Science, technology and the growing environmental crisis

Scan page 18

Events like Exxon Valdez oil spill have spurred growth of environmental groups-who The previous article in this series on the environment (February 1990) reviewed the death and disease that the high-tech capitalist holocaust has already caused on the earth. Part IV in the series examines the role of science and technology in addressing the crisis of the environment.

The depth of the environmental crisis has led to a search for answers among millions of people worldwide. One expression of this has been the sharp rise of environmentalist groups.

In the United States, environmental groups have experienced a big surge in membership, particularly after the Valdez Oil spill in the spring of 1989. The Wilderness Society alone has doubled its membership in the past two years to 335,000 members.

A recent national poll showed that over 75 percent of Americans think that preserving the environment is a key issue and would even be willing to pay higher prices for safe products.

A National Earth Day 1990 Coalition, with centers on the East and West coasts, has been formed to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the first Earth Day. Coalition leaders are calling for a week of education and action culminating in a large rally on the Mall in Washington, D.C., on April 22. [See box for details.] All the politicians are jumping on the environmentalist bandwagon. Even Margaret Thatcher plunged into environmentalism and hosted a conference on ozone depletion last May. George Bush ran as an environmentalist and said that he is committed to tackling the global warming issue.

But as people are beginning to see, these ruling-class politicians are only paying lip service to the environment. Both the United States and Britain, for example, blocked with Japan last fall in defeating an attempt to convene an international conference in the Netherlands to set a date to enact curbs on carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.

Role of 'Big Oil' Humanity has passed through the epochs of primitive communism, the rise of agriculture, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and the advent of socialism. Technologically, it has passed through the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age.

Barry Commoner, in his book "The Poverty of Power" reports that the petroAge."

In an article in Modern Plastics, it was reported that the use of synthetic petrochemicals was growing so fast that it would overtake iron as the most common material by the mid-1990s.

This industry has enjoyed overwhelming success in taking over traditional markets such as textiles, furniture, home furnishings, paints, and building materials. This fact enables Big Oil to wield incredible power.

Together these industries are dominated by 20 major corporations that are worth a total of $181 billion and produce 18 percent of the nation's Gross National Product in sales.

These corporations have flooded the market with synthetic products that are dangerous to produce and dangerous to use. Big Oil's power has also diverted capital investment and Department of Transportation funds into petroleum-consuming and polluting auto, truck, and bus transportation away from non-highway and non-petroleum using transportation systems that are energy conserving and non-polluting.

Barry Commoner relates how a nationwide electric trolley system comprised of 40,000 streetcars in 1936 provided a clean, cheap, and efficient web of inner city and intra-city transportation in the United States. This system was dismantled and reduced to 5000 streetcars by 1955 by corporations established by the General Motors Corp. in order to create a market for its new line of buses.

These GM subsidiaries bought up trolley lines in collaboration with Standard Oil of now have over 10 million members.

lems, "in effect defining the disease as a collection of symptoms." In order to accomplish prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would have to wage a head-on confrontation against interests such as the auto industry, the petrochemical industry, and agribusiness, forcing them to introduce major, costly, technological changes that would cut deep into their bloated profits.

How will industry respond to such a proposal? We already have the example set by DuPont, the major producers of freon, whose chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) has contributed to the destruction of the ozone layer.

DuPont fought efforts to stop CFC production for 15 years in spite of the fact that freon accounted for a small share of this giant corporation's assets. DuPont endangered the life of the planet for less than 2 percent of its total earnings and sales!

New strategy needed The technological means could be at hand to resolve the problems of the ecosystem. But capitalism-its governments, politicians, and corporate bosses-have blocked all solutions to the problems.

The unprecedented development of science and technology over the past decades has brought with it the promise of radical improvements in the standard of living for people throughout the globe. But this promise has not been fulfilled. On the contrary, for most inhabitants of this planet, hunger and deprivation are the order of the day.

In the epoch of imperialism, science and technology are not geared to meeting human needs, but to preserving and perpetuating a system of production-capitalism-that has outlived its usefulness and is in fact taking the world to the brink of the abyss. The large bulk of scientific research today is conducted for military purposes; that is, for the purpose of destruction.

But ecological survival of the earth does not require an abandonment of technology. On the contrary, it requires the full flourishing of science and technology aimed at meeting human needs. But as long as science and technology are developed within a system of production based on private profit (and war), they will be part of the problem, not the solution.

The scope of the environmental crisis is worldwide. From all the information available to us from the environmentally minded scientific community, it is clear that the human race is an endangered species and the planet Earth is an endangered planet.

If a way out of this impasse is not found in time, it will mean the extinction of all life as we know it. Which political forces and what strategy will be needed to resolve this crisis will be the topic of the fifth and final article of this series.

CTION APRIL1990 17

----- pull-quotes -----

chemical industry has made a semi-official bid to designate our own as the "Synthetic