Charles C. Johnson, Jr.

English

St. John's University School of Law

The Catholic Lawyer Volume 17 Number 1 Volume 17, Winter 1971, Number 1 Article 6 February 2017 The Environment: Everyman's Issue Charles C. Johnson, Jr. Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/tcl  Part of the Environmental Law Commons Recommended Citation Charles C. Johnson, Jr. (1971) "The Environment: Everyman's Issue," The Catholic Lawyer: Vol. 17 : No. 1 , Article 6. Available at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/tcl/vol17/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Catholic Lawyer by an authorized editor of St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact selbyc@stjohns.edu. THE ENVIRONMENT:EVERYMAN'S ISSUECHARLES C. JOHNSON, JR.*S OME EARNEST and well-intentioned people reject the current concernfor the environment as a false issue, a "middle-class" issue, or a dis-traction from more real and pressing social needs. Oddly enough, as arecent issue of Time magazine put it, this anti-ecology backlash is beingvoiced by many who have "little more in common than the smoggy airthey breathe." They include black militants, conservatives who think thewhole environmental crisis is a subversive plot, and a few who still thinkall that is at stake is the whooping crane.It seems to me that those who hold these views do not understandwhat is happening to our environment. Perhaps they don't even under-stand what we really mean by "the environment." And most of all, itseems to me, they have failed to recognize the complex ways in whichour social and environmental ills interact, that they have their originsin the same root causes, that they contribute to and intensify each other,and that their solutions are inextricably bound together.The young people, whose concern for civil rights, peace and equal-ity has now been extended to include ecology, understand these rela-tionships better than most of my own generation. Part of what theseyoung people are trying to tell us is that the problems of pollution,urban decay and wasted resources are intertwined with, and form partof, the problems of hunger, poverty and the physical and psychologicalills that are their constant companions.In my opinion, we need to understand, first of all, that concernfor the environment is essentially a concern for man. We may legiti-mately be concerned about the fate of the bald eagle or the grizzly bearor the giant redwoods, and there is no doubt we should question a* Associate Executive Director, American Public Health Association. B.S.C.E..Purdue University, 1947; M.SC.E., Purdue University, 1957.human ethic that callously permits theneedless destruction of other life forms,but in the final analysis the issue is: canman survive and flourish in an environ-ment in which these organisms that sharehis delicately balanced ecosystem are al-ready threatened with destruction?We know something about the effects ofenvironmental factors on human health-the relationship between some pollutantsand respiratory disease or cancer, for ex-ample. But we have barely begun to ex-plore some of the more subtle, long-rangehazards, including prenatal and genetic ef-fects and the psychological and sociologi-cal impact of unwholesome environments.It is apparent, however, that, as Dr. ReneDubos puts it, "The age of affluence, tech-nological marvels, and medical miracles isparadoxically the age of chronic ailments,of anxiety, and even of despair." The truthis that we don't have to wait for doomsdayor "eco-catastrophe" to see the results ofenvironmental mismanagement. We haveenvironmental problems involving survivalfor many in the here and now.The second thing we need to rememberis that what is commonly termed "pollu-tion" is not the entire environmental prob-lem. The environment of life is more thanland, air, and water. It is also where welive, work, and play. It is the products weconsume or use. Today, for too many peo-ple, it is noise and crowding. It is garbagepiling up in halls and alleyways. It is rats,insects and crumbling, insanitary housing.It is clogged highways, unsafe cities,and unplanned suburbs. It is rural slumsthat degrade human life and testify to thesquandering of natural resources.Who bears the principal burden of all17 CATHOLIC LAWYER, WINTER 1971these environmental ills? The poor and thenear-poor. All of us, the scientists tell us,are carrying around in our fatty tissuessome 12 parts per million of DDT. Whogets the biggest dose? Probably, as CesarChavez has told us, the poor, itinerantfarm worker. Whose children sufferedbrain damage because mercury-treatedseed grain was fed to hogs that were laterslaughtered and eaten? A poor New Mex-ico farmer. And, if mercury pollution isconcentrating, through the food chain, infish, who is it that is most apt to live on adiet of fish taken from polluted streamsand coastal waters? The poor. Where doyou find unvented gas heaters that cansicken and kill with carbon monoxidefumes? Where are you likely to get taintedor adulterated food? Not on Park Avenue.Who goes down into the mines and gets"black lung"? Or gets skin cancer fromcoal tar? Or byssinosis from cotton dustin the textile mills? We're all breathing acertain amount of lead these days, and itis not good for any of us. But whose chil-dren are being poisoned by the lead paintthat chips off old tenement walls? Whosuffers most from the polluted air, thecrowding, the noise, the rats, the garbageof our cities? The lack of open spaces andgreenery? Not the rich or the middle-class,who can afford to get away from at leastsome of these things.These environmental impacts may wellbe among the most important factors thathold people in an unbreakable cycle ofpoverty. Anyone who is concerned withthe social and economic inequities of oursociety simply must be concerned with theenvironment in which people live.When we look closely at these problems,THE ENVIRONMENTwe can see other, even more intricate rela-tionships. For example, the problems ofour cities, and the problems of rural pov-erty-in the South or the West or theNortheast or Appalachia-are, in verylarge part, the tragic aftermath of man'smisuse of the environment on which hishealth, and his prosperity, depend. Thisheedless abuse was easy to rationalize: foryears, our society has been firm in the con-viction -that anything done in the name of"progress" was by its very nature, good,and that the side-effects, however intoler-able, were the inevitable, and acceptable,"price of progress."Now we find that we have built citiesthat are almost unlivable; we have allowedvast areas of rural America to be emptiedof people and promise and have filled ourcrowded cities with the victims of ruralblight; we've built "high-speed" highwayson which "high-speed" cars move at horse-and-buggy rates; we have built an indus-trial system that gives us an affluence neverbefore seen in the world but which pollutesthe very air and water on which our livesdepend.Let me hasten to add, before I am castwith the ecology "subversives," that thesecontradictions are certainly not unique toour own nation. They are being confrontedby every developed and developing coun-try, including those having totalitariancommunist regimes. The Baltic Sea, fifteentimes as large as Lake Erie, is said to be ineven worse condition, virtually choking onpollution. The Volga and Dneiper Riversin Russia are heavily polluted, and LakeBaikal has been damaged by pulp millsand oil refineries. As you know, the won-derful Aswan Dam, which was supposedto turn Egypt into a new Garden of Eden,has created unforeseen ecologic imbalancesthat endanger the health and livelihood ofthousands of its people. In other words,the same kind of "tunnel vision" seems tohave afflicted all societies in their single-minded pursuit of technological and eco-nomic progress.In our own country, we have finallycome to realize that these things diminishthe quality of life for all, and people arebeginning to ask themselves where we wentwrong. For the first time, Americans arebeginning to reassess the values and view-points of the past that have created theseambiguities-values and viewpoints thathave been, until recently, enshrined inmany minds as the sacred cows of the"free enterprise system" or the "Americanway." They are beginning to take a moreholistic, ecological view of our economic,social, and political philosophies. They arebeginning to question whether rights ofprivate property are so sacred that theymust include the right to untrammelledexploitation of natural resources. They arequestioning the validity of an industrialcost-accounting system that regards the airand water as free resources for waste dis-posal. And they are beginning to see newcause-and-effect relationships and realizethat we cannot deal with interrelated prob-lems in a piecemeal fashion or as thoughthey existed outside the total structure ofsociety.In other words, I believe that today, inour country, a profound reexamination istaking place-a reexamination not only ofman's relationship to nature, but also to hisinstitutions, and to his fellow man. I be-lieve that, in very large part, this reexami-nation is stimulated by a new ecologicalview of the world and all its systems, andthat it is bound to alter our nation's ap-proach to all its problems.In his State of the Union message ofJanuary, 1970, President Nixon stressedthat national wealth is not synonymouswith national happiness, and that economicgrowth is required not as a thing desirablein itself, but for the achievement of specificsocial goals. He called for development ofa growth policy. Some months earlier, hehad established a National Goals ResearchStaff to forecast future developments, as-sess their long-range consequences, andestimate the range of social choice-thatis, alternative sets of goals-to achieve thereal purposes of American life.I think it is significant that the first re-port of this group, in July, 1970, addressesitself almost exclusively to the issues whichare fundamental to an ecological view,i.e., the problems of population growthand distribution, of -the environment, ofbasic science, of technology assessment,and of education. The report points outthat they have chosen to explore theseareas not because they take precedenceover such urgent specifics as poverty,crime, and inequity, but because they arebasic to the solution of these social prob-lems-they provide the framework inwhich these problems must be solved.Let me cite just one set of examples ofwhat they term the "secondary conse-quences" of short-range, limited policydecisions:The report points out that a number ofnational policies have contributed to themassive suburbanization of the last 2517 CATHOLIC LAWYER, WINTER 1971years; for instance, FHA and VA mort-gage insurance, the interstate highway sys-tem, federal and state tax policies, andstate and local land use programs. At thesame time, defense contract awards haveaccelerated the movement of people tosouthern California and the Gulf Coast.Simultaneously, agricultural research andsupport programs have helped to causedepletion of our rural population.All of these policies, the report pointsout, have made "individually positive con-tributions to society," but their collectiveimpact on population distribution, envi-ronmental change, and economic oppor-tunity were certainly not foreseen. Now,this White House research group is tryingto clarify alternative methods of dealingwith such complex, interrelated matters inways that will create an environment moreconducive to the total social, economic,and environmental needs of the nation.If all this seems just a little academic,let me express the same principles inblunter terms: it is time we stopped re-lying on piecemeal solutions to socialproblems while we go on with "businessas usual" in every other aspect of nationallife. You cannot cure the poverty ofmigrant farm workers by handing out foodstamps, important as that may be, whilehealth and hope are destroyed by a filthy,sick environment. Welfare programs, andequal opportunity programs, are fine andnecessary things but they too will be along time breaking the cycle of povertyand inequity for people whose environ-ment is a rat-infested slum or an impover-ished, depleted, eroded patch of farm land.The ecologic view demands that webroaden our view to encompass more thanTHE ENVIRONMENTthe necessary palliatives of "pollution con-trol." We must seek ways to achieve asynthesis of human knowledge and a har-mony of human actions, in every aspect ofsocial, economic and political activity torestore and maintain a livable, hospitableenvironment. This, I believe, is what Pres-ident Nixon meant when he called for"whole new philosophies of land, air, andwater use." It is time we stopped lookingat the world through the wrong end of thetelescope and began to see ourselves interms of the macro- rather than the micro-cosm.This new ecological conscience is prov-ing once again that the law must be aliving, viable force, responsive to thechanging needs and insights of society.The law is being tested, along with otherinstitutions, against the needs of a newtechnological world in which horizons dis-appear, time is telescoped, and even thefuture is not what it used to be.At a conference on law and the environ-ment, James E. Krier, Acting Professor ofLaw at U.C.L.A. pointed out that the ex-pected surge of environmental litigationwarrants rethinking much of our substan-tive and procedural law. Much of that lawevolved during the prime of the old, pro-prietary lawsuit, which it suited well. Itfits poorly, however, the frame of the newlawsuit brought to protect environmental,not economical, values in the public, notprivate, interest. For example, the commonlaw concepts of nuisance and waste donot respond to the needs of environmentallitigation; they reflect a far too narrow andmyopic view.1This will not be an easy task, develop-ing new legal forms more relevant to theproblems of our times. However, there isno area more ripe for innovative work inour society than this one, and it is an areato which lawyers, legislators, and our ju-diciary system must devote themselves.1 See LAW AND THE ENVIRONMENT: A CONFER-ENCE (M. Baldwin & J. Page, Jr. eds. 1970) (re-marks of James E. Krier).

The Environment: Everyman\u27s Issue

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The Environment: Everyman\u27s Issue

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