TL: GREENPEACE MAGAZINE March/April 1991
SO: Greenpeace USA (GP)
DT: March 1991
Keywords: Greenpeace periodicals digests us gp /

WHAT PRICE OIL?
THINKING ABOUT THE WAR

EDITORIAL: Thinking About The War

By the Staff and Volunteers of Greenpeace

GREENPEACE OPPOSES THIS WAR. BUT ANYONE who thinks we came to
this decision lightly is unaware of the intense and sometimes
acrimonious debate among ourselves, drawn out over weeks, that
brought us here. Like the country, we began divided and
discouraged. "Even when pressed by the inner demands of truth,"
wrote Martin Luther King 25 years ago, "men do not easily assume
the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in
time of war." But as we examined our history, and the future we
wanted to bring about, we were drawn inevitably to this
conclusion.

We have written already of the economic, environmental, and
diplomatic implications of this tragic policy. But in December
and January, as the Bush administration's finger tightened on
the trigger, it was not so much the elaborate arguments we had
worked out as it was our organizational ethic, our collective
history, that directed the discussion. Pressed by the inner
demands of a truth forged by two decades of difficult and
sometimes dangerous work in defense of the environment, we now
assume the difficult and controversial task of trying to end
this war.

Over four days in Washington, D.C., Greenpeace staff and
volunteers gathered to assemble a statement of opposition to the
war. What follows are some excerpts from that statement:

"In 20 years of experience working to protect the environment
from the worst of human assaults, Greenpeace has learned that
non-violence, democracy, international cooperation, and
diplomacy are the keys to successful strategies for planetary
protection, as well as prerequisites for global peace.

"Ecologically, the war in the Persian Gulf is a consequence of
a fundamentally destructive way of life, centered on our
addiction to oil. Oil revenues made it possible for Iraq to
build its armed forces, and were the prime motivating factor in
its dispute with Kuwait. Oil, when we use it, destroys the
environment through the greenhouse effect, acid rain,
devastating spills, production of hazardous chemicals, and
innumerable other direct impacts on the health of the planet.
Since the first Arab oil embargo 18 years ago, efforts by
concerned citizens to move to a sustainable, ecologically
sound energy economy have been blocked by the oil industry. 

"While spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a military
designed in part to maintain control over oil, the United States
has never spent more than $1 billion a year on research to kick
our addiction to it. The level of demand for energy, and its
cost, is a matter of technological and social choice, not fate.
In light of this current war for oil, we must ask: is armed
conflict our true national energy strategy?

"The war is already having devastating consequences for the
region in which it is being fought. As the war progresses,
massive oil spills already foul the Persian Gulf. These spills
will damage ecosystems and devastate populations of fish, birds,
and mammals. Oil wells set ablaze as a tactic of war, or as an
unintended by-product of war, are causing widespread
contamination by oily, carcinogenic soot and may have far-
reaching effects on the climate of the region, threatening the
regularity of the monsoons and the agricultural systems that are
dependent upon them; massive famine, affecting innocent
populations, may result. These are but a few of the potentially
catastrophic environmental consequences we can anticipate from
the war. 

"In the broader picture, the world of the 1990s can no longer
afford war as a means of settling international disputes. The
art of war has reached a technological plateau that permits both
the instantaneous destruction of vast areas through nuclear
explosions, as well as the slow and cruel deaths of countless
soldiers and innocent civilians through chemical or biological
poisonings. The appalling aftermath of the use of these weapons-
-in terms of radioactive, chemical and biological contamination
and damage to cities, rural communities, and agricultural lands,
creates long-term problems leading inevitably to extreme
suffering for survivors and refugees.

"As the ecological and social crisis that threatens people and
the planet deepens, the astronomical costs of keeping both the
industrialized and less industrialized world on a permanent war
footing will become increasingly unbearable, draining
irreplaceable resources that are needed to address environmental
protection and restoration, as well as the rapidly deteriorating
condition of the world's poorest. It is hard to conceive of a
greater waste of resources, or a more tragic squandering of the
birthright of all generations to come.

"The decade of the 1990s opened with the unique spectacle of the
triumph of nonviolent change throughout Eastern Europe. This
victory offered the world the hope that our future could be
increasingly determined by peaceful means. In these nations, as
elsewhere, creative, active non-violent resistance proved itself
the superior means for bringing about positive social change.

"War threatens peace in the present, posing as it does the
possibility of massive destruction to people and the planet. And
it threatens the promise of peace in the future, by pushing back
the day when humanity must choose between war and life. For
these reasons we oppose this war. 

"This war has served to reveal in stark relief what our
fundamental convictions are. It is with great conviction that we
oppose this govemment's policy, and it is with a renewed sense
of purpose that we continue our work for a green and peaceful
planet." 


THINKING ABOUT THE WAR 

An editorial by the staff and volunteers of Greenpeace.

WHAT PRICE OIL? 

The Gulf War's impact on the environment, the media, and free
speech. The state of the opposition, and how you can help.

POWER PLOY 

by Daphne Wysham 

The conflict in Iraq is the second war the U.S. has waged over
energy. The first was declared by Jimmy Carter in 1978, and
ended last month. The bad guys won.

AT OUR PERIL: THE FALSE PROMISE OF RISK ASSESSMENT 

by Jo Ann Gutin 

The next time someone tells you that the toxic waste dump next
door is safer than a walk in the park show them this article. An
essential primer on the philosophy and politics behind risk
assessment.

EXPLODING THE GREAT SECRET 

by Judy Chhristup 

Moruroa, the "great secret" in the native tongue, is an atoll in
the South Pacific where the French government explodes nuclear
bombs. After 25 years, the extent of the bomb's impact on the
islanders is beginning to emerge.

OPEN SEASON 

Lake Ontario water resembles darkroom chemicals--Department of
Energy cries wolf-- Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

GREENPEACE LOG

CAMPAIGNS 

Greenpeace Japan works to save whales-- Nasty business in
Louisiana--Antarctic negotiations continue--Protesters gather at
Nevada Test Site.

ACTION ACCESS 

Thanks GLOBE!--Support clean water--No new incinerators--Another
tuna bill--Nuclear power conference--Activist camp--Stop logging
public lands--Environmental software.


OPEN SEASON

STRAIGHT FROM THE FRYING PAN

The international effort to curb the use of chlorofluorocarbons
(CFCs), a common substance found, among other things, in
styrofoam, and that destroys the ozone layers, is something of
an anomaly in human history. Environmental reform traditionally
comes after the fact. That is, we discover, after years of
accumulating evidence, that some man-made substance is indeed
posing a threat. Only then do we make the necessary adjustments,
usually at great cost and after much damage has already been
done. The awful history of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs,
comes to mind.

In the case of CFCs, however, the international community has
anticipated and acted on a danger that is, for the most part,
still waiting in the wings. Through the Montreal Accords, the
industrialized world has decided to ratchet down the use of CFCs
internationally before the awesome ozone-destroying capacity of
these chemicals is fully realized. The schedule the participants
have given themselves is wholly inadequate; the next decade will
see millions of tons of ozone destroying gases released into the
atmosphere. But at least the principle of preventive action is
in place. To you and me, of course, this is merely common sense.
But at the level of international diplomacy, this quality is
rarer than one cares to admit.

That's the good news. Chapter two in the CFC saga is far less
inspiring. Thanks to the U.S. chemical industry, the post-CFC
world will be different only in degree: to fill the void left by
CFCs, which have a staggering variety of industrial
applications, the industry and its friends in government are
building a new industry around CFC "substitutes" called HFCs and
HCFCs. Although they are anticipated to be significantly less
dangerous, these chemicals will remain, molecule for molecule,
among the most potent ozone destroyers and greenhouse gases in
common use. This is progress?

Chemical giant E.I. Du Pont de Nemours, otherwise known as Du
Pont, will be the principal profiteer should HCFCs and HFCs be
given the green light. Du Pont has already invested half a
billion dollars to corner the market for the new chemicals, and
recently announced that it will spend another billion to build
HFC and HCFC plants in four locations around the world,
including Corpus Christi, Texas, and Louisville, Kentucky.
Thanks in part to lobbying by White House friends of Du Pont,
Allied Signal, and others, last summer's international CFC
conference put off regulating the substitutes to a later date.
When they do, they'll be relying on the recommendations of the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). And the EPA gets
its toxicological data on HCFCs and HFCs from, of all places, Du
Pont--the same Du Pont that in the early 1980s buried for three
years a study that showed potential health problems with one of
its most popular CFCs, CFC-113.

It is tragic that the first environmental agreement that
incorporates a precautionary principle--acting before the damage
is done-- is being compromised even as it begins to take effect.
We have, or had, a unique opportunity to choose clean
alternatives to replace an entire class of chemicals deemed too
destructive for common use. Dare we let it slip away?

CRISIS?
WHAT CRISIS?

REMEMBER THE TRITIUM GAP? IT BEGAN more than two years ago, when
the nuclear reactors in the Pentagon's vast bomb-making complex
at the Savannah River in South Carolina, finally succumbed to
cracks and other age-related problems. Actually they went down
against the government's wishes, thanks in part to the
dedication of environmental activists who painstakingly
documented the threat posed by the Pentagon's insistence that
the decrepit reactors continue cranking out the radioactive gas
well past their margin of safety.

Well, it ended last November, but not before the public and the
U.S. Congress endured more than two years of shrill yammering
from the Pentagon brass that doing without a reliable source of
tritium, which boosts the yield of nuclear warheads, was
"tantamount to unilateral disarmament." Accompanying the
warnings were several proposals to spend tens of billions of
dollars to build new bomb-making complexes, restore existing
reactors, and In general throw money at a "problem" that more
sober thinkers insisted did not exist.

Four months ago, W. Henson Moore, deputy secretary of the
Department of Energy, announced that "inventory needs have been
changing....We aren't going to start any more [of the reactors]
than we have to.... If we can do our mission with one, we'll run
one." This belated admission echoes the arguments of Greenpeace
analysts and others who have insisted since 1988 that a credible
deterrent, even by the standards of the loudest saber rattlers,
was available through the far cheaper method of husbanding the
material. This should pose little difficulty, as the U.S.
nuclear arsenal has decreased by nearly 12,000 weapons in the
last 24 years and will continue to decline thanks to disarmament
agreements already in place. At the rate that tritium decays--
roughly 5 percent a year--we'll have 13,000 warheads in 10 years
and about 1,500 in 2040, thus continuing a trend begun by the
Pentagon in 1967 and turning the tritium "problem" into a
blessing.

But wait. The Pentagon and the nuclear industry are continuing
to push the idea that we should spend some $8 billion on two new
production reactor complexes in Idaho and South Carolina. What
for exactly? They won't say. The fact is, no one knows how much
of what radioactive material the Pentagon thinks it needs. The
weapons-makers refuse to divulge what their inventories are, how
much plutonium and highly enriched uranium are on hand, and by
what standards their internal assessments are made. And they
adamantly refuse to talk to the Soviets about a mutual end to
tritium production, an agreement that, if formalized, would put
the world's two largest nuclear arsenals on the same inexorable
rate of decay as tritium.

When it comes to spending $8 billion on weapons plants we don't
need, there should be no secrets, particularly when the record
of near-accidents, deliberate radioactive releases, shoddy
management, and cover-ups is as egregious as it is in the
nuclear weapons manufacturing industry. The Department of Energy
could put its time and money to far better use by cleaning up
the mess it has already made rather than sealing itself behind
closed doors and crafting flimsy and expensive ration a es for
continuing the arms race.

WHY WAS THAT AGAIN?

"We are there for three letters, oil, o-i-l. That is why we are
in the Gulf. We are not there to save democracy. Saudi Arabia is
not a democracy. Neither is Kuwait."
-Senate Minority leader Robert Dole, October 17

"If you want to sum it up in one word, it's jobs." 
-Secretary of State James Baker, November 19

" . . it has everything to do with what religion embodies - good
versus evil, right versus wrong, human dignity and freedom
versus tyranny and oppression."
-President George Bush January 29  

THE INNOCENTS 

Percentage of people killed or injured in all wars over the last
10 years who were civilians (UNICEF): 84

Percentage of the Iraqi population that are children under 15
years old (IPPNW): 45

DIPLOMACY'S SHIFTING SANDS

"We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border
disagreement with Kuwait."
-Bush's Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, to Saddam Hussein on
July 25. On August 3, Hussein invaded Kuwait


What You Can Do 

Join the millions of Americans who are speaking out for peace in
the Middle East. Contact your local peace group or Greenpeace
office for information on local activities. For national alerts
and actions contact Greenpeace Public Information at
202-319-2444 

Call, write and visit your elected officials. Urge them to take
a stand against the war. 

Write your members of Congress and demand they work for a
national energy strategy based on energy efficiency and
renewable resources not giveaways to the oil industry. U.S.
House of Representatives Washington DC 20515 or U.S. Senate.
Washington DC 20510

WHO ARMED IRAQ? 

Nations whose companies sold Saddam Hussein equipment that aids
his effort to manufacture nuclear or chemical weapons: 
Argentina 
Austria 
Belgium 
China 
Czechoslovakia 
Egypt 
France 
Germany 
Italy 
The Soviet Union 
The United States 
(Source: The Simon Wiesenthal Center)

A PREREQUISITE FOR PROTEST: NON-VIOLENCE 

"To be civil, disobedience must be sincere, respectful
restrained.... It must have no ill-will or hatred behind it....
Mankind can only be saved through non-violence. 
-Mohandas K Gandhi

Protests against this war like protests throughout American
history will include nonviolent civil disobedience. The
integrity of these demonstrations of public opposition depends
on their adherence to non-violent principles. Those of us who
plan to employ civil disobedience to express our opposition to
war in the Gulf promise to 

1) USE no violence, physical or verbal
2) BE open, honest and respectful to all we meet
3) CARRY no weapons
4) CARRY no drugs or alcohol
5) REFRAIN from damaging property
6) ACCEPT the legal consequences of our action and not seek to
evade them beyond traditional and legitimate legal recourse


WHAT PRICE OIL?

WHAT FATE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT?

AS WE GO TO PRESS, environmentalists' worst fears about the
environmental effects of the Gulf war are being realized. Iraq's
massive and deliberate spill of oil, some 12 times larger than
the Exxon Valdez accident, will poison the already fragile
Persian Gulf environment for years to come. And worse may be in
store.

On January 23, according to Iraqi press accounts, a black,
greasy rain began to fall in the Iranian coastal province of
Bashehr--the first sign of the devastating atmospheric effects
of the massive, smoky oil fires that will be the first result of
ground warfare. Hussein's troops have reportedly attached
explosives to as many as 300 of the 1,000 Kuwaiti oil wells.
According to Richard Turco, professor of atmospheric science at
the University of California at Los Angeles, the smoke from
these blazes could lead to a small-scale "nuclear winter,"
lowering temperatures and altering weather patterns throughout
the northern hemisphere. Such atmospheric changes could disrupt
the annual Asian monsoon and agricultural productivity of
diverse outlying regions, affecting the food supply of billions
of people.

The bombing of chemical and biological weapons facilities poses
another significant threat to the environment. Many of the
chemicals suspected to be manufactured in Iraq persist in the
environment and the food chain for years, causing cancer and
mutations in laboratory animals. On January 25, the Pentagon
reported that U.S. warplanes had bombed two Iraqi nuclear
research reactors. The amount of radioactivity detected, said
the Pentagon, was "not significant." What this means remains to
be seen. In an operating reactor, any disruption can cause
technicians to lose control of the chain reaction, leading to a
catastrophic meltdown. Even if the reactor is shut down, a
breach of the reactor core could lead to a massive release of
highly radioactive materials into the environment. 

The United States has deployed up to 1,000 nuclear warheads in
the Persian Gulf. Although the U.S. has pledged not to use
atomic bombs in the conflict, if a warhead is hit directly by
conventional artillery or rocket fire, significant quantities of
radioactive plutonium could be released, permanently
contaminating the area "If the 100 or so nuclear weapons that
are aboard the average U.S. aircraft carrier go up in flames, it
will be far worse than Chernobyl," says Greenpeace military
expert Damien Durrant.

OTHER CASUALTIES OF WAR

THE FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION TO THE public is one of the first
casualties of war. The latest restraints laid down by the
Pentagon on January 7 are the most restrictive in modern
warfare. They limit selected reporters from a few daily papers
and major television networks to gathering news in pools and
under military escort, and they require all dispatches to
undergo a military "security review" prior to release. "It's a
political decision to keep the public from having a front row
seat at the war," says veteran New York Times reporter Sydney
Schanberg. "They think that if the public has lots of
information, it may find war distasteful and ask a lot of
questions that could cause discomfort and embarrassment."

In January, 13 news organizations filed suit against the
Pentagon, challenging the Constitutionality of the restrictions
on press coverage. "To make intelligent judgments, the public
needs news unfiltered by the Pentagon," says Victor Navasky,
publisher of The Nation, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Other news organizations involved in the lawsuit include: The
Village Voice, The Guardian, Harper's, In These Times, The L.A. 
Weekly, Mother Jones, Pacific News Service and The Progressive.

By late January, censored Pentagon statements reinforced by an
uncritical press corps had painted an overly optimistic picture
of the progress of the war. "The authorities have gotten
increasingly more skilled at controlling imagery," says Ben
Bagdikian, professor emeritus and former dean of the Berkeley
School of Journalism, "but it's not sustainable, due to the
number of correspondents and the duration of the hostilities."
As we go to press, a protracted and bloody ground war against a
clever and resolute Iraqi army has begun. "First we're winning,
and then we're dying," says Peter Dykstra, media director of
Greenpeace. "The public is being cheated twice of their right to
information about this war. First by the Pentagon's censorship
of journalists, and second by the journalists censorship of
themselves."

TEST BAN NEGOTIATIONS

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION DOESN'T WANT Saddam Hussein to build
nuclear weapons. That was part of the rationale for going to war
with Iraq. But while Bush uses fear of The Bomb to garner
political support for the war, the United States stands nearly
alone in its opposition to a complete ban on testing nuclear
weapons. 

While U.S. armed forces prepared for war last January, U.S.
delegates to the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) Amendment
Conference vowed to veto a move by the 100-plus nations in
attendance to attach an amendment to the treaty that would
prohibit all nuclear testing. The head of the U.S. delegation,
Mary Elizabeth Hoinkes, also threatened to boycott any U.N.
sessions that discuss the effort and withhold its obligatory
funding of future meetings. Rather than permit a U.S. veto to
end the debate, the delegates voted to continue the discussion
at a future meeting. Significantly, it was the first vote ever
in an arms control treaty conference, and several NATO countries
split from the U.S. position to join in voting for a continued
debate.

The Soviet Union has repeatedly promised to stop nuclear testing
when the United States does. France and China both say they will
stop testing when the U.S. and the Soviet Union stop. So-called
threshold states like India and Pakistan support a test ban, and
blame the U.S. for lack of progress. They say they may go ahead
with their nuclear weapons programs if the U.S. doesn't change
its stance.

THE LOYAL OPPOSITION

THE OTHER FAILURE OF THE MEDIA is largely self-inflicted.
Although opposition to the war is widespread in the United
States and includes people of all ages and all social strata, as
well as a wide variety of professional organizations, the
media's depiction of this groundswell of sentiment is one-sided
at best. A Los Angeles Times poll reported as late as January 14
that Americans were almost evenly divided on attacking or
continuing economic sanctions against Iraq.

However, this remarkable degree of national ambivalence is not
reflected in TV coverage of the Gulf crisis, according to
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), an organization
devoted to media analysis. FAIR examined five months of TV
coverage of the Gulf crisis, from the first commitment of troops
on August 8 until January 3. Of a total of 2,855 minutes devoted
to the Gulf crisis, only 29 minutes, or roughly 1 percent, dealt
with popular opposition to the Bush administration's policy.

According to police, protesters, and a variety of news sources,
more than two million people in roughly 20 countries, including
250,000 in the United States, marched in protest against the war
in the first week of fighting. But the significance and depth of
this antiwar sentiment was lost on the major media "The full
spectrum of thought about war deserves coverage," says FAIR
executive director Jeff Cohen. "Polls show the public supports
a Mideast peace conference or a compromise on the Iraq/Kuwait
border dispute as ways of resolving the crisis--positions not
featured on TV networks fixated on official Washington." 

In response to FAlR's findings, and in an effort to encourage
coverage that reflects the diversity of American opinion on the
Gulf crisis, Greenpeace is publishing a weekly report that
analyzes media coverage of the Persian Gulf war.

THE SPOILS OF WAR

The nine largest oil companies reported $7.2 billion in revenues
for the last three months of 1990. This is nearly 70 percent
higher than this time last year.


POWER PLOY

Remember when Washington's energy policy was only the "moral
equivalent" of war?

How the oil, nuclear, and coal industries hijacked the national
energy strategy and led us to the real thing.

By Daphne Wysham

TWO MONTHS AFTER IRAQI PRESIDENT SADDAM HUSSEIN invaded Kuwait,
President Bush decided, in an uncharacteristic moment of self-
sacrifice, to forego a speedier helicopter flight from Camp
David to the White House for a trip in the relatively more fuel-
efficient presidential limousine. If only for a fleeting moment,
oil conservation appeared to be on the president's mind.

Ironically, the end result of this effort was that Bush nearly
doubled his oil consumption: while the president drove back in
his limousine, the presidential helicopter was flown back to the
White House, empty but for the pilot.


The anecdote is telling. Bush's Reaganesque gesture, whether
deliberate or mere public relations, is by a wide margin the
most significant nod to a sane energy policy to emerge from the
White House in years.

The decade that saw Ronald Reagan tear a set of carefully
installed solar panels off the roof of the White House and
featured the most comprehensive assault on energy alternatives
to emerge from Washington, is ending with a full-scale war over
energy.

Briefly, though, there was an appearance of sanity. On July 26,
1989, President Bush directed Secretary of Energy James Watkins
to develop a comprehensive National Energy Strategy (NES),
stating: "We cannot and will not wait for the next energy crisis
to force us to respond." Eighteen months later, the Bush
administrations's response, much like that gas-guzzling
helicopter, is empty.

BUSH's 1989 DIRECTIVE TO FORMULATE a National Energy Strategy
was not the result of some new-found "greening" of the oval
office. It came about as a result of heavy pressure from
environmentalists and critics who noted that without a coherent
energy strategy, our nation would only continue to stumble
blindly from one energy crisis to another. With the order for a
study on the table, the entire public interest sector, from
environmentalists to taxpayer's unions to energy specialists,
prepared for a robust public debate.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) dutifully held 18 different
hearings across the country, listening to testimony from 379
witnesses representing 43 states, from which more than 1,000
written submissions were compiled. But many of these hearings
were held with little advance notice, and, in several cases, the
witness list was handpicked from industry and government by the
DOE.

Nevertheless, one consistent message emerged through the
obfuscation: Energy efficiency must be increased in every sector
of energy use. This recommendation, duly noted in the interim
report issued by the DOE in April of 1990, hinted that the DOE
had finally heard what environmentalists and economists in the
energy field have been saying for years--namely, that any energy
policy must have energy efficiency as its centerpiece.

On December 21, the final business day before Christmas, DOE
Secretary James Watkins placed the preliminary draft of the
National Energy Strategy on the president's Oval Office desk.
Astoundingly, under pressure from White House Chief of Staff
John Sununu and Council of Economic Advisors Chair Michael J.
Boskin, Watkins had reportedly deleted any significant energy
efficiency measures.

The NES document fails to mention higher mileage requirements
for cars--at a time when an increase in car fuel efficiency of
only 2.8 miles per gallon could save us roughly the same amount
of oil the U.S. imported from Kuwait and Iraq before the Persian
Gulf crisis. This change came at the insistence of John Sununu,
who has said that conservation should play no role in the
nation's energy policy.

The final contents of the NES are not known, and will not be
released until some time after April 1. Boskin has reportedly
urged Bush to postpone all energy decisions until the Persian
Gulf crisis has been resolved. But, according to Edwin
Rothschild, energy policy director for Energy Action, a consumer
advocacy group based in Washington, "All signs point to a policy
that will reward and placate entrenched energy interests."

The charade began to unravel in mid-August, when Sununu
reportedly directed Watkins to remove anything that might be
construed as a "recommendation" to the president on energy
policy. Instead, Sununu wanted the NES to be put forth as a
"menu of options." Though overlooked by most of the mainstream
press, this important semantic distinction would allow the
president and his advisors to do exactly as they pleased.

And they did just that. So much for "building a national
consensus" on energy policy.

NOT ONLY DOES THE DRAFT NATIONAL ENERGY STRATEGY further
entrench our reliance on dwindling national oil reserves, it
also represents a fulfilment of virtually every item on nuclear
power's and the coal industry's Christmas wish list, according
to Energy Daily, an energy trade journal. Under the NES, the DOE
proposes scaling back the already lax regulations governing new
nuclear power plants and increasing government subsidies to the
ailing industry; a significant increase in coal-fired power, the
major source of acid rain and global warming gases; and more
detailed plans to hobble or totally eliminate environmental and
public review of energy projects and decisions.

The point of departure for much of this lunacy is a grotesquely
inflated estimate of just how much energy this country will
need. (This is in part a self-fulfilling prophecy-- by ignoring
the promise of energy efficiency, the administration is ensuring
that consumption will inevitably go up). Between 1952 and 1973,
America's energy use and economic growth increased at nearly the
same rate. Since 1973, however, energy consumption in the U.S.
has been flat, while the gross national product has grown by 40
percent-- representing an energy cost savings over previous
years of $160 billion a year. Despite this evidence to the
contrary, the NES predicts that energy use in this country will
increase by up to 85 percent between 1990 and 2030.

The nuclear industry is understandably ecstatic. Such an
increase, the NES predicts, would require the equivalent of more
than triple the number of nuclear power plants in this country,
from 111 today to 400 "advanced reactors" by the year 2030.
Without such a dramatic increase in nuclear power, the DOE
claims, the country would have to obtain 81 percent of its
electrical energy needs from coal-fired power plants by the year
2030.

But, one might ask, what about the well-established public
opposition to nuclear power? No problem, says the DOE. According
to the NES, the DOE will shorten the time and expense of getting
reactors on line by cutting off public debate through
administration legislation to "appropriately limit the nature,
scope, and duration of the post-construction hearing."

What, then, about nuclear waste, for which no safe storage
method exists? The DOE proposes a chilling, albeit novel,
solution: hand nuclear waste over to the private sector.
Privatization, the DOE happily notes, would reduce government
accountability and insulate nuclear waste disposal from budget
pressures. Though not explicitly mentioned, it would also limit
public access to information about nuclear waste by avoiding
disclosure requirements faced by government agencies. 

A 1989 report by the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Public Interest
Research Group sheds some light on why the nuclear industry
continues to be the indulged child of the past two Republican
administrations. Political Action Committees (PACs) representing
companies with a direct interest in nuclear power contributed at
least $25.5 million to Senate and House candidates between 1981
and 1988. In addition to the weight of PACs, nuclear power has
always had a friend in John Sununu. In 1981, the former
professor of engineering appeared in a utility-sponsored
advertisement proclaiming that the Three Mile Island accident
had been a "good thing" for nuclear power.

IF THE MILITARY COSTS FOR OPERATION DESERT SHIELD and Operation
Desert Storm are included, gasoline is now costing us about
$5.50 per gallon, according to Rep. Bill Alexander (D-AR). When
environmental costs and other tax subsidies are factored in,
that price is even higher. Whether we have 50 or 100 years left
in our global oil reserves, the supply is a finite one, and will
only continue to grow more costly the closer we come to its end.

But, rather than invest in alternatives, the DOE proposes that
we continue down the dead end path of oil dependency. Under the
NES, the DOE proposes to ease environmental regulations to allow
oil exploration in the 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge and 46-million-acre Outer Continental Shelf as well as
the North Slope of Alaska. The Bush administration estimates
that somewhere between 3.2 billion and 9 billion barrels of oil
may lie there--enough oil, if stretched, to keep U.S. drivers on
the road for six months to a year and a half.

"Large scale offshore oil development in the Arctic will unleash
irreparable damage to Alaska's marine and coastal ecosystems,"
warns Dorothy Smith, Greenpeace's Outer Continental Shelf
campaign coordinator. "We can expect the inevitable oil spills,
the dumping of highly toxic drilling wastes, and air pollution
as bad as a major city."

Meanwhile, a new natural gas pipeline--the TransAlaska Gas
System--is being promoted for the Arctic tundra, a move that
would surrender hundreds of miles of seabed, wetlands, and
permafrost to dredging and blasting. A draft environmental
impact statement put together by the Department of the Interior
(then mysteriously retracted several weeks later) predicted that
the several-hundred-thousand-strong Porcupine Caribou herd would
decline by 20 to 40 percent if their traditional calving and
migration routes were disturbed. The loss of the caribou would,
in turn, affect the Gwich'in Indians, who rely on the animals as
a vital source of food.

Equally ill-considered, from the point of view of environmental
protection, is the NES's plans for generating electricity by
burning garbage. Under a section in the draft NES entitled
"Encourage and Promote Innovative Electric Technologies," one
would expect to find encouraging news about more environmentally
benign energy resources, like, say, solar or wind power (which
are successfully supplying hundreds of thousands of Californians
with their energy needs). No such luck. Instead, the DOE
proclaims that incineration--the process by which tons of trash
are burned while small amounts of energy are extracted--is a
renewable resource, one that needs to be further exploited in
densely populated urban areas. This option, if enacted, would
subject people and the environment to a toxic soup of
incinerator emissions, including dioxin and heavy metals. It is
also poor energy policy. Only a fraction of the energy that goes
into the production of the solid waste returns when the trash is
burned.

The most puzzling aspect of the National Energy Strategy--and,
indeed, the policies of the Bush and Reagan administrations
overall--is its failure to support energy efficiency. The option
had suffered a bit in the public eye after being smothered under
a mantle of self-sacrifice and Carter-era cardigan sweaters. But
the principle remains as strong as ever.

Energy efficiency offers astounding savings, for both the
pocketbook and the environment. Using currently available
technology coupled with innovative regulation and financing, we
could reduce our national energy consumption by anywhere from 30
to 75 percent, saving our national economy nearly $300 billion
per year.

Greater fuel efficiency would allow us to leave Alaska's
delicate ecosystems and their underlying reserves untouched.
Since 1973, energy efficiency has saved the U.S. economy 5
billion barrels of oil per year, roughly equivalent to 50 times
the potential contribution from the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge. And efficiency would prevent the emission of thousands
of tons of planet-threatening greenhouse gases. 

Because cars are the single largest consumers of oil in this
country, using 43 percent of the nation's oil, raising the fuel
efficiency of American cars should be a top priority. And, for
a time, under Carter administration directives, it was. But
under the Reagan administration, which caved in under pressure
from the auto industry and allowed fuel efficiency standards for
American-made cars to lapse, automobiles actually became less
fuel-efficient by 1.5 miles per gallon between 1985 and 1989.
The DOE's only suggestion for reducing the levels of driving is
to propose that some downtown employers charge for parking to
encourage carpooling among employees. Mass transit is not even
mentioned in the NES.

"It is the supreme irony," says Amory Lovins, research director
at the Rocky Mountain Institute, "that the same governments most
committed to markets and economic rationality are today stalling
progress on abating global warming, and gravely embarrassing
themselves, by not taking economics seriously--the practical,
field-proven economics of energy efficiency."

Professor of Energy Management and Design Programs at
California's Sonoma State University, Dr. W. J. Rohwedder
concurs with Lovins, adding, "My only conclusion is that the
wishes of oil, auto, nuclear, and coal companies, not common
sense, determine energy policy under this administration." 

ENERGY POLICY OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY 

With no leadership at the federal level some energy strategists
have concluded that the only hope for a visionary energy policy
lies at the state, local, and individual levels.

# In June of 1989, New York State passed the first public
utilities commission order mandating that power companies factor
in dollar damage done to the environment in their bids. The
result? "It makes energy efficiency and renewables relatively
more cost-effective when compared to such polluters as coal and
fossil fuel energy sources," says Laurence Dewitt, director of
the Office of Energy Efficiency and Environment Programs for New
York State. Following New York's lead, seven states have passed
similar requirements within the past several years.

# In California, Pacific Gas & Electric, the nation's largest
investor-owned public utility, has collaborated with 15
different environmental and public interest groups in creating
a model energy efficiency package called the Energy Efficiency
Blueprint. Among other things, the program rewards both
customers and shareholders for energy efficiency efforts.

# On January 4, Vermont's outgoing governor, Madeline Kunin,
unveiled a statewide energy strategy that encourages energy
efficiency. The strategy proposes a 12 percent reduction in the
emission of gases believed to be responsible for global warming
and a 17 percent reduction in the pollutants that cause acid
rain, all by reducing the use of fossil fuels by nearly a third.
Although the blueprint is expected to cost $21.5 million a year,
Kunin projected savings of $236 million a year, achieved
primarily through higher energy efficiency. 

# The Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation has achieved a
breakthrough agreement with 12 utilities in New England, which
will result in the conservation of one small coal plant's worth
of energy, and savings to consumers of nearly $500 million. As
a result of litigation and negotiation, the public utilities
will purchase and install a vast array of energy-saving devices-
- from energy-efficient lights to improved heating and cooling
systems. Overall, New England utilities have made the largest
commitment to energy efficiency based on their size--committing
between $1 and $2 billion to energy efficiency efforts.

"The states have been doing a lot more than the federal
government," says former New York Congressman Richard Ottinger,
professor of law at the Pace University School of Law in White
Plains, New York, and author of a book entitled The
Environmental Costs of Electricity". "But there are only a dozen
states that are making major strides." Part of Ottinger's
efforts will be to persuade the remaining 38 states that clean
and efficient energy resources are the wave of the future. 

Fortunately, Ottinger is not alone. He will be joined in his
efforts by the newly formed Energy Foundation, a joint
initiative of the MacArthur Foundation, the Pew Charitable
Trusts and the Rockefeller Foundation, who have made an initial
three-year commitment of $20 million to promote energy
efficiency. "The goal of this foundation is to promote the
transition to a sustainable energy future," says Hal Harvey,
executive director of the San Francisco-based foundation. "Such
a transition is imperative if the U.S. is to strengthen its
economy, improve its environment, and reduce its dependence on
foreign oil sources."

AT OUR PERIL

The False Promise of Risk Assessment

RISKING DEMOCRACY

By Jo Thornton

In another era, science was heresy, a rational challenge to the
authority of church and state. Galileo and other pioneer
thinkers paid dearly for contending that something other than
imperial edict defined the course of the stars and the evolution
of humanity. Centuries later, we find a curious reversal--
science has emerged as a new and sometimes rigid orthodoxy, a
cloak that hides the imperatives of profit, expedience, or
autocracy. More than once since the dawn of the industrial age,
established interests have used scientific language to justify
oppressive policies--the collectivization of Soviet farms, the
segregationist policies of racist states, and the grim
"efficiency" of a 19th century sweatshop.

Now, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and corporate
polluters are using scientific language to silence critics and
mask bad practices. For almost a decade, the EPA has used a form
of analysis called risk assessment to set standards for
"acceptable" amounts of pollution in the ecosystem and to issue
permits to the industries that pollute.

In recent years, the bureaucratic enthusiasm for this form of
number-crunching has bordered on hysteria. Last September, EPA
chief William Reilly announced a "revolution" in agency policy:
from now on, the EPA will use risk assessment to decide what
issues are worthy of agency action. In this way the EPA, using
purely quantitative data, will be able to separate the "serious"
environmental issues from those that, in the words of a Reilly
deputy, gain their urgency by "the latest public opinion poll."

The scientific problems with risk assessment are numerous. There
is ample evidence that risk assessments are manipulated to yield
a favorable result. By changing an assumption here, tweaking an
equation there, risk assessors can justify virtually any policy
they desire. Science is based on empirical data. Risk
assessment, which merely models and predicts events that are
never verified, allows much wiggle-room for the politically
motivated. Nevertheless, the EPA denies any potential bias in
the process. "Sound science is our most reliable compass in a
turbulent sea of siren songs," says Reilly. One of his
predecessors at the helm of the EPA, William Ruckelshaus,
insists that risk assessment is "purely objective."

In a free society, such a bald assertion of certainty in what is
really a speculative and political exercise presents a
fundamental problem. By applying a veneer of objectivity,
regulators and corporations disguise the politics as well as the
value judgments that lie behind decisions about health and the
environment. Shifting the debate into highly technical language
intimidates the concerned citizen, making it difficult for
anyone without a PhD to participate.

Industry and the EPA use risk assessments to tell citizens that
the pollution hazards from a local incinerator or factory are
"acceptable". Acceptable to whom? Community tolerance of a
particular level of pollution is a political decision based on
subjective issues like the benefits to the community, the
alternatives to the polluting technology (benign alternatives
exist for virtually every polluting technology), and the process
by which the decision is made. These are issues that cannot be
translated into quantitative terms. They require an open
discussion of values and ethics.

No one--PhD, CEO, or EPA administrator--is qualified to impose
hazards upon a community without its consent. If we derive any
lesson from the recent history of Eastern Europe and this
country's nuclear weapons facilities, it is that where secrecy,
obfuscation, or iron authority govern technological decisions,
pollution and human suffering are the likely results. Risk
assessment is, ultimately, undemocratic.                       

But there is an alternative, generated from local grassroots
movements that are fighting polluters across the United States.
They call it environmental democracy, and it means the right of
the public to participate in--even collectively determine--
decisions about technology. In the sustainable and just society
we envision, industry will not have absolute say over its
technologies. Corporate and government scientists will have to
share their information in a way that makes explicit the limits
of their expertise, authority, and objectivity. Their goal
should be to make their "expert" status obsolete, to make every
citizen conversant at all levels of the environmental debate. 

Three years ago, former EPA chief William Ruckelshaus championed
risk assessment to an audience at the National Academy of
Sciences, saying, "We are now in a troubled and emotional period
for pollution control; many communities are gripped by something
approaching panic. . . :" Unless scientists join "politicians,
lawyers, and businessmen" in using risk assessment to "explain"
pollution, Ruckelshaus prophesied, "I fear we will have set up
for ourselves a grim and unnecessary choice between the fruits
of advanced technology and the blessings of democracy." 

Ruckelshaus is wrong--technology and democracy need not be at
odds. Open, democratic decision-making would serve public
welfare as well as bring forth the best scientific knowledge. In
fact, it is the EPA's callous reliance on risk assessment that
sets up that grim choice Ruckelshaus wishes to avoid. And if
forced to choose, we'll take democracy every time.

IF YOU ARE AFRAID OF FLYING YOU PROBABLY TAKE refuge in those
reassuring aphorisms about airplane safety-- safer than the
drive to the airport and all that. In that case, you should
avoid last summer's edition of Risk Analysis. According to a
report in this scholarly journal, flying is not that much safer
than driving. It's not that the airlines are lying. But their
analysis of the relative risks of each mode of transport
includes certain assumptions, as all risk analyses do. And these
assumptions might not be justified.

The airlines' statistics are comfortingly precise: there are
0.55 fatalities per billion passenger miles flown, as opposed to
12.56 fatalities per billion passenger miles driven. But it
turns out that the figures for auto deaths are averaged--the
countless collisions among hormone-fuelled teenagers are lumped
in with the relative handful of crashes involving CPAs in beige
Volvos. So, after recrunching the numbers, the study concludes
that if your lifestyle falls somewhere toward the CPA end of the
curve, and your trip is less than 300 miles, driving is twice as
safe as flying. Score one for highway safety, at least by this
study.

Such is the nature of risk analysis. How things turn out depends
so much on the initial assumptions, the design of the analysis,
and the quality and quantity of the information, that many doubt
that the whole exercise is worth anything, particularly in
formulating public policy. The credibility of these efforts also
depends, of course, on who pays for them. Did I mention that the
highway safety analysis was conducted by the General Motors
Research Laboratory? You don't suppose . . . ? 

LIKE IT OR NOT, RISK ANALYSIS IS THE WAVE OF THE future. It is
being touted as the problem solver in all manner of
environmental policy questions. In September 1990, the United
States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a report
from its Science Advisory Board entitled Reducing Risk: Setting
Priorities and Strategies for Environmental Protection. In a
speech last fall, EPA chief William Reilly said confidently that
"despite the inherent uncertainties... comparative risk
assessment is still one of the best indicators of where we
should be directing our resources."

The U.S. government began to worry about the assessment and
regulation of risk with the passage of the Occupational Safety
and Health Act (OSHA) of 1970. Although its stated goal was the
zero-risk workplace, OSHA hedged by saying that workers would be
protected to the extent feasible, and not just technically
feasible, but economically feasible as well.

There is nothing wrong with this in theory. There are obviously
limits to the amount of safety that can be engineered into a
working environment. But attaching a price to safety is a
philosophical monkey wrench in the cosmology of the risk
assessor. Who sets the limit on what can be spent to preserve
public health? And how manipulable is this price-setting
exercise by interests who hold the safety of the man on the
street less highly than does, say, the man on the street?

Take the EPA's standards for arsenic in drinking water. In the
late 1980s the agency discovered that the standards set in a
1984 risk analysis would put a large proportion of the country's
municipal water systems out of compliance, and that remediation
would cost billions of dollars. What did the EPA do? It quietly
loosened the standards, announcing in 1988 that the cancer risk
posed by exposure to arsenic was one-tenth what it had been four
years previously.

The agency says that new research prompted the change. Perhaps,
but when tolerance standards change by an order of magnitude
between a pair of assessments, you needn't be a hopeless
paranoid to wonder if perhaps economics hasn't played a role.

Radiation exposure standards follow a similar pattern. The array
of interests that benefit from lax standards include the nuclear
power industry (General Electric, Westinghouse and others), the
Pentagon, and the Department of Energy.Throughout the history of
radiation health science, the more optimistic assessments have
emerged from industry and government, the more sober from
private researchers, environmental groups, and the occasional
courageous government-funded scientist. When researchers Alice
Stewart and Thomas Mancuso published data in the early 1970s
showing a higher-than-suspected risk of cancer among workers at
the Department of Energy's Hanford Nuclear Reservation, they
found their government funding discontinued. And now, with the
possibility of finding a permanent site for radioactive waste as
remote as ever, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is preparing
to downgrade certain low-level wastes as "Below Regulatory
Concern," meaning they can be tossed into regular landfills.
"The underlying motive seems to be to set the highest possible
[exposure limits] that can be justified by some newly invented
risk formulation," says Dr. Karl Z. Morgan, former director of
the Health Physics Division of the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory. Coincidentally, this regulatory "reform" would save
the nuclear industry some $100 million a year in disposal costs.

Still unconvinced? Watch what happens when an entire school of
risk assessment is put into the hands of people who have an
interest in the outcome. In 1983 the EPA decided to allow some
industries to do their own assessments of the health threat
posed by their toxic wastes and to make plans for their cleanup.
The analyses the industries turned in were downright optimistic;
several corporations discovered, to their delight, that sites
were not as contaminated as they had feared and that cleanup
would be a lot less expensive than they and the EPA had thought.

Under pressure from Congress, environmentalists, and the
families who live around Superfund sites, the assistant EPA
administrator in charge of Superfund cleanup conceded that the
companies charged with analyzing their toxic waste problem used
"less conservative assumptions" in their assessments than the
EPA customarily did. "EPA," he announced tersely, "will prepare
all risk assessments in the future."

WHEN YOUR FRIENDS SAY YOU ARE ONE IN A MILLION, they probably
are paying you a compliment. When a risk assessor does it, it
may mean you are going to die. One chance in a million, or 1x10-
6 in statistical argot, crops up frequently in risk assessments
because regulators often use it as a "bright line"--the number
that is deemed to separate "reasonable" from "unreasonable"
risk. The 1990 Clean Air Act breached even this arbitrary limit,
declaring that an "ample" margin of safety for toxic emissions
is one that causes cancer in one of every ten thousand "most
exposed" individuals.

But what about that one? Former EPA policy analyst Ken Bogen,
now a scientist at the University of California's Lawrence
Berkeley Laboratory, is troubled by this anonymity. "Imagine,"
says Bogen, "that an industry or a regulator said to a crowd of
one million people: 'I will give each of you one thousand
dollars, in exchange for which one, and only one, of you will
die.' At some figure, people might agree." 

But what if that person had a name? Would everyone go along with
it if he or she were identified? "That person would have the
regulator in court the next morning, for one thing," says Bogen.
"And he'd win, because he's being denied equal protection under
the law."

There are situations, Bogen believes, in which a cost benefit
approach may be useful. If the trade-off is between saving many
lives and losing very few, such as when an entire population is
vaccinated against disease, risk assessment is appropriate. But
a risk assessment that trades lives for dollars? "That," says
Bogen, "is probabilistic cannibalism. "

Being one in a million also requires a measure of accuracy that
even the best risk assessors cannot deliver. In order to make
these calculations, regulators crunch numbers. And, as any
computer operator knows, if the numbers are not accurate, your
results won't be either. 

The first complication is the quality of the information.
Judging from the reams of data that emerge from the nation's
regulatory apparatus, one could reasonably assume that
scientists have a pretty good grip on what toxic chemicals are
out there and what they do to you. Not true. Of the thousands of
chemicals in common use, only a handful have been tested
thoroughly, and almost nothing is known about what chemicals do
to humans when they are mixed together. According to the
National Toxicology Program, a preliminary assessment of the
combined effects of just 25 common contaminants in drinking
water would require 33 million experiments at a cost of about $3
trillion.

And for the chemicals that have been studied, determining how
they affect humans is still a guessing game. In calculating
their one in a million for, say, arsenic in drinking water, the
assessors must first know the degree of exposure. This is itself
a risky undertaking, subject to a host of variables such as the
manner and quantity of ingestion, regional differences in
contamination levels, as well as the problems of the sample--how
many measurements were made, and how accurate they were. On top
of that, the statistical analyst's "assumed human," not
surprisingly, is a healthy, 30-year-old white male.
Unfortunately, a toxic exposure that makes the "assumed human"
queasy might cause a serious illness in a small child and kill
a sick or elderly person. And it could cause a lifetime of
physical and mental problems in a developing fetus.

ACCORDING TO THE REPORT OF A CONFERENCE ON "Self-Regulation and
Risk Taking Behaviour" sponsored by the National Institutes of
Mental Health, the country is in the middle of an epidemic of
violent and self-destructive behaviour.

Americans love to take risks--"take" being the operative word.
They don't like hazards shoved down their throats. This simple
distinction is lost on regulators and journalists who look
askance at the seeming discrepancy between our voluntary
behaviour, such as smoking cigarettes, and our vocal objection
to having a toxic waste incinerator installed next door.

Last year, the late essayist Henry Fairlie published a broadside
entitled "Fear of Living." In it, Fairlie wonders if Americans'
predilection for litigation, their fear of nuclear power, and
their aversion to pesticides in food might suggest a lack "of
the questing endeavor of the human spirit." Invoking the Vikings
and Christopher Columbus, he fumes at environmental "extremists"
and their concern with their own "exquisite, often imagined,
physical and emotional well-being."

If the Fairlie camp thinks that Americans are risk-averse wimps,
and the National Institutes of Mental Health think Americans are
macho risk addicts, it doesn't take an advanced degree to figure
out that they don't mean the same thing by "risk." To clarify
the issue for yourself, you might try using Greenpeace
campaigner Joe Thornton's strategy: "We don't even use the word
'risk' anymore. When a regulator talks about 50 cancer deaths
thanks to some toxic emission, he's not talking about a risk.
He's talking about a certainty. We talk about threats and
hazards. What they mean is that people are going to die."

When they are trying to convince people that a certain hazard is
minimal, regulators and industry will often compare it to the
chances of a random event occurring, such as being struck by
lightning. The comparison seems reasonable at first, but it is
fundamentally (and, one imagines, deliberately) misleading. One
is indeed random, the other is a threat that is imposed upon the
community. Says Thornton, "It would be more fair if you compared
the danger of living next to a toxic waste incinerator to the
risk of being struck by lightning if someone kidnaps you during
a thunderstorm, takes you to an open field and ties you to a
giant metal pole."

THE VALUE OF A RISK ASSESSMENT DEPENDS ULTIMAtely on the values
of the assessors. Who, for example, is being "assigned" the risk
of having detectable levels of toxic waste leaked into their
drinking water? And who has the right to do the assigning? These
values and assumptions are in turn reflected in the type and
quality of information plugged into the model, the range of
considerations that are considered relevant to the case, and the
underlying benefits that are said to accrue to society as a
whole in compensation for the hazards some members are being
asked to face. In their worst form, risk assessments are tools
that industry and government use to disempower and confuse the
public.

It is not solely environmentalists, notoriously skeptical of
regulatory agencies, who are suspicious of the new "science" of
risk analysis. In May 1990, an editor of the prestigious science
journal Nature, not known for its alarmist rhetoric, gave this
advice to Britain's agricultural minister, who was desperately
trying to reassure the British public that cows infected with
bovine spongiform encephalopathy could not pass their illness on
to humans: "Never say that a risk is negligible unless your
listeners share your own philosophy of life." That anonymous
writer knows that risk, like beauty, is in the eye of the
beholder.

Thus, even if it were possible to eliminate all of the
political, mathematical, and methodological uncertainties that
plague the practice, risk assessment is perhaps best abandoned
as a tool of public policy. After all, to give one example, many
non-polluting alternatives to existing technologies could be put
in place that might reduce the threat from toxic emissions to
zero. Why not spend time and resources on developing them
instead of on fashioning exquisitely subtle quantifications of
exactly how unpalatable the current practices are? If your
community has a trash disposal problem, which would you prefer?
A $100,000 risk assessment that insists the smoke from the
multi-million-dollar incinerator poses an acceptable risk to
you, or a $100,000 recycling program that eliminates the need
for the incinerator? 


Ultimately, we should be striving toward continuous improvement
in our industrial processes, acting to eliminate hazards
completely. We should not stop because we have reached an
arbitrarily "acceptable" level of death and destruction. A
reliance on risk assessment compromises both public health and
public accountability. 

GETTING BURNED: RISK ASSESSMENT IS THE REAL THREAT TO THE PEOPLE
WHO LIVE NEAR TOXIC WASTE INCINERATORS 

Southdown, Inc., the Houston-based owner of a toxic waste
burning cement kiln in rural Greene County, Ohio, is hoping that
the angry and frightened residents who live near its facility
will calm down. A forthcoming risk assessment, say the owners,
will prove the safety of Southdown's lucrative waste burning
operation.

In Kern County, California, the Department of Health Services
recently gave the nod to National Cement's plans to double the
quantity of hazardous waste it burns because, according to a
1,200-page risk assessment written by company-paid consultants,
increasing the volume of waste burned will have no effect on the
health of local residents. Eight-hundred miles to the east,
Gifford-Hill Inc. is telling citizens of Midlothian, Texas, that
living near its toxic waste burning cement kiln is safer than
eating peanut butter.

Toxic waste incinerators are firing up their furnaces in
communities across the United States, aided in part by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has proposed new
weaker regulations governing emissions from the plants. The
basis of this standard? A risk assessment showing that
incinerators that follow the rules will cause only two cancer
deaths in 100,000 hypothetical "most exposed individuals"
breathing the air near the facilities. Such a risk, says the
EPA, is "negligible." 

In the wake of reforms, which were instituted without hearings, 
hearings, dozens of community groups challenged the use of risk
assessments and demanded that the EPA open up the regulatory
process. The EPA refused. Local groups are leading the charge
against the assessments and the way they have been carried out.
"The process is scientifically and morally indefensible," says
Luke Cole of the California Communities at Risk Project.

In their calculations, the assessors typically ignore more
factors than they include. Most deal only with a handful of the
chemicals that are released by the furnaces. National Cement's
assessment, for example, considers fewer than 30 of the more
than 1,000 pollutants emitted from the kiln, despite the
assertion of the company's CEO that the analysis "was developed
in a conservative manner that overestimates risk." EPA's
analysis extends to 72 chemicals, creating the illusion that the
other chemicals are absolutely harmless. Moreover, the EPA's
measurements are made during carefully controlled test burns of
one waste load--a situation that doesn't match the day-to-day
running of the nation's 200 working incinerators. In reality,
the volume of emissions is far greater than the EPA assumes.

The assessments, which use simplistic models to predict the
health impact of each chemical, take no account of what will
happen when people are exposed to all these chemicals at once.
"How can we expect to assess, even one by one, the dangers of
the thousands of chemicals released from incinerators?" asks Pat
Costner, toxics research director for Greenpeace. "Even the most
basic health data are available for fewer than 1 percent of the
chemicals in commerce, and no one can predict the effects of
chemical mixtures."

Another flaw in the EPA analysis is its focus on the lungs as
the entry point for incinerator emissions, to the exclusion of
all other "pathways" through which pollutants might contaminate
humans. The EPA's own scientists have written that the food
chain is by far the main exposure route for many of the
pollutants released by incinerators. Says Cole, "We are
convinced that many risk assessments drastically underestimate
the actual health threat from incinerators."

Perhaps most importantly, the EPAs short-term, localized
analysis ignores the permanent impact of heavy metals and other
long-lasting chemicals that will remain in the air, soil, and
water long after the incinerators have shut down. Also omitted
are the devastating cumulative effects that emissions from
hundreds of incinerators have on the global environment.

Finally, risk assessments consider only cancer and the most
obvious chronic impacts of the handful of chemicals they deal
with. The practical effect of this selectivity is that gaps in
knowledge are deemed indications of safety. In fact, much
evidence has been gathered about the insidious damage
incinerator pollutants inflict on the human reproductive,
nervous, and immune systems, as well as on fetal development.
The EPA either ignores these effects or simply assumes, contrary
to the evidence, that they could not be caused by toxic
emissions below a certain concentration.

Science, which is supposed to rely on conclusions that have been
proven through experimentally and theoretically consistent
study, is squarely at odds with quantitative risk assessment.
The overwhelming uncertainty of the process leaves it wide open
to abuse. "Risk assessments are designed to dazzle, confuse. and
ultimately disempower people," says Stormy Williams, a community
activist who lives near National Cement's toxic waste burner in
the California desert.
--Joe Thornton


EXPLODING THE GREAT SECRET

Polynesians living near the island of Moruroa - "the great
secret" in local dialect - are speaking out against French
nuclear testing, which has fractured their environment, health,
and culture.


By Judy Christrup

ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF NUCLEAR TESTING usually revolve around
fighting and deterring war. The rationale goes something like
this: Design, build, and test weapons with longterm nightmarish
destructive capabilities, and everyone will be too scared to use
them. Hawks and doves have been debating the logic of this
nuclear deterrence theory for decades.

But there is a growing constituency that is largely ignored in
the arms debate. Over the four-decade span that makes up the
nuclear age, thousands of people have seen their communities
destroyed and their health jeopardized by weapons production and
testing itself--from the extraction of uranium in underground
mines, to the refinement of nuclear fuels in the factory, to the
explosion of nuclear bombs underground. One such group inhabits
the islands claimed by the French in the Pacific, where France
conducts underground nuclear tests. 

TESTIMONY: "It was during drilling work that I got contaminated.
I was working in a little hole trying to dismantle an old pipe.
I wasn't careful enough and got splashed by some water that had
been left in the hole. It was mainly my hair that got wet as I
wasn't wearing any protective gear on my head. I tried to wash
it but it was difficult to get the stuff out. When I went into
the decontamination chamber all the alarms went off. I washed my
hair three times but it was still radioactive....So a specialist
had to use some special product to decontaminate me,"

--Manutahi worked as a welder on Moruroa from 1965 until 1980,
when he became sick with pulmonary disease.

It may be argued that the lives lost over the past 45 years are
a small price to pay for nuclear deterrence. A full-blown
nuclear war would undoubtedly be far more deadly. Unfortunately,
those suffering the consequences of radiation poisoning do not
do so as willing martyrs for the greater good. They are simply
not told.

The pattern of secrecy, arrogance, and neglect of workers and
residents has been repeated around the world, from the Navajo
miners of Utah to the displaced Nenets of Novaya Zemlya and the
irradiated Australian aborigines of Maralinga.

TESTIMONY: "When the military first arrived and explained what
was going to happen, lots of very important people came to the
atoll to talk to us. The admiral came and told us that there was
no danger and that nuclear bombs were good. He came with a man
who was said to be a professor and was introduced to us as one
of the greatest scientists in the world. This man's knowledge
could not be argued with. The admiral compared him to a fabulous
pearl. This man also said there were no dangers for us."

--Hiro lived on Tureia, 78 miles north of Moruroa, from 1928 to
1986.

The casualties of the French nuclear testing program are
Polynesians. Their ancestors--inhabitants of 130 islands and
atolls called Te Ao Maohi--remained free of European influence
until the late 18th century, when traders, whalers, and
missionaries settled on the islands, bringing fatal diseases and
paving the way for colonization. French Admiral Dupetit-
Thousards convinced his country that Tahiti would make a good
penal colony, and so the French government made the island a
protectorate in 1842. In 1880, Tahiti became a French colony--
French Oceana. Those who resisted colonization, like Tahitian
Queen Pomare, were subdued by threats of bombardment and
deportation to New Caledonia (the Melanesian colony that became
the penal colony instead of Tahiti).

When France chose its Polynesian colonies as nuclear test sites
n 1962, the islanders again resisted. The 30-member elected
Territorial Assembly objected to the plan, but was ignored. The
French governor of Polynesia wrote to the head of the assembly,
saying, "I should like to repeat my assurances here, in the name
of the Republic, that all necessary measures are being taken to
guarantee that the population will not suffer in the slightest
degree from the scheduled experiments." France finally decided
to conduct the bulk of its testing program on the tiny atoll of
Moruroa, which means "the great secret" in a local dialect. 

France's Prime Minister General Charles de Gaulle was
enthusiastic and single-minded about his country's nuclear
testing program. When France exploded its first nuclear bomb (in
Algeria) his cable message read, "Hurrah for France! Since this
morning she is stronger and more proud than ever!" After one
successful atmospheric test on Moruroa, de Gaulle was scheduled
to witness the next explosion on September 10, 1966, from the
cruiser De Grasse. The test was postponed because the wind was
blowing toward inhabited islands to the west. But after a day of
waiting, de Gaulle's patience wore thin, and he ordered the bomb
to be detonated. Monitoring stations operated by the New Zealand
National Radiation Laboratory detected heavy radioactive fallout
in the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, and Tuvala.

TESTIMONY: "Instead of drifting away, the mushroom cloud drifted
over the boats. It started to rain and everyone was ordered
below deck. However, a group of Polynesians who were playing the
guitar on deck and were a little bit drunk from the free drinks
offered after every "successful" test, did not understand what
was happening and remained on deck....After the rain stopped,
the whole boat had to be washed and scrubbed down."

--Edwin Haoa. Worked on Moruroa as leader of team monitoring
radioactive contamination after the explosions.

De Gaulle's enthusiasm for nuclear testing reflected both the
French elite's embarrassment over their rapid defeat in World
War II and their vision of a militarily independent nation that
could act as a counterweight to the belligerent superpowers. As
Paris-based journalist Diana Johnstone put it, "It could be
argued that what all post-1940 French leaders have striven to
restore is not so much la grandeur as le pouvoir: the power to
master the nation's fate and keep it from falling to pieces."
But France's desire for le pouvoir, like that of other
colonialist nations, served to obliterate the self-sufficiency
and cultures of other peoples.

TESTIMONY: "When I was offered the posting to Mangareva, I was
promised a beautiful island, nice people, and no problems.
However, the situation had changed with the arrival of the
legionnaires. They had become the 'kings' of the island because
they had money and alcohol. They got women by getting husbands
or fathers drunk. or by buying them off. Some of the local men
had gone to work on Moruroa, which made it 'easier' for the
legionnaires." 

--Roland. A gendarme who lived in Mangareva from 1963 to 1968.

Even the most simple aspect of Polynesian life, a diet of fresh
fish, has become impossible because of ciguatera fish poisoning.
An article appearing in the January 28, 1989, issue of the
scientific journal The Lancet reports that increased incidents
of ciguatera "are related largely to military activities that
disturb coral reef ecology." The researcher, Dr. Tilman A. Ruff,
found that ciguatera outbreaks in Micronesia, Melanesia, and
Polynesia occurred after World War II battles, nuclear testing,
shipping activities, dumping, and construction by the United
States, Great Britain, and France.

TESTIMONY: "What I saw was no longer recognizable as a human
being. Basinas could not talk and his whole body was black and
suppurating. He had pains in his joints and he was still
scratching and pulling his skin off. Usually, patients who
arrived at the hospital sick from eating fish got sent straight
to Tahiti and dismissed, but it was probably not possible with
Basinas because he was so sick."

--Tehiura. Worked as a docker at Moruroa from 1963 to 1968.

France has always maintained that its nuclear tests are
perfectly safe. Yet the French government stopped publishing
health statistics of French Polynesians in 1963, just after the
testing program began. It has relied on anecdotal evidence and
public relations stunts to prove that safety concerns are
unfounded. In 1970, French Defense minister Michel Debre tried
to blunt criticism by swimming in the lagoon at Moruroa six
hours after an atmospheric test. This sort of demonstration
continued, even after testing was moved underground in 1974. 

TESTIMONY: "While I was working there, politicians and
journalists came to check out rumors about the contamination of
the atoll and the lagoon. To prove everything was safe, the
military brass would go swimming in the lagoon. But afterwards
they took showers in special containers. Later I had to go and
clean up the containers and I noticed they used special soaps or
creams. There were tubes containing a yellow liquid which were
never used in the normal showers."

--Ruta. Has worked on Moruroa and Tahiti since 1976.


As time went on, it became increasingly difficult to keep
unflattering news about the testing program from reaching the
public. News of two accidents in 1979 and a typhoon in 1981
leaked out. The first accident--the explosion of a plutonium-
contaminated bunker--killed two workers and injured three. The
second occurred when a bomb got stuck halfway down a test shaft
and was detonated anyway. The explosion--measuring 63 on the
Richter scale-- caused a million-cubic-meter piece of the atoll
to drop into the ocean, which in turn caused a tidal wave. The
French authorities denied any connection between the tidal wave
and the explosion.

TESTIMONY: "After the explosion, people with special protective
gear had to enter the bunker and pour cement over the whole
container. They were only allowed to stay in there for a short
time as the whole place was full of plutonium and other
radioactive substances. Rene Vilette's remains--or what were
thought to be his remains-- were found three days later and sent
to France in the form of a concrete block.

---Tama Began working at Moruroa in the 1960s as an office
worker.

The typhoon hit on the night of March 11-12, 1981. Fearing for
their safety, civilian technicians leaked the news to the French
press. The storm swept radioactive waste, including 10 to 20
kilograms of plutonium, off the north beach of the atoll.
According to the technicians, who were members of the CFTD trade
union, the plutonium had been spilled on the beach during
"security tests" from 1966 to 1974, then covered in asphalt. The
powerful winds peeled off the asphalt and flung the plutonium
into the lagoon.

TESTIMONY: "People came out of their houses when it was over and
we saw that boats had been lifted onto the rocks and that all
sorts of barrels were floating around. The waves had washed them
out of the repository where they had been buried. It was hard
work to retrieve them and store them away again, this time in
the blockhouse. We were not told they contained radioactive
materials."

--Ruta

In 1982, the French Defense Ministry finally gave in to demands
by Pacific and French politicians for an independent
investigation of the "radiological state" of Moruroa. But the
team--handpicked by French Defense Minister Charles Hemu--was
not given complete access to the atoll. Because the team was not
allowed to take any measurements or visit the test sites, its
visit amounted to nothing more than a helicopter tour. The
scientists were forced to rely on French military data, so their
results, published in The Tazieff Report, were immediately
disputed. The 1984 Report of a New Zealand, Australian, and
Papua New Guinea Scientific Mission to Moruroa Atoll (otherwise
known as The Atkinson Report) was similarly limited.
Nonetheless, France used a shortened version of the report to
defend the nuclear testing program. 

One of The Atkinson Report's more dubious findings is that
"cancer statistics for the region do not support any suggestions
of elevated rates for tumor sites which might be associated with
excessive exposure to radioactive fallout." It would have been
impossible for the statistics to reflect elevated cancer rates
because a death certification system was not resumed until 1983,
and then only under pressure from the World Health Organization.
And all the health data that allegedly support this conclusion
were supplied by the French military. Professor Robert
Beaglehole, an epidemiologist at the Auckland University Medical
School wrote, "The French Polynesian health statistics have been
of such poor quality that it appears the authorities were not
seriously monitoring the health of the population."

TESTIMONY: "All the handicapped children on the island were born
after the testing started. There are also a lo of cross-eyed
people. Soon after the tests began, the women were sent to
Tahiti to give birth. The reason given for this was that
supposedly the facilities on Manaraeva were not see up to handle
births. This is nonsense because in 1959 and 1963 there was no
infirmary at all and everybody gave birth at home as they had
always done.... The fact that there were no facilities was just
an excuse used so that if anything went wrong they could just
hush it up in the hospital in Tahiti." 

--Robert lives on the Gambier Islands southeast of Moruroa.

The most recent scientific expedition to Moruroa was in 1987,
when Captain Jacques Yves Cousteau visited the island. Cousteau
described severe fissuring, underwater slides, sinking, and
accelerated aging of the atoll. He also noted radioactive
Cesium-134 in the lagoon. Norm Buske, a scientist with SEARCH
Technical Services reexamined Cousteau's data, and released a
report last year. His calculations suggest that the atoll is far
less efficient at holding in radioactive isotopes than the
French assert. Buske tried to get permission to visit the atoll
himself to collect new samples, but his request was never
answered. When he approached the atoll with the Rainbow Warrior
crew in December 1990, he was arrested by French commandos.

TESTIMONY: "Since the tests went underground there are fissures
all over the place. I'm sure these fissures prove that the tests
are dangerous, but no one warns the workers of this when they
first arrive. In some areas we had to wear badges to measure the
degree of radiation we were exposed to and we had annual medical
checkups but we never got any feedback."

--Philippe. Worked on Moruroa from 1971 to 1985. 

The testimonies in this article are taken from the Greenpeace
book Testimonies. The interviews were conducted in 1987 by Dr.
Andy Biedermann, a Swiss doctor and former crew member of the 
Rainbow Warrior. The names of the people interviewed were
changed to protect them from official repercussions.   


GREENPEACE INVESTIGATION FINDS RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION 

This time, it was not for a protest, but simply to take
scientific samples. Nevertheless, the Rainbow Warrior's December
visit to the Pacific atoll of Moruroa, where France explodes
nuclear bombs, was met with military force. Evidence of the
environmental effects of the nuclear testing program, rumored to
be destroying the foundations of the atoll and contaminating the
ocean with radioactivity, is hard to get: The French government
actively discourages impartial investigations. So when
Greenpeace asked last summer if researchers could come and take
a few water samples near the atoll, France refused. Greenpeace
went anyway. 

On December 11, trailing a plankton net, the Rainbow Warrior
skirted the 12-mile territorial limit around Moruroa. Samples
collected were found to contain Cesium-134 and Cobalt-60--both
artificial radionuclides produced by nuclear tests. When
confronted with the data, French authorities stonewalled,
refusing to discuss the results with Greenpeace scientists.
"After our alarming initial findings, we felt we had no choice
but to go into the lagoon itself to sample for radioactivity,"
says Stephanie Mills, a campaigner aboard the Rainbow Warrior.

Ignoring the warnings from the French warships that shadowed the
Rainbow Warrior, a team of five volunteers boarded an inflatable
and crossed into French territory, towing a plankton net at 3 to
4 knots. After an hour of tense waiting, 40 masked French
commandos aboard inflatables arrested the team, holding them for
three hours before releasing them. A few hours later, the team
entered the exclusionary zone a second time and were once again
arrested. "Although our inflatables were returned to the
Warrior, we were taken to Moruroa and held incommunicado for
three days, guarded night and day by French legionnaires,"
recalls Mills. The seizure unleashed outcry by Greenpeace
activists around the world, with demonstrators unfurling protest
banners in front of French Consulates in Vancouver, San
Francisco, Sydney, Auckland, and across the rose windows of
Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
--Diane Feeney


CAMPAIGNS

RACE FOR THE WHALES

IT LOOKED LIKE THE MACY'S THANKSGIVING Day parade. A huge 40-
meter-long humpback whale balloon named "Flo" floated down the
skyscraper-lined street. But this was Tokyo, not New York. Flo
was calling attention to the first Whale Watching Summit--an
attempt by Greenpeace Japan to encourage people to see whales as
part of a complete marine ecosystem, not just as a luxury food
item. As people viewed the blue leviathan, Greenpeace volunteers
handed out fact sheets. And in a nearby office building, expert
panellists debated the question, "Whales--are they to be eaten
or to be loved?"


Japan continues to undercut the international moratorium on
commercial whale hunts by claiming that this year's catch of 300
minke whales is "scientific research". Since the moratorium
began in 1986, Japan has killed 4,726 Antarctic minke whales.
"Our worst fear is that Japan will revive full-scale commercial
whaling, amounting to thousands of dead minkes each year," says
Sally Shoup, Greenpeace USA whale campaigner. "It is a race
against time between a ravenous whaling industry and growing
concern for the protection of whales."

In a more immediate race, Greenpeace's MV Gondwana left New
Zealand on December 5 to track down the Japanese factory whaling
ship, the Nisshin Maru No. 3. Greenpeace sailors spotted the
ship after a week at sea, and contacted the Japanese government,
asking that it call the ship home. The Greenpeace crew also
radioed and telexed the Nisshin Maru, notifying it of its
intention to carry out non-violent direct actions to stop it
from killing whales.

Greenpeace activists formed a high-seas human blockade by
jumping from a helicopter into the path of the 23,000-ton ship.
They were washed through the bow waves toward the stem, and once
clear of the propellers, were picked up by Greenpeace
inflatables. They then went back to the helicopter and jumped
again . . . and again. The Nisshin Maru cut its engines, then
later sped to the whaling grounds of Antarctica's Southern
Ocean. The Gondwana shadowed the whalers, while crew members put
inflatables, helicopters, and their own bodies between the
hunters and the whales. During the two-week chase, no whales
were killed.

DOWN BY THE BAYOU

IN DECEMBER, GREENPEACE ACTIVISTS targeted Louisiana's most
notorious polluter, Marine Shale Processors (MSP) (see "Nasty
Business," Greenpeace, May/June 1989). Despite a closure order
from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality DEQ, an
injunction by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency EPA),
violations of the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, millions of
dollars in fines, federal debarment, and four failed test burns,
MSP continues to operate the highest volume hazardous waste
incinerator in the country.

Marine Shale's doors would probably be closed for good, were it
not for the regional EPA office. "While all other branches of
government continue to want to shut down MSP," says John
Liebman, Greenpeace toxics campaigner, "Region 6 hands out new
permits and attempts to circumvent the DEQ. For every point the
DEQ makes, Region 6 says it has final authority." And MSP's
lawyers have their own strategy: appeal every judgment against
the company and claim that burning hazardous waste for a living
is really recycling (MSP has tried, unsuccessfully, to peddle
the toxic incinerator ash as "aggregate" for road building and
construction).

To draw attention to the problem, Greenpeace activists floated
Zodiacs down Bayou Boeuf and sprayed MSP's own effluent (which
it claims is harmless) back onto company grounds. MSP workers
lined the bank of the bayou, shouting insults and throwing rocks
at the activists. Two Marine Shale employees assaulted
campaigner Brian Hunt with steel clubs, striking him repeatedly
in the head and arms. Hunt, who sustained 12 stitches, calls the
attack "less significant than the act of violence MSP is
committing against the environment and the people of Louisiana."

ANTARCTICA CONTINUED... 

AS CAMPAIGNERS IN NEW ZEALAND LAUNCHED Greenpeace's sixth
expedition to Antarctica, government delegates from 38 countries
met in Vina del Mar, Chile, to discuss the fate of the icy
continent. The year-end meeting was sharply divided over the
mining issue: one camp wants to reserve the right to exploit oil
and minerals in Antarctica; the other prefers to see it
preserved as a World Park.

An article prohibiting minerals activities in Antarctica was
pencilled into the negotiating text, to be elaborated further at
the treaty system's next meeting in April. "For the moment, we
are arguing from a position of strength," says Susan Sabella,
Greenpeace Antarctica campaigner. "But there is nothing to
prevent the parties from watering down or scrapping the
prohibition altogether."

Greenpeace lobbyists had hoped delegates would get past "the
minerals thing" and concentrate on obtaining some meaningful
environmental protection for Antarctica. This attitude, it turns
out, was too optimistic. "When we got to the meetings," says
Sabella, "we realized just how entrenched certain nations are."
She added, "In concrete terms, we are not any better off now
than we were before the meeting, but the dialogue goes on, and
the momentum continues to build for a World Park."

TESTING 1,2,3

THOUSANDS OF PEACE ACTIVISTS GATHERED at the United States'
nuclear weapons proving ground in the Nevada desert in January
to protest nuclear testing and the Persian Gulf buildup. As some
700 of the activists crossed over to the high-security zone of
the Nevada Test Site, they were arrested for trespassing. Most
of the protesters--from the Soviet Union, Pacific Islands,
Japan, Germany, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States--
had been participating in a Uniting Nations for the Test Ban
conference in Las Vegas. Many protesters live in regions
suffering from radiation contamination from nuclear tests.

"This beautiful desert has been transformed into one of the most
dangerous and deadly lands in the world," says Olzhas
Suleirnenov, who led the public protest that shut down the main
Soviet nuclear test site in Kazakhstan last year. "As long as
places such as this exist, the Cold War is not over." Suleimenov
then accepted a peace pipe from Corbin Harney, spiritual leader
of the Western Shoshone Nation, whose land was illegally
occupied for the U.S. test site by the U.S. government. Harney
called the test site "a monster that our people cannot survive
.... We don't want this on our land."

The peaceful protest--led by Greenpeace, American Peace Test,
Citizen Alert, the Western Shoshone Nation, and 25 other groups-
- was timed to take place immediately before a United Nations
conference to negotiate a complete ban on nuclear testing. But
Elizabeth Hoinkes, head of the U.S. delegation to the
conference, told Greenpeace that the U.S. would veto an
amendment to the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which currently allows
underground nuclear detonations. The United States, Great
Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and France continue to explode
nuclear bombs underground (see page 6).

WASTE TRADE INVENTORY 

Waste traders have attempted to export over 163 million tons of
toxic waste around the world. How much will end up in your
backyard? The International Trade in Waste; A Greenpeace
Inventory gives detailed accounts of the worldwide trade of
toxic waste and the search for a dumping ground.
To obtain your copy, send a check for U.S. $20 payable to
"Greenpeace Waste Trade Project" to Greenpeace Waste Trade
Project, 1436 U St, NW Washington, DC 20009.

ACTION ACCESS

WASTE TRADE PROMISE 

A NUMBER OF LEGISLATORS FROM THE UNITED States, Europe, and
Japan have formed the Global Legislators Organization for a
Balanced Environment (GLOBE) to cooperate on international
environmental issues. Among their achievements, GLOBE members
from the United States and Japan agreed to work for a ban on
toxic waste exports to Third World countries, like the ban
adopted last year by the European Community. It is important to
thank the U.S. members for making this commitment and to inform
them that we will be anxiously awaiting legislative action to
ban waste exports. Please write to Senator Al Gore, GLOBE
International President, 393 Russell Senate Building,
Washington, DC 20510; Senator John Heinz, GLOBE USA President
and member of the toxic waste working group, 277 Russell Senate
Building, Washington, DC 20510; and Representative James
Scheuer, GLOBE Founding President, 2412 Rayburn, Washington, DC
20510.

BAN THE BURN

THE RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND Recovery Act or RCRA (pronounced
rik-ra) --the law designed to deal with solid and hazardous
wastes--is also up for reauthorization by Congress. Industry and
the Bush administration have been trying to make it easier to
site dangerous and polluting waste facilities, such as
incinerators, over the objections of local residents. Greenpeace
Action is calling for a national moratorium on construction of
new incinerators, and for implementation of pollution prevention
laws that force polluters to reduce the production and use of
toxics. Greenpeace Action also supports increased rights for
citizens battling to keep incinerators out of their communities.
Write to your congressional representatives and ask them to
support a RCRA reauthorization that includes such measures.

TUNA BILL

REPRESENTATIVE BARBARA BOXER (D-CA), champion of the new tuna
labelling law, recently introduced legislation to ban the
practice of fishing for tuna by encircling dolphins. This new
legislation would complement the ban on the sale of driftnet-
caught tuna in the U.S., which goes into effect on July 1. The
legislation would also authorize funding to research and develop
an alternative dolphin-friendly method of fishing for tuna.
Please write to your congressional representative and urge him
her to cosponsor this legislation H.R. 261).

ACT ON CLEAN WATER

THIS YEAR, CONGRESS WILL ATTEMPT TO reauthorize the Clean Water
Act in anticipation of the law's 20th anniversary in 1992. The
act's laudable goal of "zero discharge" of toxins has never been
met. Permits intended to ratchet down toxic dumping into our
waterways have instead become licenses to pollute, because the
law does not say when zero discharge must be reached. Write to
your congressional delegation and ask them to implement programs
to reduce the manufacture and use of toxic substances and to set
a timetable to reach zero discharge.

NUCLEAR POWER CONFERENCE 

GREENPEACE ACTION, THE NUCLEAR INFORMATION and Resource Service,
and the Safe Energy Communications Council, are sponsoring a
Washington, D.C., conference on nuclear power and alternative
energy on April 26-28,1991, the fifth anniversary of the 
Chernobyl disaster. A lobbying day at the Capitol will follow.
For further information, contact Greenpeace Nuclear Power
Campaign, 1436 U Street, NW, Washington, DC 20009; 202-319-2504
or 2517.

SUMMER CAMP 

CREATING OUR FUTURE (COF) WILL HOLD its fourth annual peace,
social justice, and environmental action summer camp for high
school and college students from July 22 to 31 in northern
California. For more information contact COF at 1640 Franasco
Street, Berkeley, CA 94703; 415-841-3020.

STOP THE CUT

COALITION OF GRASSROOTS ACTIVISTS, SAVE America's Forests (SAF),
is working for passage of the Native Forest Protection Act. The
act would end all logging of ancient, virgin, and native forests
on federal public lands; provide economic transition for
displaced workers; and give economic incentives for recycling.
SAF is trying to raise support for the act with a series of
events during Earth Week, culminating in a rally at the Capitol
on April 21st. To get involved, contact SAF, 4-6 Library Court,
Washington, DC 20003; 202-544-9219.

SHARE THE DATA

FOR INFORMATION ABOUT A NEW ENVIRONmental software program,
contact Save the Planet Software, Box 45, Pitkin, CO 81241; 303
-641-5035.

The Action Access Section is paid for by Greenpeace Action.
Greenpeace Action is a sister organization of Greenpeace USA
that promotes environmental protection and disarmament through
grassroots organizing, education, and legislation.