Battlefield
Earth
By
Bill Moyers, AlterNet. Posted December 4, 2004
The environment is in trouble and
the religious right doesn't care.
It's time to act as if the future depends on us
because it does. This week the Center
for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School presented its fourth annual Global
Environment Citizen Award to Bill Moyers.
In presenting the award, Meryl Streep, a member of the Center board, said, "Through resourceful,
intrepid reportage and perceptive voices from the forward edge of the debate,
Moyers has examined an environment under siege with the aim of engaging
citizens." Following is the text
of Bill Moyers' response to Ms. Streep's presentation of the award:
I accept this award on behalf of
all the people behind the camera whom
you never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists,
and just plain citizens whose stories
we have covered in reporting on how
environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are simply
beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other people's
experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories. The journalist who truly deserves this award
is my friend, Bill McKibben. He enjoys
the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of journalistic heroes for his
pioneer work in writing about the environment. His bestseller "The End of Nature" carried on where Rachel
Carson's "Silent Spring" left
off. Writing in Mother Jones recently,
Bill described how the problems we
journalists routinely cover, "conventional,
manageable programs like budget shortfalls and
pollution", may be about to convert
to chaotic, unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he writes, could be the accelerating
deterioration of the environment,
creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is causing
the melt of the arctic to release so much freshwater into the North Atlantic
that even the Pentagon is growing
alarmed that a weakening gulf stream could yield abrupt and
overwhelming changes, the kind of
changes that could radically alter civilizations.
That's
one challenge we journalists face, how to tell such a story without coming
across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most want to understand
what's happening, who must act on what they read and hear. As difficult as
it is, however, for journalists to fashion a
readable narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and
viewers, there is an even harder challenge to pierce the ideology that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics
in my lifetime is that the delusional
is no longer marginal. It has come in
from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in
Congress. For the first time in our
history, ideology and theology hold a
monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot
be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted
by what is generally accepted as reality.
When ideology and theology
couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians
alike, oblivious to the facts. Remember James Watt, President Reagan's
first Secretary of the Interior? My
favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told
the U.S. Congress that protecting
natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony
he said, "after the last tree is
felled, Christ will come back." Beltway elites snickered. The press corps
didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious.
So were his compatriots out across
the country. They are the people who
believe the bible is literally true, one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is
accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went
to the polls believing in the rapture
index. That's right, the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the
best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the left-behind
series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the
19th century by a couple of immigrant
preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a
narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans. Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre
(the British writer George Monbiot
recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding
to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of its
"biblical lands," legions of the anti-Christ will attack it,
triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are
burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted
out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right
hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer
plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.
I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot,
I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them
from Texas to the West Bank. They are
sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring
the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with
money and volunteers. It's why the
invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels
"which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the
third part of man." A war with
Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed,
an essential conflagration on the road
to redemption. The last time I Googled
it, the rapture index stood at 144, just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will
blow, the son of god will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners
will be condemned to eternal hellfire.
So what
does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by
the journalist, Glenn Scherer "the road to environmental apocalypse".
Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe
that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually
welcomed, even hastened, as a sign of
the coming apocalypse. As Grist makes
clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are
beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half
the U.S. Congress before the recent election, 231 legislators in total, more
since the election, are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the
108th congress earned 80 to
100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill
First, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick
Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority
Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian
coalition was Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the
biblical book of Amos on the senate floor: "the days will come, sayeth the
Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land." he seemed to be
relishing the thought.
And why not? There's a constituency
for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that
59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of
Revelations are going to come true.
Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio
tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn some
of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people
under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it,
"to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when the
droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are
signs of the apocalypse foretold in the bible?
Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued
in the rapture? And why care about
converting from oil to solar when the same god who performed the miracle of the
loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a
word?"
Because
these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history
book, America's Providential History.
You'll find there these words: "the secular or socialist has a
limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a
piece." However, "[t]he
Christian knows that the potential in god is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in god's
earth... while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians
know that god has made the earth
sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the
people."
No wonder
Karl Rove goes around the White House
whistling that militant hymn, "Onward Christian
Soldiers." He turned out millions
of the foot soldiers on November 2, including many who have made the apocalypse
a powerful driving force in modern American politics. I can see in the look on your faces just how hard it is for the
journalist to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world
without expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think of my friend on Wall
Street whom I once asked: "What do
you think of the market?" "I'm optimistic," he answered.
"Then why do you look so
worried?" And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is
justified." I'm not, either.
Once upon
a time I agreed with the Eric Chivian and the Center for Health and the Global
Environment that people will protect the natural environment when they realize
its importance to their health and to
the health and lives of their children.
Now I am not so sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that, it's
just that I read the news and connect the dots: I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the
environment. This for an administration
that wants to rewrite the Clean Air
Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting
rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act that requires the
government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources. That wants to relax pollution limits for
ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections; and ease pollution standards for
cars, sports utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.
That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep
certain information about environmental
problems secret from the public. That wants to drop all its new-source
review suits against polluting coal-fired power plants and weaken consent
decrees reached earlier with coal companies.
That wants to open the arctic
wildlife refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National
Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and
the last great coastal wild land in America.
I read
the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency had
planned to spend nine million dollars, $2 million of it from the
administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council, to pay poor
families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides
have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an
end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the
families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as
guinea pigs for the study. I read all
this in the news. I read the news just
last night and learned that the administration's friends at the international
policy network, which is supported by Exxon Mobile and others of like mind,
have issued a new report that climate
change is "a myth, sea levels are not rising," scientists who believe
catastrophe is possible are "an embarrassment."
I not
only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations bill passed
by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species
protections from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest
in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public
lands; a
rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in
California.
I read
all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer, pictures of my grandchildren:
Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age 10; of Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, nine
months. I see the future looking back
at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know
not what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought:
"That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their
world." And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are
greedy? Because we have lost our
capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at
injustice? What has happened to out
moral imagination? On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: 'How do you see the
world?" And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it
feelingly.'" I see it feelingly.
The news is not good these days. I
can tell you, though, that as a
journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can
be the truth that sets us free, not only to feel but to fight for the
future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to
despair, the cure for cynicism, and the
answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my
desk. What we need to match the science
of human health is what the ancient Israelites called "hocma", the
science of the heart... the capacity to see... to feel... and then to act... as
if the future depended on you. Believe
me, it does.
Bill Moyers is the host of the weekly public
affairs series NOW with Bill Moyers, which airs Friday nights on PBS.
December
28, 2004 NY Times
Pentagon Is
Pressing to Bypass Environmental Laws for War Games and Arms Testing
By FELICITY
BARRINGER
WASHINGTON,
Dec. 27 - The Defense Department,
which controls 28 million acres of land across the nation that it uses for
combat exercises and weapons testing, has been moving on a variety of fronts to
reduce requirements that it safeguard the environment on that land.
In Congress, the Pentagon has won exemptions in the
last two years from parts of the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal
Protection Act. It has sought in recent years to exempt military activities,
for three years, from compliance with parts of the Clean Air Act.
Also, the Pentagon, which controls about 140 of the
1,240 toxic Superfund sites around the country, is seeking partial exemptions
from two laws governing toxic waste. And two months ago, it drafted revisions
to a 1996 directive built on a pledge "to display environmental security
leadership within Department of Defense activities worldwide."
The draft revisions eliminate the reference to
environmental security, and emphasize instead that it is the Pentagon's role to
sustain the national defense mission. Potential risks to the environment and worker
safety, it says, should be addressed as part of a larger effort to manage
risks, save money and preserve readiness.
The Pentagon's enthusiasm for the environmental ethos
has waxed and waned over the past 15 years, as it has grappled with its roles
as one of the country's longest-standing industrial polluters and conservator
of some of the nation's most ecologically sensitive land.
It has spent more than $25 billion since 1985 on a
program to clean up active and closed military bases, but at the same time has
continued to generate pollution. Toxic residues like perchlorate, a component
of rocket fuel, have been found in the Colorado River and in ground water in
some states.
In addition, the Congressional appropriations for
cleanups under the department's environmental restoration program, which
usually hew to the department's budget requests, have been largely unchanged in
recent years but slightly lower overall than in the Clinton administration,
even as estimates for cleanups at closed military bases have far exceeded
current spending.
The 1996 directive was produced under the Clinton
administration, at a time of heightened concern over environmental issues. It
was unclear when the revised draft directive might go into effect.
But the copy made available on the Web site of an
environmental group made it clear that it represented a fundamentally different
philosophy. Kyla Bennett, leader of the New England chapter of Public Employees
for Environmental Responsibility, which released the directive, said the draft
policy "says, 'We'll do whatever we have to do under the cloak of
readiness and national security.' " Ms. Bennett added, "It's
discouraging to me that the Department of Defense uses the terrorist attacks as
a cloak to excuse themselves from environmental laws."
In a telephone interview last week, Pentagon
officials would not comment on the draft directive nor predict whether the
department would renew its push for legislation exempting the agency from some
Clean Air Act and toxic waste disposal requirements.
But these officials said that without changes in the
laws, they feared that if they tried to redeploy fighter jets, they might find
themselves required to adopt burdensome environmental controls. This could
happen if the areas where the jet squadrons were being sent were already in
violation of Clean Air Act standards, and locating the squadrons there would
add to the pollution.
The officials, including two of the department's
senior environmental officials, said that they feared a wave of lawsuits to
block munitions testing that could rely on the Superfund law or a second law on
toxic materials, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, to argue that
live-fire training was a waste management activity subject to environmental
controls.
Benedict S. Cohen, a deputy general counsel at the
Pentagon, said in an interview on Thursday, "The department felt it was
appropriate, rather than to wait for a range to be shut down by a court
injunction, to warn Congress that this problem is looming" and seek exemptions
from the laws.
Two lawsuits, one seeking to prevent live-fire
exercises at a Navy bombing range at Vieques Island, off Puerto Rico, and the
other seeking protections from artillery for a marsh - home to migratory birds
- bordering on Fort Richardson, Alaska, have relied on the two toxic waste
laws.
The Army settled the lawsuit involving Fort
Richardson in October, promising to restrict firing during twice-yearly bird
migrations and while cleanup activities were under way in the marsh. It also agreed
to monitoring to determine if toxic constituents of explosives were seeping
into water beyond the base.
The Vieques lawsuit was rendered moot when the Navy
closed the bombing range.
"Our concern was that there is no distinction in
principle between activities taking place at Vieques and Richardson and efforts
taking place all over the country at our installations," Mr. Cohen said.
"There's nothing unique about military tests and training."
If, he said, a precedent had been set that these
activities were subject to control under the two toxic waste laws, "it
would have been extraordinarily difficult to defeat such litigation anywhere in
the United States."
But the opposition of Democrats in Congress, along
with some moderate Republicans, has thus far bottled up the legislation
providing the Pentagon exemptions from the toxic waste laws and extending by
three years the requirement to comply with some Clean Air Act provisions. If
the legislative effort is renewed, two House Democratic staff members said, the
opposition will remain intense.
"These exemptions are part of a much broader
pattern going on from D.O.D., a huge retrograde pattern," said a
Democratic staff member who requested anonymity because the ranking Democratic
member, Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, had instructed the staff to
do so. Among other things, he said, the Pentagon has, in the past four years,
added almost no sites to the Superfund list of toxic waste areas that must be
cleaned up, reversing the trend established during three previous
administrations.
"The whole thrust of these exemptions," the
staff member added, "is to remove any kind of independent authority from
the states, Environmental Protection Agency, water authority or from a citizen
suit that would get them to sample, identify and clean up the
contamination."
A former Pentagon official who served in a Democratic
administration and requested anonymity because of current job concerns said
that the department's actions had sent a signal "that the Defense
Department is less interested in environmental leadership and isn't working as
hard as I think it could" to engage states, local communities and others
with a stake in environmental compliance and cleanup. The laws from which the
department seeks exemption, the former official said, already contain waivers
for national emergencies.
In response, Glenn Flood, a department spokesman,
said in an e-mail message, "Asking the president to grant an exemption
every time the military needs to train is not practical."