From: prune@athena.mit.edu (Paul Berland)
Subject: The Grip of Apathy is Strong
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 11:15:30 GMT

What are we up against?

Barry Commoner hints at it in "The Failure of the Environmental Effort"
April 1992, _Current History_, Vol. 91, No. 564:

     In 1970 the Clean Air Act ammendments called for a 90 percent 
     reduction in the levels of urban carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon, 
     and ozone, setting a 1977 deadline for achieving this goal.  
     The penalty for failure was very severe: loss of federal 
     funding for development projects.  In 1977, with compliance 
     not even in sight, the deadline was moved to 1982.  And when 
     that also was missed, the deadline was once more delayed, to 
     December 31, 1987.  Now, with urban areas in which 100 million 
     people breathe substandard air still in noncompliance, the 
     1990 ammendments to the Clean Air Act give some of these places 
     another 25 years to comply --- to meet the standard, if they 
     can.  Step by embarrassing step, because we are unwilling to 
     adopt the measures that can prevent air pollution, enforcement 
     of the laboriously constructed standards evolves into a
     distant hope.

     It hardly requires a sociological survey to determine the 
     response to this retrogressive policy.  The polluters can 
     justify their inaction and the public its apathy.  It erodes 
     the integrity of regulation and diminishes public faith in the
     meaning of environmental legislation.  This is part of the 
     price we pay for failing to attack environmental pollution
     at its origin.

     Confronted with such environmental failures, regulatory 
     agencies have become remarkably creative about finding new
     ways to retreat.  The latest is what I call the Humpty-Dumpty
     approach.  You will recall that in _Through the Looking Glass_,
     Alice gets into an argument with Humpty-Dumpty, who claims that
     the word "glory" means "a nice, knock-down argument."  When
     Alice objects to this arbitrary redefinition, Humpty-Dumpty
     says, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to
     mean."  Alice replies, "The question is whether you can make
     words mean so many different things."  Humpty-Dumpty's response
     is unanswerable: "The question is, which is to be the master."

     I am afraid Humpty's freewheeling linguistic philosophy has
     begun to take hold in regulatory circles.  Not long ago, for
     example, when tests of fly ash --- the fine ash emitted by
     trash-burning incinerators --- showed that it was sufficiently
     contaminated with toxic metals to qualify as a hazardous 
     substance, as defined by the EPA, the New York State Department
     of Environmental Protection issued a remarkable pronouncement.
     Metal-contaminated fly ash is not a hazardous substance, it was
     declared, but a "special waste."  This did not change the lead
     or cadmium content of the fly ash, of course.  What it did mean
     was fly ash, unlike an ordinary hazardous substance, need not
     be consigned to an expensive Class I landfill --- an additional
     cost that, according to a New York State official, might cripple
     the incinerator industry.