Still Time to Survive, Barry Commoner Says

The portents of man-made disaster are everywhere: global warming, widespread drought and famine; holes in the Earth’s protective ozone mantle; polluted lakes and oceans; disappearing species, and a glut of toxic waste.

Yet Earth Day co-founder Barry Commoner--long a voice in the wilderness for environmentally sensitive ways of producing food, energy and goods--says there is still time. Time to attack the causes of pollution, to change our energy-gulping ways and the very way we live.

“There is time-- if we start now,” said the 72-year-old biologist and director of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College in New York City. “We’ve got maybe 20 to 30 years to forestall the effect of global warming. But we have to start now, because it takes time.”

Commoner, in town to speak at Cal State Fullerton on Monday as part of a weeklong series of events leading up to Earth Day observances Sunday, said in an interview that the answer remains the same one he outlined in 1970, the year he made the cover of Time Magazine for his revolutionary views on the environment.

“The only thing that will work is prevention. . . . Environmental pollution is an incurable disease . . . and once you have the disease, it is too late,” he said.

The solution is to eliminate the pollutants before they damage the atmosphere, the drinking water, the soil and our health, Commoner said. It worked with lead, a deadly compound that is largely being eliminated from gasoline, paints and other compounds, and with PCBs, a toxic, extremely persistent chemical that once was used in virtually every transformer box on every utility pole in the nation.

But society must apply the same principles to nitrogen oxide emissions from cars, to sources of ozone and a host of other chemicals instead of following the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s path of establishing so-called “acceptable” levels of pollution.

That is where the consumer comes in, Commoner said. The buyers must demand something more than an “acceptable” risk of toxicity.

“A classic case is the pesticide alar,” he said of the controversial chemical that until recently was sprayed on apple crops around the nation to prolong shelf life. “Most mothers felt that if there was a question about the safety of alar, they wouldn’t take a chance. And the sale of apples and apple juice fell off very sharply. As a result, the manufacturer of alar took it off the market.

“Really that’s the way we have to go: Instead of arguing about what (level of risk) is acceptable, we simply have to change what we produce and how we produce it. To eliminate pollution, it means shifting to organic farming, changing the engines of the cars so they don’t produce nitrogen oxide, switching to solar energy and stop using (harmful) chemicals. . . .

“All of the clean technologies are known, it’s a question of simply applying them,” he said, repeating his oft-asserted charge that the technology to produce a pollutant-free car engine exists but U.S. auto makers will not invest in the necessary overhaul of existing manufacturing plants.

In many respects, not a lot has changed since 1970, said Commoner, who is promoting his new book “Making Peace With the Planet.” But he finds reason for optimism in the proliferation of grass-roots environmental groups dotting cities and towns across the country and the world.

“These groups have adopted the prevention strategy, and they are confronting polluters in their hometown,” he said, citing the success of residents of South Central Los Angeles who successfully blocked a massive trash incinerator, the Lancer Project, planned for their community.

Star Kist Tuna’s decision last week to refuse to buy products from fishing concerns that trap dolphins in their nets is another example of the kind of pressure ordinary citizens can exert, he said.

“In that case, the industry got the message: The message is, people who are conducting a production process that damages the environment have to change what they are doing. They have to change the way they produce tuna fish, the way they grow apples, the way they make gasolines, the way they make car engines,” Commoner said.

The next step, however, will require consumer/environmentalists to find their way into the corporate board rooms of America, where decisions about products and profits are made, he said.