build-up. There will be ever-present dangers of land misuse that could be catastrophic during times that are calling for increased production of food. Famine, however, is more likely to result from disruption of transportation per se. . . . It is probable that at least one major global outbreak of disease will occur before the year 2000. The consequences are difficult to predict; however, the focus of origin will almost certainly be somewhere in Asia. probably in south-central Asia. Non-viral infections can probably be contained or largely limited to the continent of origin. Viral infections, on the other hand, can spread with disastrous consequences around the world. The reasons for this are the comparative ease with which viruses can be distributed in water-supply and sewage systems.”

He finishes by suggesting “that we may be living in some kind of Faustian world, in which we do not solve our problems, but merely replace them with other problems.”

Professor L. Kassas from the University of Cairo was clearly the ideal person to deal with the ecological consequences of water projects since he has watched very closely the much-publicised effects of the Aswan Dam.

Perhaps the most outspoken of all the participants was Dr. Wurster, on the subject of the effect of insecticides on human health. He pointed out that

“Several studies of the physiological effects of DDT, Aldrin, Dieldrin, and Endrin have involved human subjects (Jager, 1970; Hayes et al, 1971). These studies were deficient in experimental design, failed to consider the most relevant parameters, and were more concerned with levels of CH storage than with physiological or biochemical effects. They establish only that under current environmental conditions, excluding accidents and suicides, members of the general population are not dying of acute CH insecticide poisoning nor are they suffering overt, toxic symptoms. Long-term, chronic effects were inadequately studied.

“To be more specific, the investigations by Hayes et al. (1971) and those conducted in the Shell Laboratories (Jager, 1970) had only men in their samples; women, children, infants and foetuses were not studied. The small numbers of men involved were completely inadequate to evaluate biological events (such as carcinogenesis or mutagenesis) that may occur once in many thousands of individuals. Periods of exposure were too short to detect biological effects involving induction periods that may be many years or decades. Emphasis was given to reviewing the men’s attendance records at work, and many of the other simple blood and other routine tests performed were largely irrelevant. When two of 22 men who were being fed high dosages of DDT became severely ill after months on this diet, they were dropped from the experiment and excluded from the data with the conclusion that ‘at no time was there any objective finding to indicate a relationship between illness and DDT storage’ (Hayes et al., 1971).

“It is unlikely that these tests on men could have detected behavioural changes, hepatic enzyme induction, carcinogenesis, mutagenesis, or other effects that might be anticipated in man because they occurred in experiments with laboratory animals. The authors concluded, nevertheless, that exposure to these CH insecticides involved no ill-effects on human health—a conclusion that has been widely quoted by the pesticide industry. It seems remarkable that, although hundreds of millions of people have been exposed to these substances for more than two decades, their effects have been so inadequately tested by such primitive studies on such a small number of men!”

He also pointed out the tremendous inertia within our society that prevents the withdrawal of pesticides, even ones that have been proved harmful.

“As for steps that should be taken by governments, it seems that so far the main steps taken by the United States Government have been to generate propaganda. Thus the US Department of Agriculture has the habit of cancelling certain uses or registrations of various pesticides. They usually cancel those that are no longer used, which makes good publicity and doesn’t change usage patterns at all. They have hundreds and hundreds of such registrations and, when enough public pressure builds up, they cancel 50 or 100 and then the newspaper headlines say, ‘Department of Agriculture bans 47 uses on 32 different vegetables’, which sounds great. But it doesn’t do anything, it’s a completely useless step. The intricacies of Federal Law are such that the effect of cancellation in any event is to do essentially nothing, because all it does is initiate an administrative procedure that goes on virtually forever without any conclusion. There has never been a cancellation proceeding that has gone to termination, except where the manufacturer agreed to it. In other words, there have been many so-called steps taken by the US Government to restrict the use of DDT; but as of this moment there is no restriction whatsoever in the United States at the Federal level on the use of DDT. There are some state restrictions, particularly in Wisconsin, to a lesser extent in New York, in Arizona, in Illinois, and a few other states; but at the Federal level it’s been all talk an no action.”

Professor Kovda’s paper on World Soils and Human Activity was highly informative as was Dr. Worthington’s paper on Sustained Biological Activity.

David Brower was the ideal person to deal with what organisations and industry should do and his paper was followed up by a number of action-orientated talks which neatly rounded up the conference.

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