The costs of modernization

Several themes run through the essays in this book. The first is that there is a direct, historical link between the increasingly serious environmental problems we are experiencing today and the 'modernisation' of our economic activities.

Such modernisation - be it in the field of forestry, agriculture, fishing, food processing, manufacturing or power generation - inevitably sets in train a series of closely related changes with profound social, economic and ecological implications. Activities (bread-making, for example) which were previously a vocation or a way of life have become industrial undertakings. Rather than being carried out at the domestic level, or as small family businesses, they are now carried out by giant commercial concerns. The scale of operations increases correspondingly; the use of natural products gradually gives way to that of synthetics; and increasingly sophisticated machines take over more and more of the functions previously fulfilled by human labour.

Alongside these changes, there has been a critical shift in our attitude towards the management of our resources and the running of our economy. The accent is now on the short term, with little or no thought being shown for the future. The achievement of economic efficiency (with the aim of maximising short-term gains) has seemingly become the be-all and end-all of human endeavour. All other considerations have been ruthlessly subordinated to that one overriding goal.

No matter if a new 'development' destroys an ancient monument, flattens the historic centre of a town, or uproots a local community. No matter if our countryside is torn apart by bulldozers, or if the country's wildlife is steadily deprived of habitats in which to survive. No matter if the quality of the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink is eroded through pollution or if our health is undermined as a result. Such considerations are simply brushed aside as the inevitable price we must pay for economic efficiency.

Forestry and farming

The effects of 'modernisation' are evident in the field of forestry. The Forestry Commission operates on a large scale, using machinery and methods that are entirely geared to the achievement of short-term results. There is no concern for the environmental costs. Vast spraying programmes are regularly undertaken using pesticides known to be health hazards. Ugly conifer monocultures are planted on unsuitable lowland soils which, as Colin Price, Christine Cahalan and Don Harding note, can "cause podzolization, a process which results in the acidification of soils", in addition to giving rise to "nitrogen deficiencies". [1] Clear cutting also leads to erosion, especially on slopes.

For these and other reasons, modern forestry cannot last for long. Indeed, the experience in Czechoslovakia suggests that growing seven generations of conifers on sandy soil leads to such environmental degradation that the soil is no longer capable of supporting commercial forestry. [2]

Robert Waller also notes how in farming, efficiency has become the catchword. "Farming is a business now not a way of life" has become "the slogan nailed to the masthead of the ministry". [3] Farms have grown bigger and bigger, putting the traditional small farmer out of business and destroying the very fabric of rural society. Ever more expensive equipment has been introduced with the result that debts have skyrocketed bringing many farmers to the brink of bankruptcy.

At the same time, sound husbandry has been replaced by chemical farming, [4] our countryside has been ruthlessly destroyed to provide more and more agricultural land and ever bigger fields, [5] and our wildlife has been all but exterminated. Our best soils are suffering from accelerating erosion, [6] our groundwaters are increasingly polluted with nitrates (the result of fertiliser use) and our rivers with pesticides. Inevitably, our drinking water, [7] and our food, is increasingly contaminated - the latter with antibiotics and hormones, [8] in addition to nitrates, [9] and pesticide residues. [10]

Can we seriously regard such environmental costs as an acceptable price to pay for having a modern agricultural industry? Unquestionably not. As Robert Waller asks,

"Surely the 'business of farming' includes the conservation of the environment? How can it be healthy 'business' if it erodes the soil, contaminates our waterways and our groundwater and even the food it produces?" [11]

Fishing

The fishing industry is another industry which has caused widespread ecological damage as a result of modernisation. In order to increase economic efficiency, we have introduced massive trawlers, equipped with the latest capital-intensive technology, that can harvest vast quantities of fish in a very short dine. Fish catches have increased dramatically as a result, but at what cost and for how long?

As David Harris notes, small fishermen using traditional methods have been put out of business; fishing communities have been disrupted; and overfishing has brought the herring "to the verge of commercial extinction. [12] Now, says Harris, "it is the turn of the mackerel". In the future, other species are also likely to be fished into extinction. Indeed, "nearly all species within easy reach are under intense pressure".

Once the fish stocks are gone, the big trawler owners will in turn go out of business, as is already beginning to happen, leaving a new breed of untutored and possibly part-time fishermen to eke out a marginal livelihood from our polluted and depleted seas.

Even now that it is readily apparent that the fishing industry is rushing headlong towards destruction, the authorities are doing next to nothing to halt (let alone reverse) these disastrous trends. On the contrary, government policy actually militates against the conservation of fish stocks.

Food processing

In the last 30 years, we have seen the development of the modern, capital-intensive, science-based food-processing industry which now churns out 75 percent of the food we eat. According to Erik Millstone, some 3,500 or more additives are now used "in millions of combinations" to make this industry economically efficient. [13]

As a result, the average Briton eats four kilogrammes a year of a mixture of some 3,500 different chemical additives, most of which have never been tested for possible health effects. Yet, as Alan Irwin and Doogie Russell imply, such additives must make a significant (though as yet unquantified) contribution to the incidence of cancer in this country - a disease which may already be killing as many as 150,000 Britons a year. [14]

The food-processing industry argues that additives are essential if the price of food is to be kept down. In reality, however, many additives are used to transform fresh food which would otherwise be sold relatively cheaply into packaged foods which, with sufficient publicity, can be sold at a much higher price - even though they are laced with synthetic chemicals and thoroughly devitalised.

Potato crisps (which, today, play an important part in the diet of most of our children) are a case in point.

"When we spend 13p to buy a packet of crisps, we are buying 1p's worth of potatoes which have been peeled, sliced, fried, flavoured, preserved, packaged, distributed and advertised into a highly profitable product, instead of a simple but relatively unprofitable spud." [15]

Such products cannot provide us with a sound and healthy diet. Thankfully, however, the food-processing industry is unlikely to survive in its present form for very much longer. Already consumer pressure is forcing manufacturers to change their ways:

• In January 1985, Sainsbury's began to eliminate additives from their own-brand goods: as from March 1986, shoppers have been able to identify which products contain additives and (perhaps more important) which do not, through a system of colour coding introduced by the company.
• Birds Eye has also announced that it intends to eliminate "all artificial colours" (including tartrazine, the yellow dye suspected of causing hyperactivity in children) from all of its products. The company has also promised a reduction in the number of other additives it uses.

The electricity supply industry

Over the last decade we have also witnessed the modernisation of the electricity supply industry - and, in particular, the substitution of nuclear for coal and oil-fired power stations.

The insidious pollution to which nuclear power gives rise is well described by Peter Bunyard, who also examines the likely effects of Britain's nuclear programme on our health. [16] Britain's reprocessing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria is particularly polluting. As Nick Gallie notes in his contribution, the plant, which is owned by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL), routinely releases "two million gallons of radioactive waste-contaminated water directly into the Irish Sea every day. It has done so for over 20 years". [17]

Accidental releases to the environment add still more radioactivity to the sea. Such accidents occur with monotonous regularity. In February 1986 alone, there were four major accidents, one of which released half a tonne of reprocessed uranium into the Irish Sea.

The extent to which the Irish Sea is now contaminated and the effects of radioactive pollution from Sellafield are now coming to light, with clusters of childhood leukaemias appearing in villages on the Cumbrian coast - and, indeed, on the other side of the sea in Ireland.

Is the pollution really worth while? Is it a justifiable price to pay for the cheap electricity that nuclear power is said to provide? The answer is a resounding No. The costs of generating nuclear electricity, as Peter Bunyard explains only too clearly, are incomparably higher than they are made out to be by the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) and Britain's other generating boards. [18] Significantly, in the USA, the nuclear industry is almost dead. There have been no new orders for nuclear power stations for several years, while over 100 orders have been cancelled since the late 1970s.

This is not primarily because of opposition to nuclear power - though this is certainly a factor - but because they are too expensive. In the USA, power is generated by private companies which do not have a monopoly on electricity supply and which cannot afford the massive investment required for a single nuclear power station. By contrast, the CEGB is one of the largest monopolies in the world. With most electricity being generated by coal, it can afford, at this stage, to divert its resources to a build-up of nuclear power.

If a referendum were called tomorrow, it is likely that Britain's nuclear industry would be phased out in the near future. [19] Of those questioned in a recent public opinion poll (conducted prior to the Chernobyl accident), 70 percent said that they thought Sellafield unsafe: 39 percent wanted the plant closed, whilst 40 percent felt it should only reprocess spent fuel from Britain's reactors. [20] Only 17 percent of those interviewed believed ministerial assurances that the plant was safe - and a mere 11 percent wished the government to continue building nuclear plants. [21]

Despite such public disquiet over nuclear power (disquiet which the government puts down to "emotionalism" and "irrationality") the government remains firmly committed to its nuclear programme. The reason, as Peter Bunyard makes clear, lies in the well-established (but much denied) connection between Britain's civil nuclear programme and the maintenance of her independent nuclear deterrent. [22] Put simply, Britain needs nuclear power to generate the plutonium for atom bombs.

Third World relations

Our relationship with the Third World is also increasingly governed by hard-nosed business considerations. Since 1980, it has been official government policy to allocate aid according to "political, industrial and commercial considerations" with the aim of "helping the poorest people in the poorest countries". As John Tanner notes in The Times, however, "the second definition of aid seems to have been forgotten". [23] Indeed, the government has actually reduced its aid to the people of Africa in the face of the worst famine of all time.

As John Madeley points out, this reduction in aid is intended to ensure that "there is more in the kitty for better off countries such as Turkey and Mexico". [24] The logic is that such countries are more likely to have the cash to spend on British goods and services than the poor nations of Africa. The 'goods and services' that are available from Britain include pesticides whose use is often prohibited in other Western countries, armaments (of which Britain now sells £1,200 million worth a year) and even instruments of torture.

Does the British public share the cynicism of its political leaders? Judging by its overwhelming support for Bob Geldof in his efforts to raise money for real aid to the world's starving masses, this is unlikely. Indeed John Madeley suggests:

There could yet be votes for politicians who show people that they understand why and how Britain's relationship with the Third World does matter - why it is not in our interests that Third World people are poisoned by our chemicals, go hungry because we refuse to pay a fair price for their products and give aid to build giant white elephants, like the Mahaweli project, which can only serve to impoverish still further the poor of the Third World. [25]

Rationalizing inaction

The second theme to emerge from this book concerns the hand-in-glove relationship that has developed between industry, politicians and the civil service. Whenever efforts have been made to impose controls, however modest, on the activities of our most polluting industries, civil servants have done their level best to water down those controls or, worse still, to stifle them at birth.

To choose an example at random: consider the support given to the highly polluting pesticide industry by successive British governments. As Chris Rose notes,

"recent research in the Kew Public Records Office by Maurice Frankel of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, has revealed how early attempts to bring pesticides under a comprehensive system of legal controls in order to protect farmworkers, the public and the environment, were undermined and finally defeated by concerted lobbying from within the civil service on behalf (it would appear) of the pesticide industry. Official papers from the early 1950s show how civil servants deliberately manoeuvred and steered 'expert' committees away from imposing legal controls - and even rewrote and reversed their findings." [26]

Rose goes on to comment:

"the ministry not only went out of its way to help manufacturers and commercial users of farm chemicals to fend off controls over their use, it also played a considerable role in undermining controls over the sale of pesticides in shops."

It is worth considering some of the expedients resorted to by government, industry and the civil service to prevent the imposition of controls not only over the use of pesticides but over other destructive activities.

A question of evidence

The most obvious expedient is to insist that there is no 'scientific evidence' that a particular product or activity is in fact harmful, and hence no need to control it. Most people generally accept such an assurance at its face value, especially if it is provided by a well-known and highly qualified scientist. Few realise that such an assurance is often only true because no one has ever bothered to look for the evidence - in other words, there is 'no evidence' because the necessary research has never been undertaken to find it.

The point is made by Erik Millstone with regard to food additives.

"When industry says that there is no evidence of any chronic hazards from additives, this does not mean that it has looked for such hazards." [27]

The truth is that there has been very little research into the effects of food additives on our health.

Nor for that matter has there been much research on the environmental effects of agricultural chemicals. As Harry Walters recently noted in an article in The Ecologist, agricultural research in Britain has been "concentrated on the most cost-effective ways of using the new machines, fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides"; environmental research has been "virtually ignored and has remained neglected to this day". [28]

The fact that the environmental effects of the majority of chemicals have never been examined has not prevented successive British governments from encouraging their use. Thus the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service (ADAS) has encouraged the use of more and more nitrate fertilisers, though it has never conducted "any research on the quality of food produced or on the health of those who eat it".

Chris Rose notes that

"the complete absence of figures for the amounts of different pesticides used on farms makes the detailed study of pesticide related cancers, nervous disorders, or other potential effects extremely difficult, if not impossible."

In addition,

"baseline environmental monitoring has been studiously ignored or even reduced, so ministers can safely reply that there is 'no evidence' of problems."

Nor does the government have much idea of the extent to which drinking water is contaminated since "data on pesticides detected in rivers and groundwater are not held centrally". [29]

Worse still, as David Wheeler of the University of Surrey points out, Britain's water authorities have been specifically asked by the Department of the Environment "under direct instructions from ministers... effectively to ignore contamination of the public water supplies by pesticides". [30] It would clearly be an embarrassment for the public to know the extent to which its drinking water is contaminated with such poisons.

Even when environmental research is undertaken, it is often carried out with the apparent aim of justifying the continued use of a chemical or the continuation of a given policy. In 1982, for example, Sir Derek (now Lord) Rayner was appointed to conduct an audit of research undertaken by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF). Commenting on the need to continue monitoring the biological effects of dumping waste at sea, Rayner [31] listed the three reasons why such monitoring should be carried out:

1. Because the (Oslo and London) Conventions require it;
2. As a check on paper predictions of the effects of dumping;
3. In order to demonstrate to national and international opinion that dumping is safe.

Research to demonstrate that dumping is safe? Whatever happened to scientific objectivity?

Another tactic is to fund research which attempts to pin the blame for environmental damage or adverse health effects on factors which are either outside our control or whose regulation does not demand any drastic changes in policy. Thus, although many eminent epidemiologists now believe that between 50 and 80 percent of human cancers are caused by exposure to radiation or to chemicals in the environment, little research is devoted to the environmental causes of cancer. Instead, the bulk of the funding goes on researching the mechanisms of carcinogenesis at the cellular level and the role that viruses play as possible causes of cancer.

Similarly, Nigel Dudley notes that according to Steve Elsworth of Friends of the Earth,

"The CEGB's scientific research is framed so that it does not ask the question 'what causes acid rain?' but rather 'what apart from sulphur oxide emissions could cause acid damage to the environment?' " [32]

What is 'scientific evidence'?

Even when sufficient data have been acquired to justify the banning of a dangerous environmental pollutant, government scientists often insist that it does not constitute 'scientific evidence'. Thus, although the literature on the connection between nitrosamines and cancer is extensive, this does not prevent government medical advisers from declaring the link to be 'not proven'.

This brings us to the rarely discussed question of what actually constitutes 'scientific evidence'. One of its necessary features is that it must have been obtained by a qualified scientist. This is not a frivolous comment. Often evidence which incriminates a chemical or an activity as harmful is dismissed by the authorities because it has been gathered by a 'layman' rather than a scientist.

For example, reports by farmers of abortions and birth defects among sheep following their exposure to the herbicide 2,4,5-T have invariably been classified as "anecdotal evidence" - no matter how many cases are reported by farmers, or how well documented those reports might be. In effect, 'scientific evidence' is a commodity over which scientists have a virtual monopoly - which is of course very convenient, since most of them are employed directly or indirectly by government or industry. Those who are not, are unlikely to obtain funding for the relevant research.

Another feature of scientific evidence is its claimed indubitability. But is it really possible to guarantee that a chemical is completely safe? It is certainly difficult, if not impossible, to prove the harmfulness of a chemical substance epidemiologically. Erik Millstone makes this point with regard to food additives:

"With 3,500 or more additives being used in millions of combinations, and often in minute quantities (some products contain up to 30 different additives), it is next to impossible for epidemiology to identify any long-term or chronic effects from using particular food additives." [33]

Even under laboratory conditions, it is difficult to prove for certain that a chemical is 100 percent safe. Consider, for example, the problems of testing for carcinogenicity:

• Cancer tends to have a long 'latency' period - that is, it takes a considerable time (5 to 30 or more years) after exposure to a carcinogenic agent before the disease manifests itself. Clearly it is very difficult (if not impossible) to carry out experiments over such a period of time. Yet to expose laboratory animals to large doses over shorter periods (thus artificially reducing the latency period) may give misleading results.
• Cancer can be caused by exposure to numerous chemicals. Since we are exposed to a vast number of possible carcinogens (it is reckoned that some 9,000 different synthetic organic chemicals are in current everyday use, and many of them are either established or suspected carcinogens), a slight carcinogenic effect on the part of an individual chemical could be of significance. However, to test for slight carcinogenic effects is complicated and expensive, since it requires exposing large numbers of laboratory animals to very small doses. Not surprisingly, such tests are rarely carried out.
• Any comprehensive safety test would have to test for all the additive effects and (more difficult still) the synergic effects of all the different combinations of chemicals to which we are exposed.
• It is logistically impossible to carry out all the tests which would be required to establish that a chemical is safe beyond all doubt. To reveal every possible carcinogenic, let alone mutagenic or teratogenic, effect would necessitate testing sufficient samples of every possible combination of all the chemicals introduced into our environment, over a long enough period for the tests to yield meaningful results. Among other things, there are probably not enough technicians, laboratories or indeed laboratory animals available in the world, much less in Britain, to carry out the vast number of experiments which would be required to undertake such tests.
• The tests carried out on laboratory, animals, living in totally artificial conditions, cannot be taken as providing hard and fast evidence as to the effects of a chemical on human being living in the real world. Thalidomide, for instance, had hundreds of times less effect on laboratory, hamsters than on human beings.

The myth of 'acceptable' levels

If we take all these, and many other factors, into account, one cannot avoid coming to the conclusion that the 'scientific evidence' to which government scientists attach so much importance does not amount to very much in the way of a guarantee of safety. All we can hope to establish is the probability that a chemical is harmful, and that should be regarded as sufficient information to act upon. Were such an approach to be adopted, however, few of the chemicals we use today would be permitted.

Faced with that reality, the authorities have frequently reacted by simply burying their heads in the sands. Thus a spokesman for MAFF's Advisory Committee on Pesticides (ACP) actually told one of us [Edward Goldsmith] in a telephone conversation in 1977 that there was no evidence that synergic effects existed - this despite a large body of research to the contrary. Indeed, the scientific literature makes it clear that synergic effects are present more often than they are absent.

The refusal of MAFF scientists to face up to the existence (let alone the dangers) of synergy is reflected in the "permissible" levels which the ministry sets for pesticide residues in food. Those levels are based on the implausible assumption that whilst it is unsafe to consume more than a given amount of a single pesticide, it is perfectly safe to consume a cocktail of many different pesticides - so long as the level of each pesticide in the cocktail does not exceed the permitted level.

The truth is that it is impossible to set a safe level for a given pesticide when our food contains tens if not hundreds of pesticide residues - not to mention all the other chemicals purposefully introduced into it by the food industry.

In fact, few of the "acceptable" levels which have been set for exposure to pollutants (be it pesticides or other dangerous substances) have any serious biological basis. More often than not the "acceptable" exposure level to a pollutant is the lowest level acceptable to the industry which generates it.

Angela Singer shows how this is so with respect to exposure to asbestos. [34] Indeed the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has itself admitted that the officially accepted level of asbestos particles in the air we breathe is "of no biological significance"; the level being no more than "an empirical level which we have some hope of enforcing", or "merely what engineering controls achieve".

Other examples abound. Consider the following extract, for instance, from the 1967 Report of the Food Additives and Contaminants Committee on Aldrin and Dieldrin Residues in Food:

"We should like to recommend that no aldrin and dieldrin be permitted in milk and baby foods but we are aware that with the great sensitivity of analytic methods it has become possible to detect very low residues of aldrin and dieldrin in food and also that at present it would be impossible to produce milk or baby foods that were entirely free from aldrin and dieldrin. For these reasons we reluctantly decide against a zero tolerance and recommend that a limit of 0.003 ppm. be placed on aldrin and dieldrin in liquid milk, this being the lowest practicable limit of analysis. We recommend a corresponding limit of 0.02 ppm. in baby foods (including dried milk) which would take account of the difference in residues likely to be found in liquid and dried products. We also recommend that all ingredients for baby foods should be chosen by manufacturers with a view to keeping the aldrin and dieldrin content to the lowest possible level. While these limits seem to us realistic, we do not accept them readily or with equanimity." [35]

Secrecy

Research that conflicts with the interests of industry or which, if made public, would cast government policy in a poor light is frequently kept secret. This is often achieved by pleading the Official Secrets Act. Maurice Frankel deals with this whole issue - and the vital need for a Freedom of Information Act - in some detail. [36]

Other authors give examples of how secrecy has prevented the public from knowing the real dangers it runs from exposure to specific pollutants:

• Angela Singer shows how a key Department of Health report on asbestos was kept secret for no less than eight years. "When the BBC television programme, Nationwide, wanted a copy ... it had to be obtained in the USA under the US Freedom of Information Act". [37]
• Brian Price notes how Sir Henry Yellowlees, Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health, wrote a letter in which he stated that "the simplest and quickest way of reducing general population exposure to lead is by reducing sharply or by entirely eliminating lead in petrol". This letter, however, was not made public until it was eventually leaked to CLEAR, the Campaign for Lead Free Air. [38]
• Secrecy also prevents the public from knowing anything about the chemical additives in processed foods. As Erik Millstone points out, "all the deliberations of the Food Advisory Committee of MAFF, as well as all the technical data on which its gives its advice to ministers, are covered by the Official Secrets Act". [39]
• So too, secrecy prevents us from knowing anything about the pesticides used to grow the food we eat and hence about the pesticide residues which we inevitably consume. As Chris Rose notes, MAFF "insists that pesticide safety and environmental clearance data should be kept secret". [40]

Such secrecy over the health effects of pollutants is particularly irresponsible. Serious and objective students of carcinogenesis are agreed that somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of human cancers are caused by exposure to radiation or by the chemicals in the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe.

This is certainly the position of Professor Samuel Epstein - one of the leading authorities on the subject in the USA. Alan Irwin and Doogie Russell, though not venturing a figure themselves, point to research sponsored by the trade unions which shows that up to 30 percent of cancers are caused in the work place by exposure to such pollutants as asbestos, 2,4,5-T, vinyl chloride, benzene, BCME, low-level radiation and aromatic amines - all of which are well-documented carcinogens. [41]

The chemical industry and the scientists whom it employs either directly or indirectly insist that industrial pollutants are not a major cause of cancer. Instead, they blame the majority of cancers on viruses, smoking and the consumption of alcohol and animal fats. At most, industry tells us, chemicals in the workplace cause 5 percent of cancers. But even if this figure were true, it would mean, as Allan Irwin and Doogie Russell note, that about 7,000 people are dying of cancer every year as a result of occupational exposure to carcinogens. [42] If Epstein is right, then the real figure is far higher - between 70,000 and 112,000 every year.

How can we possibly justify having hidden from so many people information which, if it had been acted upon, could have prevented them from dying a slow and painful death?

If we are to reverse the rising tide of cancer deaths in Britain, there is only one possible course open to us. As Irwin and Russell argue, our first priority must be to tackle carcinogenic substances in the environment. [43] To do this we must counteract "the secrecy and the complacency that has characterised the state's approach to regulation" and indeed oppose "the powerful lobbies in this country which act against good health". We can no longer tolerate the stonewalling and secrecy of government and industry, on this vital issue - and it is up to the environmental movement to make this clear.

Misleading the Public

Today, much of the information supplied by government and industry on key environmental issues is designed to rationalise current practices and policies. To that end, numerous public statements have been made which can only be described as purposefully misleading.

Alice Coleman, for example, considers that the land-use surveys provided by the civil service were designed, "consciously or unconsciously", to conceal information rather than reveal it. [44] This, she says, may reflect the fact that the department responsible for advising on land-use policies (the Department of the Environment) also designs the surveys that might expose the adverse consequences of its advice. Elsewhere she refers to the official land-use surveys as "smokescreens of disinformation".

Likewise, the CEGB is shamelessly cooking the books in order to suggest that nuclear power stations are more economic than coal-fired ones. The Board has resorted to every possible accounting trick in order to delude the public on that score. Even the House of Commons Select Committee on Energy has concluded that "the method used by the CEGB to justify past investments in Nuclear Power is highly misleading as a guide to past investment decisions" and "entirely useless for appraising future ones". [45]

The National Radiological Protection Board is also misleading the public when it states that

"no overriding reason connected with radiological protection considerations has been identified which would preclude the disposal of suitably conditioned high-level waste on the ocean floor."

The NRPB knows that there is no commercially obtainable material that can contain high-level wastes for the tens of thousands of years (in some cases hundreds of thousands) during which they are potentially dangerous. Certainly the stainless steel drums in which the wastes are normally encased are quite inadequate to the task in hand - not least because they will be corroded by the action of the salt water in a matter of decades.

The NRPB also knows that it is impossible to predict the movement of radionuclides on the ocean floor, especially if one considers that violent storms are known to occur in the ocean's depths which could transport them just about anywhere. Besides, the Board's reassurances are based on the assumption that radionuclides are diluted in the sea water - "the myth of dilution", as Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University refers to it. In reality, radionuclides tend to concentrate in specific organisms, organs and tissues.

Thus ruthenium concentrates in seaweed, strontium in the bones of living things, plutonium in bones and testicles (which might partly explain the current epidemic of testicular cancer among young men in the industrial world), iodine 129 and 131 in the thyroid gland and so on. Such concentrations can be anything up to 300,000 times the levels in the surrounding environment.

Patrick Jenkin MP also misled the public when he said that although the contamination of Cumbrian beaches (as the result of an accidental release of nuclear waste from Sellafield in 1983) was "very unsatisfactory", there was "no evidence it could cause significant damage to anyone's health". He went on to say that the worst that anyone might suffer would be "localised irritation of the skin from prolonged contact with one of a number of pieces which have been found with much higher than usual levels of radioactivity".

As Peter Bunyard describes in detail, even very small doses of radioactivity can cause cancer. Yet, in the case of Sellafield, we are dealing with the release of a substantial amount of radioactive waste, quite sufficient to affect the health of anyone exposed to it.

The government, as we now know, was also guilty of hoodwinking the public when it insisted that plutonium from civil nuclear reactors had never been exported to the USA for military purposes. Nigel Lawson, when Secretary of State for Energy, stated quite explicitly that

"There is no more connection between the generation of power in a nuclear power station and weapons than there is between a conventional power station and conventional weapons."

CEGB representatives took the same line at the Sizewell Inquiry. Significantly, Lord Hinton, the first Chairman of the CEGB to commission nuclear power stations for generating electricity, made the following comment:

"I am absolutely certain the CEGB statement is incorrect . . I don't know whether they should get permission for a PWR at Sizewell or not, but what is important is that they shouldn't tell bloody lies in their evidence."

In March 1986, Lord Marshall, Chairman of the CEGB, admitted that some civil plutonium had indeed been diverted for military use.

Suppressing information

All too often, government scientists who actually take it upon themselves to tell the truth on some vital environmental issue immediately get into trouble with the authorities, usually on the grounds that they have broken the Official Secrets Act and are thereby some sort of traitor.

Thus, when in 1982 Dr Matthews, a soil scientist working for the MAFF, dared warn Cumbrian mothers not to take their children onto the radioactive beaches in the area around Sellafield, he was immediately dismissed from his job. No one was supposed to know that the beaches were significantly radioactive. So, too, when Dr Ross Hesketh revealed in 1983 that the British government, contrary to all its assurances, was exporting plutonium to the USA for military purposes, he suffered the same fate.

When a government-appointed body decides to publish environmental information that is not consistent with the government line, it is also likely to get into trouble. Thus, the Standing Technical Advisory Committee on Water Quality warned the government in 1983 (in two leaked draft reports) of the alarming increases in the nitrate contents of most of our drinking water. It even dared show that some of our drinking water was so contaminated that we would be in breach of an EEC Directive on water quality, when it came into force in 1985.

The government's response was simply to abolish the committee and to decree that, in future, reports on water quality would be drawn up only for the purpose of advising ministers, and would remain unpublished.

Scientists from the Soil Survey of England and Wales found their funds cut off after they reported on the true extent of soil erosion from arable land in Britain. The survey revealed that soil erosion is widespread, thus giving the lie to previous government assurances that erosion is not a problem in Britain, The results of the survey highlighted how destructive and unsustainable are the modern capital-intensive methods of farming which successive governments have been encouraging farmers to adopt. The Soil Survey is now likely to be discontinued.

Given such heavy-handed attempts to manipulate the flow of information to the public, it is hardly surprising that government announcements are treated with increasing scepticism by those within the environmental movement. Nor is that scepticism restricted to environmental activists. An informal poll conducted some years ago revealed that no more than 12 percent of BNFL's employees at Sellafield actually believed what their management was telling them regarding the safety of the plant they worked in. How long will it be before the electorate, as a whole, reacts in a similar way to the pronouncements of its elected government?

Delaying tactics

On those occasions when the government has been forced to 'do something' about a pollutant or a hazardous activity (usually as a result of a public outcry), its first reaction has invariably been to set up a scientific committee to 'look into the problem'. This delaying tactic (well known to fans of Yes, Minister) gains considerable time, since committees can take several years before they report. It also gives the public the impression that the government's response is even-handed, objective and well considered.

In recent years, no fewer than ten committees have been set up to examine the hazards of the herbicide 2,4,5-T. Each one has pronounced the poison "safe" if used according to the manufacturers' instructions - a recommendation which, as Chris Kaufman points out, completely ignores the realities of spraying the chemical under farming conditions. [46]

Similar committees in the USA and elsewhere have reviewed the same basic evidence and come to dramatically different conclusions. Indeed, 2,4,5-T is now banned in the USA (for most uses), Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Japan and Holland.

In 1976, the Labour government set up the Simpson Committee (known after its chairman, Bill Simpson) to look into the relationship between asbestos and lung cancer - a full 70 years after the critical link between the two had first been established.

The committee took three years to come out with its final report, which contained 41 recommendations. By January 1986, only four of those recommendations had been implemented. According to Angela Singer, "Many of the proposed reforms would have made no real difference to industrial practices anyway". [47]

Similarly, in the mid-1970s, under pressure from environmental groups to ban the addition of lead to petrol, the government commissioned Professor Patrick Lawther to look into the health effects of leaded petrol. Notes Brian Price,

"In doing so, it bought time during which it did not have to act and also hoped for a whitewash of sufficient opacity to enable it to rebuff the environmentalists for some considerable time." [48]

In the event, "the ploy backfired". The report was too deeply flawed to stand up to more than superficial analysis, and it was quickly discredited.

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?

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".

Notes