The costs of modernization

More recently, the British government announced that it would take no action to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power stations until the Royal Society had completed a five year study into the connection between sulphur dioxide emissions and acid rain. The study is to be funded by the National Coal Board and the CEGB, the very industries which stand to lose most by any decision to tighten controls on emissions. Britain is the only major industrial country in Europe not to have joined the so-called ’30 percent Club’ – a group of 20 countries which are now committed to reducing sulphur dioxide emissions by 30 percent of 1980 levels by 1993. As Nigel Dudley notes:

“Britain’s major role as a polluter is not open to doubt, however, and has produced strong European pressure for a reduction in emissions. This Britain has steadfastly resisted, blocking resolutions within the UN and European parliament wherever possible.” [49]

Non-implementation of environmental legislation

When it was first introduced into Parliament, Britain’s main piece of environmental legislation, the 1974 Control of Pollution Act, was widely acclaimed as a responsible and well-meaning attempt to grapple with the problem of pollution. At the time, Mrs Thatcher, then opposition spokeswoman on the environment, welcomed the act as

“likely to have a greater, more lasting impact on the quality of life in many parts of Britain than most other measures”.

Once she had gained power, however, her interest in the quality of life noticeably diminished. Ten years after the act received royal assent, few of its clauses on water pollution had even been implemented. As Fred Pearce notes:

“Almost every polluting pipe or drain that the Act was intended to bring within the law has been granted an exemption.” [50]

The act’s clauses on waste disposal were similarly delayed. Indeed, had it not been for the need to comply with the EEC’s Directive on Toxic and Dangerous Waste, many of the act’s provisions on waste disposal might still not be implemented.

Commenting on the delays in implementing the Control of Pollution Act, the 1984 Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution made its view quite plain:

“whilst we recognise that financial considerations will inevitably continue to be uppermost in Ministers’ minds, we wish to stress the importance of tackling pollution problems in an order of priority which has been determined on merit, not on grounds of expediency or merely in response to the pressure of international obligations. We must sound a warning against the use of exemption orders as a mere device for postponing action on the nastier forms of uncontrolled discharge.” [51]

It is not only ‘home grown’ legislation like the Control of Pollution Act which successive British governments have failed to implement or sought to delay. Britain, to her eternal shame, has fought tooth and nail to stymie numerous EEC Directives aimed at protecting the environment and improving public health. Thus:

The government did everything it could to prevent the EEC from passing a directive to ban the use of growth-promoters in cattle. It argued that to pass such a law would simply encourage the development of a black market in hormones. Were one to accept that argument then no legislation would ever be passed against harmful products or activities unless they could be shown to be unprofitable – in which case, such legislation would be unnecessary since industry and consumers would have no reason to adopt them.
The government has also failed to implement the EEC Directive on the Quality of Water Intended for Human Consumption, which became law in 1985. The Directive establishes guide levels (GLs) and maximum admissible concentrations (MACs) for a range of pollutants. The guide level for nitrate is set at 25mg per litre, while the maximum admissible concentration is 50mg per litre. As Brian Price points out, however, “The British government is intending to ignore the new limit by issuing ‘derogations’ (that is, exemptions) in the case of some 350 specified water sources.” [52]
Britain also tried to side-step having to implement an EEC Directive requiring the cleaning up of bathing beaches in Europe. It did so by exploiting a loophole in the wording of the Directive, which allows member states to come up with their own definition of what constitutes a bathing beach. “Britain decided on a definition so restrictive that it did not include Blackpool – by a long way the nation’s favourite resort – as a bathing beach”, notes Fred Pearce. [53] As a result, Britain designated only 27 of her 600 beaches as ‘bathing beaches’ as against the 3,000 so designated by the French and the Italians. Although the EEC has set a scientifically testable definition of what constitutes a ‘safe’ beach, England’s water authorities have effectively ignored it. Instead, as Pearce points out, they define a beach as satisfactory “if there are no signs of sewage, such as sewer slicks or solids, in areas that people might bathe in”.
Perhaps the greatest battle between Britain and the EEC, however, has been over industrial discharges to rivers, estuaries and coastal waters. Britain’s partners in the Community are adamant that the discharge of certain “blacklisted” substances should be strictly controlled through a system of ‘limit values’ which would lay down the maximum permissible concentration of a given pollutant in any single discharge. The limit values would apply throughout the EEC. Britain, however, argues that such an approach is too “inflexible” and would penalise British industry. Because our rivers are short and fast flowing, says the government, they can absorb more pollution than rivers on the continent. Britain therefore insists that emission standards should be allowed to vary from river to river. Directives which seek to impose limit values have been summarily rejected by the government.

Britain’s frequent use of the veto to block EEC Directives and her laissez-faire attitude to environmental legislation has earned her the opprobrium of Europe. Our government is seen as petty minded, arrogant, and insular. Sadly our reputation outside Europe is little better. It sank to its lowest level when Britain attempted to steamroller the London Dumping Convention (the international body which polices the dumping of waste at sea) into lifting its moratorium on dumping nuclear waste at sea.

Led by Spain, Australia and New Zealand, 25 countries voted for an indefinite ban on the practice. Only 6 countries (including Britain, France and the USA) voted in favour of nuclear dumping. When Britain lost the vote, the British delegation insisted that the resolution was not legally binding and that Britain (who is responsible for having dumped 90 percent of the radioactive waste which has ever been dumped at sea) would continue to look upon ocean dumping as a possible waste-disposal option.

Public inquiries: rubber stamping decisions?

Under the Town and County Planning Act 1971, the Secretary of State for the Environment has powers to ‘call in’ any planning application which, if granted, would have “implications of more than local significance”. Once an application has been called in, a local planning inquiry is usually set up to advise the Secretary of State whether or not to permit the proposed development. Any ‘interested’ parties may present evidence to the inquiry, which is presided over by an inspector and (if the evidence is likely to be highly technical) one or more assessors.

The Thatcher administration considers that too much time and money is being spent on public inquiries. So it decided to limit their terms of reference so that basic issues (such as the desirability of the project) cannot be raised. Thus the Dounreay Inquiry, which opened in April 1986 to consider the Atomic Energy Authority’s application to build a reprocessing plant for spent fuel from Britain’s future fast-breeder reactor programme, had its terms of reference limited to a consideration of planning and purely technical issues. The government declared that it did not wish to see the Dounreay Inquiry become a “trial for nuclear waste” in the same way as the Sizewell Inquiry has become a “trial for nuclear power”.

For many people, the government’s decision to limit the Dounreay inquiry merely confirmed a long-held suspicion that public inquiries are little more than PR exercises. Certainly, the government’s refusal to provide funds to the objectors makes a mockery of the claim that inquiries are open, objective and democratic.

At both the Windscale and Sizewell Inquiries, the objectors had to raise for themselves the money with which to put forward their case, sometimes without the benefit of a lawyer. In sharp contrast, the expenses of both BNFL and the CEGB – amounting to several million pounds – were paid for by the taxpayer, since both are state-owned companies. If inquiries are really intended to be open, democratic and objective, surely the objectors should also be funded by the state?

The Windscale Inquiry itself had all the hallmarks of a rubber stamp. The report of Mr Justice Parker, the Inspector at the Inquiry, not only ignored the evidence of several distinguished objectors – notably Professor Radford, chairman of the US National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation, but also distorted the evidence of others. As The Ecologist commented at the time:

“Parker has a way of twisting the argument so that the objectors’ case seems to support BNFL’s. Thus he manages to argue that instead of increasing the chances of proliferation, reprocessing actually reduces them; instead of incurring a greater threat from radioactive waste, it diminishes it; and instead of leading to a greater drain of energy resources it actually increases them.”

Changing values

If our government refuses to listen to us, if any evidence we provide as to the harmfulness of its policies is summarily dismissed as “hearsay”, if the research required to reveal hazards is starved of funds, if vital information on pollution and other dangers is kept secret under the Official Secrets Act, and if public inquiries are little more than PR exercises, is there anything we can do to change government policy? Are there any grounds for hope?

Table 1: How the public ranks environmental problems
Issue	Very serious	Quite serious	Not very serious	Not at all serious
Nuclear power waste	69	18	9	2
Industrial effluents	67	25	6	1
Industrial air pollution	46	40	11	2
Lead from petrol	45	39	11	2
Traffic noise/dirt	20	45	29	4
Aircraft noise	7	24	50	17
Source:The Social Attitudes Survey, 1985.
Note 1: All figures in %.
Note 2: “Don’t knows” omitted.

The answer is a guarded Yes – although we should never underestimate the likely resistance to change. The 1985 Social Attitudes Survey reveals that a significant proportion of the population is already beginning to regard a number of environmental problems as “very serious” (see Table 1). Public hostility to nuclear power is also growing daily, and unless Britain is transformed into a police state, it is difficult to see how our government can actually implement its present highly ambitious nuclear programme.

In the meantime, the environmental movement in Britain has never been more active. Friends of the Earth are producing extremely high-quality reports on key environmental issues, obtaining wider press coverage than ever before. Greenpeace, also, has shown the effectiveness of non-violent direct action which, as Nick Gallie points out, is one of the best means available for attracting the public’s attention, arousing its sympathy and stimulating debate on the need to safeguard our environment against the depredations of industry. [54]

Many other groups (such as Ecoropa, the Soil Association, the Henry Doubleday Research Association, the Farm and Food Society and the Conservation Society), together with countless local groups which have been set up to oppose irresponsible developments in their own areas, are also doing invaluable work.

The trade unions are increasingly taking up the green banner. Thus, the National Union of Seamen (NUS), the train drivers’ union ASLEF, and the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) have combined to ban the movement of nuclear waste to be dumped at sea and have even persuaded the international Transport Workers’ Federation to ban ocean-dumping worldwide. [55] The National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers has instructed its members to refuse to handle 2,4,5-T and, as Chris Kaufman points out, [56] many other unions now support a total ban on the herbicide. Meanwhile, the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians (UCATT) has instructed its members to refuse to work with any form of asbestos. [57]

Britain’s Green Party is now becoming better known and could eventually play an important role in the political life of Britain. Its activities attract considerable public attention at election time, publicising both the ecological policies that it supports and the ecological value system which they reflect. This is of vital importance, for if real change is to be achieved, we must face up to the need for a radical shift in our values. There is, as Jonathon Porritt notes, a limit to what can he gained by acting on specific issues:

“The superficial sound and furs of many environmental battles conceals the fact that the real struggle is between . . . different value systems, a deeper confrontation which is only marginally influenced by the outcome of one specific issue It has therefore been deeply frustrating to have to re-fight the same battle in different places at different times, as if nothing has been learnt from previous clashes.” [58]

Underlying the destruction we are witnessing today lies a value system which is wedded to the belief that

“human needs can only be met through permanent expansion of the process of production and consumption – regardless of the damage done to the planet, to the rights of future generations, to the human spirit and to the living standards of all those who end up as the losers in this global, all-encompassing human race.” [59]

Indeed, in terms of the value-system of industrialism (and, in particular, in terms of modern economic theory) the environmental damage we are inflicting on the planet is of no consequence whatsoever. Today’s economists are trained to maximise ‘benefits’ and minimise ‘costs’. By definition, a ‘cost’ must reflect a deprivation of some sort – more precisely, the deprivation of some ‘benefit’.

Yet Nature’s benefits – the fresh, clean water that flows in unpolluted streams and rivers, the rain that naturally irrigates our crops, a stable and predictable climate and the fertility of the soils upon which our agricultural system depends – are all taken for granted by economists and ascribed no economic value of any sort.

As a result, the loss of Nature’s benefits (which only accrue through the proper functioning of the ecosystem) is not considered a cost. It does not appear to have occurred to economists that if our activities interfere too radically with the workings of Nature, then Nature might no longer be capable of providing the benefits we now take for granted and upon which our very survival depends.

So long as we adhere to such a cock-eyed view of the world, we will continue to believe that if a project is ‘economic’ that is, if it maximises the short-term return on the resources it uses – it must be ‘good’ for the country, regardless of the environmental damage it causes. The environmental movement must reveal such thinking for the nonsense it clearly is.

We must convince the public that economic growth – the “permanent expansion of the process of production and consumption” – cannot solve the basic problems that confront us today: material goods cannot compensate for the breakdown of communities or the destruction of the environment; institutions, staffed by anonymous civil servants wearing (to use John McKnight’s phrase) “the mask of care”, cannot replace a mother or, in a cohesive community, even a neighbour; and technology (however sophisticated) cannot solve the problems of alienation, alcoholism or drug abuse simply because these are not technological problems.

The crisis we are facing today is not caused by a lack of material goods, nor yet by a lack of technology it is caused by the social, biological and ecological disruption we have inflicted on the world in our relentless pursuit of material ‘progress’. It can only be solved by re-establishing the social, biological and ecological systems we have disrupted. Only then can we hope to achieve a sustainable, just and self-reliant society.

The Chilean economist Manfred Von Neef notes how even Lord Keynes warned that

“the importance of economic problems should not be overestimated with the result that matters of higher and more permanent significance are sacrificed to its supposed necessities.” [60]

The contributors to this book show how completely we have ignored that warning. We cannot afford to do so any longer. A fundamental change in the attitude of our political leaders is required – one which will lead to a veritable reversal of present policies. At stake is whether or not we and our children are to inhabit the industrial wasteland our politicians are busily creating for us, in what can still be “a green and pleasant land”.

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Notes

1	Colin Price, Christine Cahalan and Don Harding, The Environment in Forestry Policy, p.88.
2	J. Pellisek, “Conifers and Soil Deterioration”. The Ecologist Vol 5 No. 9, November 1975.
3	Robert Waller, chapter 3, Britain’s Farm Policy, p.47.
4	Alan Long, chapter 10, Down on the Pharm, pp.120-35.
5	Chris Rose, chapter 5, The Destruction of the Countryside, pp.66-78.
6	R. P. C. Morgan, chapter 6, Soil Erosion in Britain, pp.79-84.
7	Brian Price, chapter 16, Lead Astray, pp. 189-97.
8	Long, Down on the Pharm.
9	A. H. Walters, chapter 14, Nitrates in Food, pp.172-8.
10	Chris Rose, chapter 12, Pesticides, pp.143-64.
11	Waller, Britain’s Farm Policy, p.50.
12	David Harris, chapter 9, The Mackerel Massacre, p.117.
13	Erik Millstone, chapter 15, Food Additives, p. 184.
14	Alan Irwin and Doogie Russell, chapter 29. Fighting Back against Cancer, p.316.
15	Millstone, Food Additives, p.182.
16	Peter Bunyard, chapter 23, The Sellafield Discharges, pp.252-66; chapter 25, Radiation and Health, pp. 273-83.
17	Nick Gallie, chapter 34, The Case for Direct Action, p.356.
18	Peter Bunyard, chapter 26, Ignoring the True Cost of Nuclear Power, pp. 284-95.
19	The term ‘Britain’ is used throughout this book although it is recognised that strictly speaking Britain excludes Northern Ireland.
20	Poll conducted by NOP Market Research Ltd in March 1986.
21	Geoffrey Lean “Nuclear Plant Poll Fuels Concern”, The Observer, 30 March 1986.
22	Peter Bunyard, chapter 27, Britain and Plutonium Exports pp.296-303.
23	The Times. November 1984.
24	John Madeley, chapter 30. Britain and the Third World, p.325.
25	John Madeley, Britain and the Third World, p.328.
26	Chris Rose, chapter 11. Pesticide Controls, pp. 136-7.
27	Millstone Food Additives, p.184.
28	Walters, “Nitrates in Food”, The Ecologist vol 15 No 4, 1985.
29	Chris Rose. chapter 12, Pesticides. An Industry out of Control, p.160.
30	David Wheeler. “Britain’s Polluted Drinking Water”, The Ecologist Vol 16 No 2 /3, 1986.
31	The Rayner Scrutiny Committee on Fisheries Research and Development, Draft Report, 1982.
32	Nigel Dudley, chapter 8, Acid Rain and British Pollution Control Policy, p96.
33	Millstone, Food Additives, p.184.
34	Angela Singer, chapter 17, Asbestos, pp.198-209.
35	Report of the Food Additives and Contaminants Committee on Aldrin and Dieldrin Residues in Food. London, HMSO, 1967.
36	Maurice Frankel, chapter 32, Environmental Secrecy, pp.333-41.
37	Singer, Asbestos, p.202.
38	Price, Lead Astray, p.192.
39	Millstone, Food Additives, pp.185-6.
40	Rose, Pesticide Exports, pp.329-32.
41	Irwin and Russell, Fighting Back against Cancer, p.317.
42	Irwin and Russell, Fighting Back against Cancer, p.318.
43	Irwin and Russell, Fighting Back against Cancer, p.318.
44	Alice Coleman, chapter 2, The Loss of Productive Land, p.37.
45	House of Commons Select Committee on Energy Report (3 vols), London, HMSO, 1981.
46	Chris Kaufman, chapter 13, 2,4,5-T, p.166.
47	Singer, Asbestos, p.205.
48	Price, Lead Astray, p.190.
49	Dudley, Acid Rain, p.101.
50	Fred Pearce, chapter 20 Dirty water under the Bridge, p.231.
51	The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, Tackling Pollution: Experience and Prospects, London HMSO, 1984, p.80.
52	Price, Pollution on Tap, p.239.
53	Pearce, Britain’s Dirty Beaches, p.210.
54	Gallie, Case for Direct Action, pp.352-60.
55	Jim Slater, chapter 24, Dumping Nuclear Waste at Sea, p.267-72.
56	Kaufman, 2,4,5-T, pp.165-6.
57	Singer, Asbestos, p.207.
58	Jonathon Porritt, chapter 33, Beyond Environmentalism, p.346.
59	Jonathon Porritt, Beyond Environmentalism, pp.345-6.
60	Quoted in Manfred A. Max-Neef, From the Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics, Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjold. Foundation. 1982.