TL: GREENPEACE Magazine July-September 1987
SO: Greenpeace USA (GP)
DT: July 1987
Keywords: periodicals greenpeace us pre90 gp digests /

ANTARCTICA: Laying Claim to the Last Wilderness

TAKING ACTION: THE HIGHER LAW OF THE NUCLEAR AGE 
by John E. Mack, M.D. One man's response to a society preparing
for nuclear war.

LIVING NEXT TO THE LANDFILL 
by Andre Carothers.
Few things evoke skepticism in government and the EPA like
having the world's largest toxic waste dump move in next door.

WASTE MANAGEMENT INDEX 
by Jim Vallette.
Everything they don't want you to know about the world's largest
toxic waste handling company.

DIET FOR A POISONED PLANET 
by John McCormick.
When you consider the cost of a red, ripe tomato, don't forget
to factor in contaminated ground water, poisoned children and
"super bugs."


ECO-NOTES

POISONING OUR OWN

Since the first atomic explosion in 1945, millions of people
have been exposed to radioactive fallout from nuclear blasts.
But few civilians have received the repeated intense exposures
typical of U.S. military personnel involved in above ground
nuclear tests and clean-up work in Nagasaki and Hiroshima after
the nuclear blasts. 

When the National Association of Radiation Survivors sued for
compensation on behalf of radiation victims, the Veterans
Administration, it was discovered recently, destroyed thousands
of crucial documents rather than turn them over to the federal
court. While Michael Dunlap, assistant director of pension
services, testified that the files were purged in a routine
"housecleaning," several other VA employees reported that they
were harassed and threatened with the loss of their jobs when
they questioned their supervisors on the legality of the action.

There are few places irradiated vets can turn for help. The 1983
Warner Amendment transfers all suits filed against military
contractors to the U.S. government, but the government, under
the 1950 Feres Doctrine, cannot be sued for injuries related to
military service.


PLANE FOOLISHNESS

In 1968, an American B-52 bomber carrying four nuclear bombs
crashed in Greenland, spreading 16 kilograms of plutonium and
other highly toxic radioactive materials over acres of tundra.
Over a four-month period, more than 230,000 cubic feet of ice
and debris were scraped up and disposed of by hundreds of U.S.
and Danish military personnel, many of whom now suffer from
cancer and radiation-related illnesses. The crash resulted in
the suspension of the U.S. program that had kept nuclear weapons
airborne at all times since 1961.

Plutonium may once again take to the air, this time twice a
month and in quantities 15 times as high as that released in the
1968 crash. If the U.S. Congress accepts a new plan proposed by
the Reagan administration, Japan would be released from
requirements that transport of all U.S.derived radioactive
materials be subject to U.S. approval. This release would allow
them to fly plutonium reprocessed by commercial facilities in
Europe back to Japan by an agreed-upon polar route.

Until now, the U.S. has been able to review the shipments on a
case by case basis. Because of the hazards, plutonium shipments
are vanishingly rare; Japan's last was by sea and required Navy
escorts and satellite surveillance. But by the year 2000, 25,000
kilograms of separated plutonium will be recycled in commercial
nuclear reactors routinely each year (only six kilograms were
required to destroy Nagasaki). Four countries will separate most
of this plutonium - France, West Germany, the United Kingdom
and, by the turn of the century, Japan. Plutonium transport will
become a common occurrence.

Besides the obvious concerns - crashes or midair collisions
resulting in catastrophic releases of plutonium- the global
commerce in plutonium will contribute to the proliferation of
nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons development can be "hidden" in
nuclear power programs - as the cases of Israel, South Africa
and Pakistan, among others, attest. And the possibility of a
hijack of weapons-grade plutonium by terrorists is greatly
increased.


DOLLARS AND SCIENCE

The shipping manifest said frozen seafood, but it told only part
of the story. When Greenpeace activists, acting on inside
information, intercepted the black refrigerated shipping
container as it was unloaded in Hamburg, West Germany, they
discovered 175 tons of meat from endangered Sei and Fin whales. 

The shipment was part of Iceland's 1986 fall catch of 114
endangered whales taken under the guise of "scientific
research." It was headed for the markets of Japan, in violation
of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species
(CITES) agreements. Under a new domestic law adopted in response
to CITES rulings, the West German government seized the whale
meat, and can store or destroy the meat "if a scientific or
educational purpose is not found."

This year Iceland, which is not a member of CITES, will export
1000 tons of whale meat to Japan, which has filed a
"reservation" to the CITES ban on commerce in whale products.
Both Japan and Norway will join Iceland in an effort to "whale
for science" when they submit proposals to the International
Whaling Commission meeting this June.

"This is a continuation of commercial whaling under another
name," said Dean Wilkinson, Wildlife Legislative Director at
Green peace. "If killing whales is valuable for scientific
knowledge, the whaling nations missed out on over two million
opportunities to learn in the past half century." The U.S.
delegation to the IWC will counter the whaling nations'
proposals with its own resolution to severely limit research
whaling.


NUCLEAR COVER-UP

A year after the Chernobyl accident, the safety of the nuclear
power industry shows no signs of improvement. Reports of a leak
of 25 tons of highly-reactive sodium at the Super-Phenix breeder
in France were quickly followed by another leak - a collection
of International Atomic Energy Agency reports chronicling 250
"incidents" at nuclear stations worldwide, made public by the
West German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. The IAEA report was
withheld by the agency because member nations "didn't want to
cause a panic," according to Marlene O'Dell, spokesperson for
the Vienna-based agency.

Of particular concern to nuclear power experts is the Soviet-
designed VVER-440 nuclear reactor. A Greenpeace-commissioned
investigation discovered that the reactor suffered from a
variety of serious defects, including inadequate containment
structures, leak-prone emergency coolant systems, faulty
pressure reduction systems and brittle valves and gaskets.
Located in ten sites throughout Europe and in Finland, an
accident at one of these reactors could lead to massive
contamination of major European cities.

"While all modern types of reactors in the East and West are
equally unsafe, it has to be noted that the VVER-440 is more
unsafe than the average," said Dr. Helmut Hirsch, the main
ECO author of the report. Especially shoddy is the VVER-440
station at Dukovany in Czechoslovakia, where chances of an
accident occurring before the end of the century may be as high
as one in five. Depending on weather conditions, an accident at
this reactor could send a radioactive plume over Vienna within
six hours and cause between 12,000 and 100,000 cancers in
Austria alone.

Despite the bad press, the only reactor to close down
permanently last year was in Chernobyl. By the end of 1986, 21
new reactors were added to the 373 power reactors already on
line in 26 countries. Most of this expansion is taking place in
the developing nations, where the nuclear industry has taken
advantage of the "energy crisis" to market wares viewed with
skepticism by Europe and the United States.

TEDS ENDANGERED

Sea turtles are dying by the thousands all along the southern
Atlantic and the Gulf Coast. Some local shrimpers are upset, but
not about the turtles. They're upset about the Turtle Excluder
Device (TED) - an instrument designed by the National Marine
Fisheries Service that releases virtually all turtles caught in
shrimping nets. 

In order to avoid legal action that might make TED use
mandatory, the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOM), environmentalists and the shrimp industry
agreed to sit down and negotiate the issue last January. Calling
TEDs "Today's Environmental Destruction of Shrimpers," a small
but vocal group of shrimpers contend that the use of TEDs
significantly reduces shrimp catch and creates dangers for the
shrimpers themselves.

In fact, shrimp nets pose a serious threat to the region's
dwindling numbers of sea turtles, particularly the gravely
endangered Kemp's Ridley. More than 11,000 sea turtles die each
year in shrimp nets. Fortunately, tests of the newest TED
designs show that the devices can significantly reduce the catch
of unwanted marine life, in some cases improving the efficiency
of the shrimp fleet. But many shrimpers continue to oppose TEDs.

WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS

Acid rain is killing more than lakes and rivers, according to
the latest research. The health effects on humans, both direct
and indirect, may prove far more widespread than was thought a
few years ago. Acid emissions in the air contribute to all types
of lung disease, striking children, the elderly and asthmatics
in particular. "Acid rain is the third major causal factor of
lung disease after active and passive smoking," says Dr. Phil
lip J. Landrigan, Director of Environmental and Occupational
Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. 

The U.S. Congress' Office of Technology Assessment determined
that sulfate particles may be the cause of 50,000 premature
deaths annually in the US and Canada. And Canadian researchers
suspect that during certain times of year, almost half the
hospital admissions for small children in southwestern Ontario
are attributable to acid pollution. 

Acid rain also leaches toxins and heavy metals out of soils and
water pipes. Fish and animals thus accumulate poisons in their
system that are passed on to humans who eat them, and public
water supplies are increasingly tainted with lead, aluminum and
mercury.

As acid rain's death toll mounts in Canada - along with the
human diseases, experts estimate 14,000 lakes in eastern Canada
and 13 salmon-bearing rivers in Nova Scotia are "acid dead" -
Canada's impatience with the Reagan administration rises in
step. The Ottawa Summit between Prime Minister Brian Mulroney
and President Reagan last March, which ended with a vague
agreement "to consider" an accord on acid rain prevention, has
since produced little action on the U.S. side of the border.

President Reagan promised to spend $2.5 billion to "develop air
pollution technologies," a plan criticized for being research
and not action-oriented. The administration's 1986 budget,
however, asked for only $350 million, a fraction of what was
recommended by the joint US/Canada Envoy's Report in 1986.


TAKING ACTION

The Higher Law of the Nuclear Age

By John E. Mack, M.D.

"There is a dark side to human nature that I don't understand .
. . Whether it gets control or not is the essence of the problem
of governments dealing with each other."

During the past several years I have tried to reconcile my
activist imperatives with the academic and psychiatric life I
also lead. Henry David Thoreau, in his 1849 essay on resistance
to civil government, said, "There are thousands who are in
opinion opposed to slavery and to the war (he was referring to
the war with Mexico), who yet in effect do nothing to put an end
to them." The nuclear arms race calls for us to do something
about it. In my case, however, as a psychiatrist in academic
life, there are problems with activity. Some actions create
tensions and conflicts, perhaps even incompatibilities and
contradictions. Action, I suspect, may be a bigger problem for
psychoanalysts than for others because we are trained from the
beginning not to be active, not to do too much. 

There are a variety of political actions we may undertake as
teachers or as concerned citizens involved in the electoral
process, such as writing letters, signing petitions, marching
for peace, or working for candidates whose stance on issues we
support. But I write particularly about a decision I made last
June to be arrested in Mercury, Nevada, at the Nuclear Test
Site, in protest of U.S. testing of nuclear weapons. 

The Soviet moratorium on nuclear-weapons testing began in August
of 1985 and ended in February 1987. The protesters in Nevada
these past months opposed continued U.S. testing in the face of
the Soviet moratorium. There have been pioneers in these
protests, such as Daniel Ellsberg; the Reverend Lewis Vitale, of
the Franciscan order in Las Vegas; the Shoshone Indians, who
complain bitterly about the internal injuries being done to
their mother earth by nuclear explosions; the Berrigans; and
Margaret Brenman-Gibson, a psychologist and professor at Harvard
who has been arrested a number of times in Nevada. Groups like
Greenpeace and, more recently, American Peace Test (APT) have
been organizing demonstrations against U.S. testing for several
years. 

In May a colleague and friend of mine, Lester Grinspoon, another
Harvard psychiatrist, called me about an APT action that was
being planned for the weekend of May 31 to June 2, 1986. He
asked me if I would join a group of psychiatrists and others at
the test site. I spoke with my wife and children about the
possibility and was somewhat surprised to find that each of my
three sons, ages 22, 24 and 26, was interested in joining me in
a family action at the site. My wife Sally eventually decided to
join us, and we went to Nevada together as a family. On Sunday
there was training in the discipline of nonviolent civil
disobedience. 

That day, all of the demonstrators agreed to take a single
action on Monday. Those who were to be arrested would cross the
white line marking the perimeter of the site in an orderly
manner so as not to bring about violence or create chaos.

When Sally and I went out to Nevada, it had not been our
intention to be arrested, but to be in the support group for
those who would be. We found ourselves increasingly dissatisfied
with this decision. By Sunday night our sons had made up their
minds that they were going to join with those moving onto the
test site. By Monday morning it became clear to us that we could
not have our children walk across the line while we stood on the
other side and waved as if to say, "Nice going, guys, well see
you back in Boston." So we were all arrested together. The 149
who crossed the line were handcuffed and taken away on a bus in
the 110 degree heat.

Sally and I signed out later on our own recognizance. Our
initial trial took place on September 29. Richard Falk, a well-
known international lawyer at Princeton, argued our case in
terms of greater danger posed by nuclear weapons and the
Nuremberg principles, which oblige individuals to uphold
international law. Judge William Sullivan, the county justice in
Beatty, has had his hands full dealing with the overwhelming
number of demonstrations taking place at the test site. On
November 24, after deliberating for eight weeks, he ruled that
the demonstrators were in fact guilty of trespassing. On
September 30 another large demonstration occurred that resulted
in 140 arrests, and again on February 5, 1987, over 430
demonstrators were arrested.

In my view of the political situation, actions like this are
important, if not essential. I start my analysis with what I
call the dark side of humankind. People, I find, will generally
go along with this notion if it can be located elsewhere. I have
been conducting a study of decision makers in the nuclear age
and spent hours at Livermore Laboratories in California
interviewing weapons makers. The man formerly in charge of
designing all nuclear weapons at the lab said to me quite
spontaneously, "There is a dark side to human nature that I
don't understand. I know it's in everybody and in every society,
and whether that dark side gets control or not is the essence of
the problem of governments dealing with each other."

But when I have pressed him and others further, it is the
expression of the dark side in others--in the Soviet Union, for
instance, or among the ideological extremists in the Reagan
administration--that is emphasized. They are different from us.
The dark side resides in the institutions that harness science
and technology for destructive purposes. Nuclear weapons have
proven to be amplifiers of terror, aggression and power. They
seem to contribute to a certain primitivism of thought and to
the emergence of the demonic in all of us. But their threat also
inspires opposite tendencies, efforts to transcend differences
between peoples. 

The dark side of humankind in the nuclear age is expressed by
nationalism and the ideologies that support it. We need to
understand the special power nationalism holds. If it is not the
primary group-identification for most of humankind, surely the
idea of the nation and its values and purposes is the one for
which men and women will most readily die and for which they,
albeit usually at someone else's orders, will kill others. There
is some mystery about its power. Nationalism is both compelling
and thin, for when human contact is made across national lines,
nationalistic thinking often melts away.

This power, as I see it, has dual origins. One source resides in
tribal history and the myths of national origin. The history of
tribes and nations has led to the focus on outside dangers.
There is thus in the psychology of nationalism a built-in
tendency to externalize. National histories are associated with
outside enemies, with threat and the struggle for survival.
Heroes are those who are thought to have saved the nation from
its enemies. 

The second source of power of nationalism lies in a population's
personal reservoirs of emotional susceptibility. We identify
with the nation. It serves to give us a sense of value and
belonging, of community - real or false. Nationalism may also
provide an outlet for aggressive emotions. Morton Halperin, a
nuclear strategist who has worked with leaders at the highest
levels for a quarter of a century, goes further than I, as a
psychiatrist, would dare when he says, "Policy makers, like most
of the rest of us, are playing out their deep psychological
needs because nobody knows how to prove their ideas are wrong."

Nationalism is supported by ideologies, bodies of thought that
simplify and distort history and political reality to justify
national behavior. Ideologies have a double-edged quality. They
represent positive values such as freedom, or the collective
purpose of the nation. But they tend to become empty slogans,
polarizing issues and dividing people from each other. What I
call the "ideologies of enmity" sanction killing and mass
killing. 

Dehumanization and demonization of the other are primary devices
leaders use to mobilize the citizenry against an adversary. The
understanding, or at least the use, of these mechanisms is being
demonstrated increasingly by political analysts. Soviet expert
Seweryn Bialer, in his new book, The Soviet Paradox writes: "It
is wrong to dehumanize the complex experience, thoughts, and
fears of the Soviet people and demonize the Soviet leaders,
denying any validity to their fear of war, their legitimate
security concerns, and their recognition of the imperative need
to create some sort of mod us vivendi with the other nuclear
powers." 

Paul Warnke says in a recent article, "Our problem today is that
we are running out of acceptable enemies. At one point we could
count on Red China, and Dean Rusk could talk about the specter
of a billion Chinese armed with nuclear weapons. Today we have
a billion Chinese armed with nuclear weapons, but they scare
nobody but the Russians. . . We have to find a worthy enemy. The
entire burden has now fallen on the Soviets. I do not know what
we would do without them."

The ideologies of enmity bind us to the reality of the other.
They create a structure of interpretation that limits what can
show up about another society - what we,for example, might learn
about the Soviet Union, or the Soviets about us. They hide from
us our own contribution to the conflict and to the suffering
that our own nation may cause. Ideologies blind one to where
ideologies themselves reside. Ideology is, by and large,
something someone else has.

Our blaming of the Soviet Union used to include the accusation
of lying. But during the past few weeks and months we have seen
a steady pattern of lying and distortion on our own part, now
euphemistically called disinformation. We saw it in the KAL
incident, in which U.S. leaders insisted, despite evidence to
the contrary, that the Soviet pilots knew the civilian status of
the aircraft they gunned down. We see it in Secretary of Defense
Caspar Weinberger's repeated insistence, without citing
evidence, that the Soviets believe they can win a nuclear war.
We see it in the name given to the contra killers--"freedom
fighters" - and we see it in the Poindexter memo that called for
"the use of real and illusionary defense through a
disinformation program" to aggravate Khadafy's paranoia. The
most telling incident was George Schultz's employment of an
alleged quote from Churchill to justify lying about Khadafy: "In
time of war, the truth is so precious it must be attended by a
bodyguard of lies." Are we at war? Is lying and its
justification now institutionalized as part of our national
ideology? 

We hear a lot these days about the need for enemies. I don't
quite see it that way. I believe we have a genetic potential for
violence, but I do not think there is anything inevitable about
it. National leaders use that potential for political purposes;
they recruit our hatred and the violence in us. Hitler said in
Mein Kampf that to retain power one must keep the focus always
on an outside enemy. I believe that we have the capability of
transcending this potential, but we will need different marching
orders if we are to do it.

Ideology is the psychopolitical glue that binds the war system
together. It provides the justification for the vast array of
economic, domestic, political, scientific, military, and
technocratic vested interests that comprise the system. It
furnishes the abnegation of collective self-responsibility that
permits the weapons makers and users to do what they do.

Nuclear weapons decision makers, with a few exceptions, are not
ideologues. They accept just enough of the prevailing anti-
Soviet attitudes to permit them to do what they know how to do
well without too much guilt. They usually do not much question
the basic assumptions. Many weapons makers believe, for example,
that they are working to stabilize deterrence. But they do not
see how our advanced nuclear systems might be perceived as a
threat by the Soviets, or that we use them to force political
results and change Soviet behavior. 

The Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) is a kind of
apogee, a coming together in the heavens of all of the forces I
have described. It is the ultimate expression of U.S. power
through advanced technology. It reveals the faith of an
ideologically committed leader and his blindly loyal followers.
Many speak disparagingly of the scheme's mythic qualities.

MIT principal research scientist Kosta Tsipis calls it a
"technological science-fiction fantasy." Senator Edward Kennedy
calls it a "grand illusion." Responsible scientists have argued
persuasively that the system will not offer real protection, but
they miss the main point. Political psychologist Lloyd Etheridge
comes close to the heart of the matter. He argues that Star Wars
is suited to the carrying out of national power as dramatic art.
It is an appeal to faith and imagination and to emotion. As such
it is effective, impressive. Its mythic appeal overrides the
more mundane considerations of whether it will "work," let alone
whether it is politically or militarily wise. It is nationalism
as theater.

So where does this perspective leave us? In great danger, I
think. The danger derives not only from the overwhelming
destructiveness of nuclear devices but also from our attachment
to them and to the unrealistic perception that they could be
used successfully in a combat situation. The most compelling way
to appreciate the degree of the nuclear threat and its
indiscriminate nature is to realize that one's own country's
nuclear weapons are as much a danger as those of the adversary.
Whether this is so because of the possible nuclear winter
phenomenon or the virtual certainty of retaliation should the
weapons be used is not important. 

Lisa Peattie, MIT Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, who was
arrested with us in Nevada in June, said in her written defense:
"Another basis for the right of citizens to take action toward
stopping the preparations for nuclear war is the basic right of
persons to defend themselves and their children." In other
words, our government is threatening its own citizens, and we
have a right to defend ourselves. 

My analysis leads me to the conclusion that analysis is not
enough. Something more must be done to oppose the threat and the
forces that create it. What are the possibilities? First, there
is education and awareness. By awareness I mean an appreciation
that the problem is not only out there, in the Soviet Union, but
here as well. 

George Orwell pointed out that nationalistic and ideological
blinders are difficult to remove, but you can at least know that
you have them. We can become aware of the arrogance of U.S.
power and find ways of resisting it. We need to mobilize
alternative forms of power. This begins with new visions of
possibility. Jonathan Schell; the Beyond War group in
California; Randall Forsberg, in a new position paper outlining
a program for how to beat the war system in forty years; all
provide visions of a world without nuclear terror. We need the
courage to commit ourselves to the possibility of a world that
is not dominated by the threat of the war system. This is not a
technological problem; no hardware can, by itself, help much to
overcome our self-created vulnerability. 

We need to create a web of relationships between the United
States and the Soviet Union that can help to transcend narrowly
defined interests and the various expressions of militant
nationalism. Nowadays we often hear about globalism, or
universalism, and the essential interconnected Ness of peoples
in the nuclear age. It will take a lot of work to make this
real. We will continue to pursue familiar forms of political
action within the electoral system. But something more seems to
be needed, some effective protest that can directly challenge
the products of the power system that so threaten us.

Nonviolent resistance to illegitimate authority has a long
history in this country, dating back to the Boston Tea Party.
Thoreau gave it classic expression. If the law, wrote Thoreau,
"is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of
injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life
be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is
to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong
which I condemn." "A very few," Thoreau said, "as heroes,
patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve
the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist
it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies
by it."

Nonviolent resistance as an effective political force was
developed by Gandhi in the struggle for Indian independence. We
saw a dramatic example of it recently in the Philippines when
Marcos was swept out of power. Martin Luther King's leadership
of the struggle against racism in the South set a powerful
precedent for the political use of nonviolent civil disobedience
in this country. In a Birmingham jail in 1963 King wrote, "We
had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby
we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case
before the conscience of the local and the national community."
King's methods provided a way of dramatizing particular evils.
The New Yorker reminded us recently that at the time of his
death, King was "trying to figure out ways to extend his
successful tactic of nonviolent civil disobedience into new and
even more difficult battles - battles in which the enemy was not
as obvious and crude as it had been in Birmingham." 

The enemy in the nuclear battle is not always subtle, but its
power is formidable. The most effective counter force to that
power is a profoundly aroused and determined public that
strongly resists what Galbraith calls "the idea of nuclear
euthanasia." But all of us who have protested have faced the
problem of making the threat tangible, immediate, and palpable,
not something vaguely "out there," of dramatizing the evil with
which we are dealing and of penetrating the thicket of arcane
language that surrounds the arms race and leaves us feeling
frustrated and confused. One of the purposes of civil
disobedience is to do just that.

Illinois law professor Francis A. Boyle has written that
nonviolent civil disobedience is important to prevent or impede
"ongoing criminal activities." It represents the "last
constitutional avenue open to the American people to preserve
their democratic form of government with its historical
commitment to the rule of law."

There is evidence that nonviolent civil disobedience is becoming
more broad based and mainstream. Of the 140 arrested on
September 30, there were fifty physicians, seventeen professors
and teachers, six government public-health officials, several
nurses, a number of housewives, the publisher of Las Vegas
magazine, two lawyers, and a congressional aide. The action was
co-organized by the American Public Health Association (APHA),
hardly a radical group. Jerrianne Hayslette of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal wrote that "the 420 health care professionals
riding busses to the Nevada Test Site were not on a lark." Some,
she noted, wore "business suits, uptown dresses and high heels,"
and "many of the APHA delegates still wore their convention
ribbons." Columnist Robert Lowest of the Gateway Gazette wrote
of the protesters: "These were not long-haired hippies or
student dissidents of the past; these were responsible citizens
who happen to disagree with our nation's current policy of
continued nuclear weapons testing."

There is power in taking a stand, in saying no with your body.
Several congressmen have told us that the August, 1986 vote, in
which the House committed itself to cutting off funds for
nuclear weapons testing, was very much affected by the
demonstrations. Philippines president Corazon Aquino said in
September, 1986, "The central part of nonviolent change" is
touching "the humanity of your opponent" and finding "a way to
his basic decency." For nonviolent civil disobedience to focus
public attention on the spiralling arms race and create the
much-needed national debate about basic policy assumptions in
relation to nuclear weapons, the demonstrators will have to
extend their organization and communicate clearly to the public
and the media the reasons they have felt it necessary to take
such drastic action.

On September 30, 1986, the U.S. Department of Energy chose to
set off a nuclear test, as if in contempt of the growing ranks
of antinuclear demonstrators. Again, there were massive arrests,
over 130 this time. The test was called Lab Quark (they have
these cute names for them). When the countdown for Lab Quark
began, Carl Sagan held a radio up to a microphone so that the
hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the test site could hear
it. For several minutes afterward there was a deadly silence in
the desert, punctuated only by the sound of a baby crying.

On February 3, 1987, the U.S. exploded another underground test,
code-named Hazebrook. It is this test, says the Soviet Union,
that prompted them to finally end their unilateral moratorium.
Two days later more than 430 protesters were arrested, including
Dr. Carl Sagan and actors Martin Sheen and Kris Kristofferson.
The protest was sponsored by a diverse collection of groups,
including the Federation of American Scientists, the American
Public Health Association, Physicians for Social Responsibility
and Parliamentarians for Global Action. 

In attendance at the protest or a conference the day before were
Members of Congress Tom Downey, Jim Bates, Barbara Boxer, Mike
Lowry, Leon Panetta and Pat Schroeder. Also present were former
nuclear weapons designer Dr. Ted Taylor, Nobel Laureate for
Physics Professor Owen Chamberlain, Dr. Hugh Dewitt, senior
scientist at the Lawrence Liver more Weapons Laboratory, Marvin
Minsky, Donner Professor of Science at MIT, Dr. Lester
Grinspoon, Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical
School, and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. "This
observer," wrote Hank Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun,
"has seldom witnessed a more eminent group that was willing to
accept innumerable hardships with more grace, humility and
thoughtful response while petitioning for a cause that could
mean survival for their children, grandchildren and all
mankind." 

So here is where I've come to. The nuclear arms race threatens
academic life and freedom and everything else we cherish. Some
aspects of our education may enable us to see or understand the
threat more clearly than others do. Surely we need to be better
informed about the nuclear arms race so that we can effectively
challenge the basic tenets that have justified its perpetuation
and escalation. But in addition to becoming better informed, we
have the opportunity--the obligation--to do all we can to oppose
this most terrible evil of our time. Each of us can do it in his
or her own way. Nonviolent civil disobedience is traditionally
American, but one must be prepared for the consequences. King
said, "One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly,
and with a willingness to accept the penalty." For me,
personally, there has been something liberating in this action.
I recommend civil disobedience for your spiritual health.

John E. Mack, M.D., is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard
Medical School and director of the Center for Psychological
Studies in the Nuclear Age. Copyrights 1987 Harvard Magazine.
Reprinted by Permission.

UPHOLDING A HIGHER LAW 

by Brian Bence

It is inevitable that the conscience of an individual will come
into conflict with the law of the state. In 19th-century
southern United States, abolitionists routinely broke the
Fugitive Slave Act and a century later Martin Luther King led
the campaign of civil disobedience that roped back segregation.
Today, people break the law because their conscience demands
that they oppose the destruction of the environment, human
rights abuses in the conduct of foreign policy and the nuclear
arms race.

Sit-ins, civil disobedience and non-violent direct actions are
traditional means of social change in all societies, and legally
sanctioned in the United States in part by the Bill of Rights
and the system of trial by jury, where state law is subject to
scrutiny by the conscience of the community. Legal support is
also found in the necessity defense, where breaking the law is
considered justified if it is done to prevent a greater harm,
and in international laws and agreements such as the U.N.
Charter, the Geneva Convention and the Nuremberg Principles. 

Richard Falk, a professor of international law at the Center for
International Studies, Princeton University, sees breaking the
law as the only recourse for U.S. citizens opposed to aspects of
United States nuclear and foreign policy. He reasons that the
excessive secrecy demanded by nuclear weapons coupled with the
hair-trigger readiness of nuclear war fighting systems have
effectively removed Congressional oversight from vital national
security decisions. "Representative democracy is now virtually
dead when it comes to nuclear national security," says Falk. He
calls this erosion of democracy "nuclearism," which he defines
as "the unrestricted authority to unleash unlimited violence
with no legal or moral accountability."

These arguments and others like them are being used in court to
convince juries to acquit demonstrators arrested for protests
such as trespassing on the Nevada Test Site, destroying military
equipment and disrupting CIA recruiting on U.S. college
campuses. The main obstacle to this defense strategy is the
tendency for judges to prohibit certain testimony and issue
narrow instructions to the jury, or to avoid such cases
altogether (rather than preside over an"embarrassing"
precedent).

Last December, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark
prepared a defense based on necessity and the Nuremberg
principles for the almost 100 people arrested for trespassing
onto the Nevada Test Site last September. But on January 16th,
five days before the trial was scheduled to begin, the District
Attorney dropped the charges because of purported irregularities
in the arrest process. It is widely assumed that the charges
were dropped to avoid a public national debate on the wisdom and
legality of continued nuclear weapons testing. 

In the rare instance when a full airing of the issues is
allowed, trials have sometimes ended in acquittals or hung
juries. In a highly publicized jury trial last April, 14
activists including former President Jimmy Carter's daughter Amy
and veteran activist Abbie Hoffman were acquitted of charges
stemming from protests against CIA recruiting on the campus of
the University of Massachusetts. Commenting on the jury's
decision, prosecutor W. Michael Ryan said "Middle America
doesn't want the CIA doing what they are doing." Juror Anne
Gafney said afterwards, "These young people are doing perhaps
what most of us should be doing." 


The Coming of Age of Sumter County

by Andre Carothers
Photos by Fred Ward

Kaye Kiker, president of Alabamians for a Clean Environment, is
telling stories in her parlor--highlights of her five year
campaign to close down what may be the world's largest hazardous
waste landfill, located in Emelle, 20 miles from her house in
York, Alabama. I am taking notes and trying to understand why
she laughs so easily and speaks so benignly, even positively, of
the events of the last five years. 

Circumstances and her Christian sense of right and wrong have
transformed this churchgoing rural housewife into the leader of
a vocal and controversial group of local townspeople: ACE,
Alabamians for a Clean Environment, now numbers about 300, and
it has already established itself as.the leading citizens group
monitoring the Emelle landfill and its owners, Chemical Waste
Management, Inc.

At 10:30 p.m., Kaye's phone rings. It is the last of five calls
made by James Dailey, the mayor of Emelle, whose 300 residents
live next to the 2400-acre toxic waste landfill. Dailey tells
Kaye he has been trying to decide whether to evacuate his town,
based on reports from his neighbors--and the evidence of his own
senses - that an acrid, sickly sweet cloud of undetermined
content has settled on Emelle. 

As she always does when driving up Route 17, Kaye watches the
road in the beam of her headlights for chemical spills. Leaking
trucks have dumped thousands of gallons of poison on Sumter
County roads, she says. Dailey meets us out front of his brick
ranch house and we walk into his kitchen. "Their heads are
aching," he says, referring to his neighbors. He has already
called the EPA and the Alabama Department of Environmental
Management (ADEM) and the manager of the facility and the
sheriff's office, but no one has called back. After waiting half
an hour, we drive up to the site.

At the gate of Chemical Waste Management's Emelle Treatment
Facility, the night manager tells us that some "incompatible
material" from a Mississippi landfill was just poured into the
gaping pit ChemWaste has carved in the Alabama chalk. They
didn't know what it was, but it smelled "real bad" and they were
trying to "neutralize" it.

Kaye seems unsurprised. She is long past taking pleasure in
having her concerns proven right. Just four months before, in
November of 1986, she and her colleagues from ACE had submitted
an inch thick stack of documents to a hearing conducted by the
EPA on the question of whether Chemical Waste Management should
be allowed to build a toxic waste incinerator at the Emelle
facility. In it, ACE mentioned the lack of a proper notification
and evacuation procedure in case of an emergency.

The EPA and ChemWaste had drawn up a plan in accordance with
regulations, but a few cursory questions on the part of ACE
members revealed it to be a sham. The Sheriff of Sumter County
had not read it, the Sheriff's department did not know the
location of all the houses bordering on the landfill, none of
the residents had ever been briefed on an evacuation plan and
half of the local people didn't even know that the "factory" on
route 17 was a hazardous waste landfill.

It was then that I began to understand how it came to pass in
Sumter County that the elected mayor of Emelle would turn to the
county's leading environmentalist--instead of the civil
authorities, the managers of the landfill or the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency - when faced with a question
concerning the health and welfare of his constituents.

The whites in Sumter County are not politically aware. "If I
mentioned apartheid," said one ACE member, "they'd ask me what
kind of flower it was." But the presence of the toxic waste
business - its culture of deception, arrogance and simple
lawbreaking - has changed this rural corner of Alabama forever,
uniting blacks and whites and eroding the region's deeply held
tradition of trust and deference to authority. It is the coming
of age of Sumter County.

The Emelle landfill is all things to all people. To the
regulators and the burgeoning "waste management" industry, it's
one of the United States' showcase disposal facilities - called
the "Cadillac of landfills" - a secure resting place for the
torrent of hazardous chemical byproducts of U.S industry. For
others, it's a poison pill for Sumter County, a symbol of
industrial profligacy and a superficial band-aid over the
nation's toxic waste cancer. 

United States industry produces, at last count, close to 300
million metric tons of hazardous waste each year, enough to fill
a line of railroad cars stretching around the world, with
several thousands miles to spare. Until 12 years ago, disposal
of these wastes was virtually unregulated in the United States.
Now the country is facing clean-up costs in the hundreds of
billions of dollars and the staggering medical and environmental
implications of decades of indiscriminate dumping. The United
States is in the throes of a reform movement - trying to dig out
from under decades of accumulated poison with a spasm of
regulation and legislation. 

One of the results of this reformation is the phenomenal growth,
in both profits and influence, of hazardous waste handing
companies. ChemWaste shares the lucrative commerce in hazardous
chemicals disposal with a handful of national or global
conglomerates - BFI, Allied Signal, IT, IU International and
Rollins Environmental Services. 

The Emelle landfill is one of 10 major facilities managed by
Chemical Waste Management (ChemWaste), a subsidiary of Waste
Management Inc, a global conglomerate with gross earnings of $2
billion in 1986. The Emelle facility receives the poisons from
waste generators throughout the country and from other dump
sites being "cleaned up" by the federal government. Each barrel
of waste it takes in represents a profit for ChemWaste. 

In the last ten years, ChemWaste has accumulated fines of over
$30 million; so extensive is the list of their crimes and
misdemeanors that the EPA has set up a special task force to
deal with ChemWaste's problems alone. But the massive profits
have bought a measure of respectability and not a few EPA
officials have moved on to more lucrative positions in ChemWaste
hierarchy. The collusion between industry and its regulator is
now so close that EPA toxic waste administrator Hugh Kaufman
once complained "Sometimes the EPA acts as if it were a wholly-
owned subsidiary of ChemWaste Management."

What occurs at the national level has been replayed for Sumter
County. "It is apparent," said Montgomery County Attorney
General Jimmy Evans, "that ChemWaste, the Alabama Department of
Environmental Management and the EPA have all gotten into bed
together." The Emelle landfill was barely two years old before
it was revealed that Alabama Governor George Wallace's son-in-
law bought the land, obtained the relevant permits with
surprising ease and immediately sold it to ChemWaste at a
profit, over the lifetime of the deal, estimated at $15-$30
million. 

In the years that followed, the county learned about the leaking
barge, the hidden shipment of PCB-contaminated wastes, the
controversy over the cracks in the chalk layer and the PCBs in
Bodka creek. Today, local legend mirrors national legend--just
as the country has elevated Love Canal, Bhopal, Minimata and
Seveso to parables for the toxics age, so has Sumter County
adopted the stories emerging from Emelle as regional proverbs.
The result has been disaffectation and distrust - traits
uncharacteristic of genteel rural Alabama. 

"I told the folks from ACE two years ago that I didn't trust the
EPA or ADEM, and I think a few of them were offended," said
Wendell Paris, a black civil rights activist who is involved in
the toxics issue, I don't think it would offend them today." ACE
and Wendell's group, the Minority Peoples Council, are now
working together, the first such alliance in Sumter County
history.

Sumter County, Alabama, lies in one of the poorest sections of
the South's economically troubled "black belt." Originally, the
black belt was a section of rich dark earth running 300 miles
along the Tombigbee River from central Alabama to northeastern
Mississippi. The term has since been used to denote a much
larger band of the southern United States where poor blacks
remain--a legacy of the era of slavery and cotton. 

The Atlanta Constitution calls the black belt "a third world
right in our own back yard . . . avoided by industry, failed by
agriculture." The history of successful black labor organizing
has intimidated businesses, who are being lured by cheap foreign
labor. In the corporate view, says one writer, investing here is
"a little like investing in some unstable South American
government." Sumter County, 70 percent black, is no exception.
Thirty two percent of County residents live below the poverty
line. Farming, the mainstay of the region, is unprofitable-land
prices have fallen 15-20 percent since 1981 and almost half the
store fronts in downtown York are boarded up. 

Not surprisingly, when the toxic waste landfill was proposed ten
years ago, Sumter County residents didn't see it as the
convulsion of a nation trying to bury decades of industrial
waste--they saw it as the new business in town. "Unique Industry
Coming: New Use for Selma Chalk to Create Jobs" reads the
headline in the Sumter County Record, dated May 25th, 1977.
Below, the landfill is described as "a new facility which could
give this area more advantage in attracting other businesses."

At the time, many local residents didn't know what was going on
atop the hill out Route 17. "When they first came, the rumor was
it would be brick factory, " said James Dailey, " Oh boy, we
said, we 11 all get jobs at the brick factory." When I met Mayor
James Dailey in March, no one from Emelle worked at the dump.
"We've been losing businesses, not gaining them," said Dailey,
"The only thing that a toxic waste dump attracts is toxic
waste."

Touting the economic benefits of hazardous waste facilities -
known in the trade as locally unwanted land uses, or LULUs - is
common practice among waste handling companies and their friends
in the EPA. Of the four major landfills located in the
southeastern United States, three are in impoverished black
counties. According to a report by the Commission for Racial
Justice, communities with the greatest number of commercial
hazardous waste facilities also had the highest relative number
of minority residents. "It is, in effect, environmental racism,"
says Commission Director Reverend Benjamin Chavies.

Will Collette, a director of the Citizen's Clearinghouse on
Hazardous Waste, agrees. "The toxic waste issue is fast becoming
the top social justice issue in North America. People are
becoming more aware of it now, but Sumter County in 1977 was
ripe for the picking."

For James Dailey, it means moving his family and picking up the
pieces elsewhere. His handsome red brick ranch house, once
appraised at $50,000, is now worth less than $15,000. Property
values throughout the area are equally depressed. "No one wants
to live next to the dump," he says. Down the unpaved street from
Mayor Dailey's house is a small park with a swing, gazebo and a
few benches--Emelle's municipal park, courtesy of Chemical Waste
Management. 

While ChemWaste hasn't engendered an economic renaissance, the
taxes it pays are now vital to Sumter County. A host of regional
services benefit from the $5-dollar per barrel tax, including
the library, historical society, ambulance service and sheriff's
department. The students at Sumter Academy, who last Easter were
entertained by the ChemWaste Easter bunny, use ChemWaste note
pads in school. A ChemWaste representative sits on the panel
that judges the Livingston High School science fair. "There's no
aspect of this county that is not touched by ChemWaste," says
Kaye Kiker, "I don't really know how the county would run
without them." 

Wendell Paris, civil rights activist and head of the Minority
People's Council in Livingston is bitter. He first became
involved in the dump issue when a group of ChemWaste workers
brought labels from barrels of waste for him to read, wondering
why their shoes were melting and their wives and children
falling sick. "Ten years ago ChemWaste came in and started
buying people up," he said, "Then they built a day care center
and that little park in Emelle. Now the whole county is addicted
to toxic waste. They've turned Sumter County into America's pay
toilet."

When the EPA fired its first volley in the war on toxic waste 15
years ago, the agency was surefooted and confident. Trusting in
their numbers and their science, the bureaucrats drafted
national regulations and waited for the results to come in--all
EPA had to do was "cut the gorilla loose and the problem would
soon be solved," said former EPA administrator William
Ruckelshaus. The events of the last few years have dampened the
EPA's confidence. "In the drafting of those laws, we made
several assumptions," Ruckelshaus told the University of Houston
Law Center last year, "the trouble is, almost all of them are
wrong." 

Science proved less than conclusive in identifying the toxic
chemicals, predicting their effects and isolating them from the
environment. Statistics proved equally unreliable - today no one
knows how much waste there is, where it comes from and where it
ends up.

Of the 35,000 chemicals in commerce considered by the EPA to be
definitely or potentially harmful to human health, health and
safety guidelines have been established for roughly 2000.
Meanwhile, 1,000 new ones are added to the global chemical
inventory each year. Not only is the EPA unsure of the types and
quantities of toxic waste produced by industry, but little is
known about the effects of individual toxic chemicals on the
environment and nothing on what effects they might have in
combination.

As the dimensions of the problem became clear, the glimmer of an
alternative policy began to emerge. Since 1984, the EPA has
officially advocated "waste minimization" - eliminating or
altering industrial processes that produce hazardous waste in
order to drastically reduce the volume of the waste stream. 

A successful waste minimization strategy essentially removes the
problem. Reducing the production of the waste means no more
incinerators, no more leaking landfills, no more toxics-related
cancers or birth defects, no more Emelles. It has virtually
taken over as the policy of choice for environmental groups and
now receives the lion's share of the rhetoric in and out of
government. "We are all true believers," said one EPA official. 

But in practice, the EPA and its officers around the U.S. act as
if they had never heard of their agency's policy. The clearest
indicator: no money or time is being devoted to it. According to
Joel Hirschorn, senior associate at the U.S. Congress' Office of
Technology Assessment, of approximately $16 billion spent by
federal, state and local governments on environmental protection
in 1986, only about $4 million were devoted to source reduction
- less than one half of one percent of the agency's toxic waste
funding. "With the ultimate solution right under their noses,
the EPA is doing nothing," says David Rapaport, toxics
campaigner for Greenpeace, "There are no regulations, no plans
for regulations, and no way of finding out whether anything is
being done. It's a joke."

Perhaps nowhere is the chasm between policy and practice more
evident than in the EPA's Region IV office in Atlanta, Georgia.
Presiding over the southern states from Georgia to Mississippi
and north to Kentucky and North Carolina, it is here that
decisions are made that affect, among many other things, Emelle,
Mayor Dailey, the health of Sumter County and the financial
prospects of ChemWaste Management. 

Jack Ravan runs the EPA Region IV office. For Ravan, solving the
toxic waste problem is a matter of "capacity" and "education" -
building more waste-handling facilities and persuading people to
accept them into their communities. "There is little government
can actively do to participate in waste minimization . . .
Levels of waste generation are expected to grow," Ravan informed
a group of state officials and environmentalists last March,
"Reducing waste generation has passed beyond the stage where
improved housekeeping procedures can give substantial results."

Rather than do nothing, Ravan has charted a course that many
think is the functional equivalent. He wants to build high-
temperature incinerators to burn the waste (see side bar). "We
are about to embark on a campaign to sell incinerators," he told
the round table, "We can (grant permits for) them, and we will."

Ravan's answer to the other problem, where to put the
facilities, is "public education." For Ravan, local opposition
to toxic waste handling companies is born in ignorance--dioxins
and PCBs are "scare compounds." He feels that local citizens
won't understand toxicity studies ("People don't like being
compared to rats") or the statistics used to calculate dosage.
His perspective was shared by one of the state officials: "Try
explaining ten to the minus 6 to a community," he chuckled.

Just as James Dailey predicted, the next industry to arrive in
Sumter County may be a toxic waste incinerator, built on top of
the millions of gallons of toxic waste seeping into the chalk
hills of Emelle. The adamant and informed opposition of ACE and
its allies notwithstanding, the odds are in industry's favor -
while ChemWaste fields an office of highly paid corporate
lawyers, ACE finances its work with rummage sales. 

What groups like ACE have accomplished, on shoestring budgets
from rural living rooms, is astounding. According to a paper
published in the American Journal of Public Health (May, 1984),
grassroots groups "demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of
issues such as waste site remediation, the limits of
epidemiologic A1 studies and alternatives to aerial spraying of
pesticides." A majority of the groups surveyed, says the report,
"interacted regularly with scientists and health professionals."


Using this strategy, groups like ACE are uncovering
contamination, deception, geological flaws and violations of
environmental regulations that the EPA and state agencies, for
whatever reasons, fail to reveal. Near Montgomery, Alabama, a
toxic waste dump on the verge of being approved by the EPA was
scuttled after a local group discovered a network of abandoned
mine shafts under the site. 

Unconvinced that state and federal agencies are doing a good
job, community groups are also taking air and water samples and
having them analyzed. Citizen-coordinated health surveys, where
volunteers go door-to-door collecting health information, are
turning up cancer, birth defect and miscarriage "clusters" that
may indicate toxic contamination. "Some of the best
environmental monitoring," an EPA consultant told me, "is being
done by citizens groups."

The rite of passage for Sumter County was accepting toxic waste.
The transition has a certain irony, for landfills are on the way
out, a discredited form of waste handling technology. But
ChemWaste's presence here is enough to jerk this rural corner of
Alabama into the 20th century--an age in which people mistrust
the government, are wary of corporate interests and look to each
other for knowledge, preservation and support. 

It also brought forth the type of community organization and
self-sufficiency that sustained humans in another era-before
people felt that they were to be taken care of, before
government assumed its paternal role. Like communities
throughout history, ACE and the Minority Peoples Council are
thinking locally, taking care of their own backyard by
preserving southern Alabama's rolling black earth hills and pine
covered hollows. But like many such struggles today, it is a
campaign with global implications. 

In Washington, efforts to "manage" the torrent of wastes
continues. ChemWaste is now looking to the west coast as a site
for a "test burn" aboard its incinerator ship and the EPA is
moving to permit land-based incinerators. Jack Ravan held
another meeting in the southeast, where federal and state
officials discussed the dearth of waste management facilities
and Ravan admitted he "had no problem forcing an incinerator
down a community's throat." And the EPA drew up its 1986 budget,
allocating $400,000 of some $16 billion to waste minimization. 

Meanwhile, ACE and its allies are filing a lawsuit challenging
ChemWaste's incinerator permit on the grounds that the company
did not file an Environmental Impact Statement, as required by
U.S. law. They are also helping organize a protest march in
Sumter County and the state capitol. 

To raise money, ACE members are organizing rummage sales. Kaye
is selling a stained glass window she made in her workshop.
Other ACE members hope to sell quilts they sewed. And Peggy
Denniston, whose husband Eric Loftis was almost ousted from the
county museum council for his outspoken criticism of ChemWaste,
says she might sell a wooden sculpture she carved. It placed
second in the Livingston University art show sponsored by the
local arts council, and the $40.00 prize is going to the lawsuit
fund. Crafted of ten separate pieces of mahogany, it depicts a
woman's head thrown back in anguish, the mouth open and
screaming. It's called Emelle, 2000: A Victim of Hazardous
Waste.


INCINERATION: NO SOLUTION

In their haste to find a place to put industry's toxic wastes,
the EPA, the waste management companies and the waste producers
are turning to incinerators. Superficially attractive because
they reduce the volume of wastes, incinerators are a different
sort of hazard, poorly understood and very difficult to control.

Test burns under perfect conditions reveal that a host of
unquantified toxins - some unburned remains of the chemicals fed
into the furnace, and others new compounds created by the
process itself - are released from the stacks. These include
carcinogenic heavy metals, furans and dioxin, the most poisonous
chemical known to exist. 

According to the EPA's Science Advisory Board, "the toxicities
of emissions from. . . incinerators is largely unknown."
Accurately predicting the performance of these incinerators is,
according to the Board, "an essentially impossible task."

Despite the lack of reliable information and the potential
environmental hazards, the EPA has projected the need for 82
land-based incinerators and 33 ocean-going incinerators over the
next several years. Waste minimization, by contrast, has been
largely ignored - some EPA officials argue, falsely, that "the
market" will encourage waste minimization strategies. In fact,
as one consultant put it, industry won't do anything "unless
their backs are to the wall."


WASTE MANAGEMENT INDEX

World's largest waste disposal company: Waste Management, Inc.
(WMI) Gross revenues, WMI, 1977: $237 million
Gross revenues, WMI, 1986: $2.02 billion

Largest hazardous waste disposal in U.S.: Chemical Waste
Management (CWM), subsidiary of WMI.
Estimated total of penalties paid by WMI for environmental
violations, 1982-85: over $31,000,000

Estimated average time it took WMI to earn $31,000,000 in gross
revenues, 1986: Six days Number of WMI-owned or operated sites
charged with environmental violations, 1980-87: 19 


Number of WMI-owned hazardous waste landfills now closed due to
toxic waste leaks: 4 Number of major WMI facilities found to
have non-existent or inadequate ground water monitoring systems,
1984: 5

Amount of environmental insurance coverage held by WMI for its
16 hazardous waste dumps and 102 municipal landfills, May 1987:
none.

Honoraria given U.S. legislators by WMI, 1983: $8,000
In 1984: $25,500   In 1985: $57,500

Rank of WMI among corporate honoraria donors, 1985: 10th

Bribes given to Fox Lake, Illinois mayor and village board
member by WMI manager: $12,000

Amount of bribe WMI gave to Chicago Alderman Clifford Kelley:
$6,500. Other WMI "gifts" to Kelley: rental cars, campaign
contributions, free transportation and tickets to 1984 and 1985
Super Bowls

Year current WMI Chairman Dean Buntrock was indicted for
extortion, price-fixing, and "notoriously, continuously and
intentionally" threatening physical harm to owners of competing
waste firms and their families: 1962

Month WMI subsidiary began building radioactive waste compacting
facility in Channahon, Illinois: January, 1987

Month the Mayor of Channahon found out: April

Price of ChemLawn stock, February '87, before hostile takeover
attempt by WMI: $17.75 Price of ChemLawn stock after merger with
WMI rival: $36.60 Number of shares held in ChemLawn by WMI
chairman Dean Buntrock: 35,000 Estimated profit from takeover
bid for Buntrock family: $600,000 Number of gallons of fuel oil
contaminated by PCBs sold by CWM as "reclaimed oil" to
unsuspecting Midwestern customers, 1983: 6,000,000 gallons. 

Amount of fine levied against CWM by EPA for sale of
contaminated oil, 1985: $2,500,000 Estimated CWM earnings from
the illegal sale: over $20,000,000 late toxic leak discovered by
CWM employees at Lowry, Colorado, landfill: July 16, 1981 late
toxic leak reported to environmental agencies by CWM: Never 

Color of CWM's logbook for recording July leak: yellow
Color of logbook shown to EPA inspectors: black

Year WMI told U.S. Defense Dept. that it had incinerated 260,000
gallons of DDT as agreed to by contract: 1983
Year federal officials discovered that thousands of gallons of
the DDT had not yet been incinerated by WMI: 1984

Compiled by Jim Vallette

BASE CAMP PERSONNEL NEEDED FOR 1987/88 ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION 

We are beginning the search for next year's overwintering team,
in hopes of identifying the team and understudies at the
earliest possible date.

We are looking for the following volunteers.

Medical Doctor - Experienced in emergency medical procedures.
Successful candidate will be encouraged to undertake his/her own
medical research in the Antarctic, with the aim of publishing
after return. 

Radio Technicians - Familiarity with maintenance and repair of
HF and VHF communications systems. HF antenna theory and
satellite communications installation and maintenance experience
helpful. Satellite systems equipment training will be provided
by Greenpeace.

Diesel Electric Generator Mechanic - Will be required to service
small petrol engines (two and four stroke) and Perkins diesel-
powered tracked vehicle, and maintain two Perkins Diesel
generators at base camp. 

Biological Scientist - Will be encouraged to research Antarctic
coastal fish populations. Suitable equipment furnished. Will
also conduct ongoing, objective assessment of base's
environmental impact. Knowledge of terrestrial biology and
limnology helpful. Primary proposals for research in appropriate
biological fields will be considered. 

Positions open to women and men. Must be conversant in English;
other languages useful. Previous Antarctic experience highly
desirable. Commitment to extend from September 1987-March 1989.
Greenpeace will pay all expenses incurred in the name of the
expedition.

Please apply in writing to:

Greenpeace, Antarctic Expedition, 
1611 Connecticut Avenue, NW 
Washington, DC 20009


POOR SPORTS

The Greenpeace campaign to end the use of kangaroo leather in
sport shoes has had considerable success. Many sport shoe
companies have agreed to phase out kangaroo skin, thus closing
off one of the markets for the world's largest wildlife
slaughter (2.7 million kangaroos killed this year). 

Adidas, a major sporting shoe corporation, agreed to stop
selling kangaroo shoes in the United Kingdom, but continues to
manufacture kangaroo-skin shoes in their German factories for
distribution in the United States. Greenpeace urges you to write
and express your opposition to the use of kangaroo leather in
Adidas sporting shoes. Mr. Stephen Tannen, President, Adidas
U.S.A, Suite 300, 200 Sheffield Street, Mountainside, NJ 07092.

NO HOT MEALS

If you can't swallow the idea of eating irradiated foods,
Representative Doug Bosco has a bill for you. The Food
Irradiation Safety and Labelling Act of 1987 (HR 956) would stop
food irradiation until risk assessment studies are completed and
require labelling of irradiated ingredients used in processed
foods and restaurants. A companion bill (S 461) has been
introduced in the Senate by George Mitchell (D-Maine). Concerns
about the radiation, used to kill insects and microorganisms in
food, include vitamin loss and new chemicals formed in the
processing. Write your Representative and Senator and express
your support for the bills.

RAINFOREST PRESERVE

Brazilian President Jose Sarney recently announced his decision
to allocate 9,000 square km. of tropical rain forest as a
"Yanomami Indian Park." But the President is being pressured by
commercial interests who want to exploit the mineral-rich
territory.

The Yanomami Indians, who number approximately 8,500, have
suffered social injustices and health problems over the past
twenty years due to encroachment on their lands. Please send a
letter of support to the President of Brazil congratulating him
on his decision to guarantee the Yanomami Indians their
sanctuary. 

Ilmo. Sr. Jose Sarney, Presidente da Republica, Palacio do
Planalto, 70.150 Brazilia-DF Brazil.

DOUBLETALK

Gro Harlem Brundtland is the Prime Minister of Norway and
Chairperson of a special commission set up by the United Nations
to study environmental problems. As chairperson of the
commission, she presided over the release of a far-reaching
report urging significant steps to protect the global
environment. But as Prime Minister of Norway she is leader of a
country that has violated the International Whaling Commission
moratorium on whaling and will kill 375 minke whales of a stock
the IWC has said should be fully protected.

Norway claims this will be its last "commercial" hunt, but it is
now hatching plans for a "scientific" whale hunt, a distinction
that environmentalists, and particularly the whales, find
difficult to appreciate. Please write Mrs. Brundtland and tell
her it is contradictory for a person to portray herself as one
of the world's foremost advocates of the environment and at the
same time sanction whaling on depleted stocks. Statsminster Gro
Harlem Brundtland, Post Boks 8001 Dep, N-0030 Oslo 1, Norway.

THREATENED SHORELINE

The California coastline areas of Big Sur and Redwood National
Park are home to gray whales and other endangered species as
well the site of some of the most productive fisheries in the
world. However, as early as 1989, these areas also could be home
for several off-shore drilling facilities and dumping grounds
for toxic wastes.

Although the House Appropriations Committee approved an
agreement that delayed all oil lease sales along the California
coastline for two years, the Department of Interior Staff
continues to plan for the leasing of off-shore sites, including
issuing Environmental Impact Statements. Ocean Sanctuary
Legislation, introduced by Congresswoman Barbara Boxer, provides
permanent protection against ocean incineration, oil drilling
and dumping in those coastline areas. Please write your
legislators in support of H.R. 920: U.S. House of
Representatives, Washington, D.C. 20515.

TEST BAN WORK CONTINUES

When the Soviet Union ended its 19-month moratorium on nuclear
testing in March, international pressure on the United States to
agree to testing limitations eased. Now, both nations have
returned to the status quo before the Soviet moratorium began-a
brisk schedule of roughly two nuclear explosions a month each. 

Greenpeace remains as committed as ever to our campaign to end
nuclear weapons testing forever. As presidential campaigns are
beginning in the United States, U.S. citizens can help by
telling your candidates and party caucuses that you want the
next president to seriously pursue a Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty, and that you expect to hear the candidates speak up and
declare their opposition to continued nuclear testing. For more
information, call or write Florence Schneider at Greenpeace,
1611 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009. 202
462-1177.


Diet For A Poisoned Planet

by John McCormick
Photos by Angus Wright

John McCormick is a policy analyst for Greenpeace's World Bank
Project.

The low clouds in the distance appeared to be lifting. On the
ground, agricultural fields stretched as far as the eye could
see. Though the sun had just risen, the temperature was already
in the low 90s and the stagnant air tasted bitter. There was no
breeze, no motion - just the wispy gray fog on the horizon. 

As the unmistakable whine of a plane pierced the air, a lone
figure positioned himself at the end of the field and began
waving a tattered red flag on a pole. The cloud, which was not
rising at all but instead billowed along the ground, suddenly
split open as the plane materialized, trailing a stream of white
mist that soaked the ripening tomato plants and the unprotected
flagman.

Morning had come to Mexico's Culiacan Valley and the thousands
of acres of tomato plants, now coated with pesticides, were one
day closer to harvest and the lucrative U.S. winter vegetable
market. 

For the grower, the decision to spray that morning may have had
more to do with the ideal weather conditions than the fear that
insects might be attacking the crops. The canning factory
manager may have scheduled that spray application months ago
when he contracted to buy the produce. The field worker had no
say in the matter. More than likely, no one told him that the
cloud settling on his skin and clothing was killing more than
the insects, birds, soil organisms and reptiles - poisoning, in
fact, all the life in the valley's ecosystem. It was killing him
as well.

Culiacan, capitol of Sinaloa, supports 200,000 people in a sunny
valley near the coast. The farmers are heavily dependent on
agricultural chemicals to sustain the high yields. Some of the
poisons have been heavily restricted or banned in the United
States. But the pesticide control laws of Mexico are neither
strict nor enforced - the government itself is a major producer
of agricultural chemicals. 

Each year, the farmers apply pesticides and herbicides in
heavier and heavier doses to keep pace with insects and weeds
that, over time, develop a genetic resistant. Their pervasive
spraying kills beneficial predator insects, thereby eliminating
a natural means of controlling important agricultural pests.
Eventually the farmers are caught in a spiralling cycle of use
known as the "pesticide treadmill." Each year they use more and
different poisons to accomplish the same job in the mistaken
belief that if applying some pesticides is good, then more is
better. 

As a result, the men, women and children of Culiacan have high
rates of leukemia and respiratory disorders, contracted because
of the poisons in their air, soil and food. The most severely
afflicted are the agricultural workers who, through ignorance or
neglect, are denied the basic protections afforded workers in
more affluent countries. The vegetables, meanwhile, enter the
U.S. markets tainted with the residues of pesticides--some of
which have been banned by the U.S. government for health
reasons. 

For the moment, Culiacan has not gone the way of Mexico's Rio
Grande Valley, where, in the early 1970s, cotton pests became so
resistant to pesticides that the crop was lost and the local
economy was plunged into social and economic depression. Nor has
it suffered quite as acutely as Tijuana, in the north, where 17
people died and 300 fell sick after eating sugar contaminated
with the bug-killer Parathion. But a local agronomist's warning
paints a grim future for the valley: "By the year 2000, it will
probably be impossible to commercially farm vegetables in the
Culiacan Valley due to pesticide resistance among pests."

Agricultural chemical sprays, liquids and granules have one
function--they kill weeds, insects, rodents and plant diseases
competing for the farmer's harvest. In large enough doses, these
biocides can kill any organism, from mosquito eggs to water
buffalo. Those less poisonous may still cause tumorous cancers,
neurological damage, respiratory ailments, sterility and birth
defects in humans and animals. After use, some naturally
decompose to form new compounds even more toxic.

Since 1945, some 15,000 pesticide compounds and more than 35,000
different formulations have entered the global pesticide market.
These products are derived from about 1,400 active ingredients.
How many are considered safe for humans, and at what levels of
exposure, is unknown. A U.S. Congressional investigation found
that only a fraction had undergone the U.S. government's
regulatory analysis - a procedure criticized for being cursory
and incomplete. The study found that nearly 60 percent of the
pesticides now in use were incompletely analyzed for birth
defects, 80 percent lacked adequate cancer data and 90 percent
were not sufficiently studied for possible chromosome damage.

Adding to the uncertainty is the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration's (FDA) investigation of a massive scandal at a
pesticide testing laboratory. Industrial Bio-Test was discovered
in 1976 to have routinely falsified over a decade of chemical
and pesticide data. It is generally accepted that such health-
threatening pesticides as Toxaphene, 2,4-D, Paraquat and DBCP
were registered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
based on IBT data. 

Even if realistic health data were available for all of the most
heavily used pesticides, it is doubtful that Americans would be
protected. Setting standards, however arbitrary, for pesticide
residues on food is not difficult - what has proven impossible
is accurately analyzing the 290 billion pounds of food Americans
consume annually, of which 43 billion pounds is imported.

Between 1979 and 1985, the U.S. FDA determined that, of 100,000
items analyzed, roughly 3 percent of domestic food samples and
over 6 percent of imported products were contaminated with
"unacceptable" levels of poisons. These figures are largely
meaningless. The analytical methods are effective for only two-
thirds of the pesticides registered in the U.S., and the FDA
does not know what pesticides are used on imported food nor what
agrochemical residues to look for.

One example: EDBCs. This class of fungicides - used on citrus
crops, beans, tomatoes, lettuce and bananas worldwide - is known
to break down into a potent carcinogen called ETU. Between 1978
and 1987, a period in which the United States imported 17
billion pounds of bananas each year, the FDA did not test any
imported produce for EDBC residues. Only twelve samples of the
California lettuce crop were tested for the fungicide in the
same period, although it was widely known that EBDCs were
heavily used by the growers. 

While the United States at least pays lip service to the idea of
regulating toxic pesticides, few developing nations have
parallel initiatives and some have none at all. Less developed
nations - the fastest growing agrochemical market-use 30 percent
of the world's insecticides. Their addiction to pesticides can
be seen as the price of admission to join the agricultural
"green revolution" of the 1960s.

More than a revolution, this scientific transformation has
permanently changed agriculture throughout the world. Native
grains and legumes were spliced, grafted, altered and hybridized
to develop more productive crops. Where traditional farming once
relied on diverse fields of fruits and vegetables, these have
been replaced by massive mechanized farms supporting a single
type of crop.

The results of this transformation are profound. These
remodelled strains of traditional crops require huge amounts of
water, chemical fertilizers and insecticides to achieve their
greater yield. As a result, some engineered species have lost
their natural defenses against insects and must be repeatedly
doused with repellants. The agrochemicals, meanwhile, have
altered the ecosystem by killing off the food supply of
otherwise harmless insects, thus turning them into pests. By
eliminating predators of still other pests, pesticides are
actually helping some species of insects become problems to
farmers.

Another insidious side effect of pesticide abuse in developing
countries is resistance. Since insects may hatch several
generations in one growing season, repeated pesticide spraying
on insects genetically resistant to the chemicals increases
their proportionate numbers in the field. The survivors mate and
pass on their resistant gene and their progeny are therefore
immune to the poison.

In 1969 224 species of insects were known to be resistant to one
or an groups of insecticides. By 1984 that number had doubled to
447, and some entomologists estimate it may be closer to 600.
Roughly 17 species are resistant to insecticides and that total
is increasing rapidly. "Twenty years down the road," says
economic entomologist Allan Felsot, "all the chemicals we have
now likely won't work any more, at all."


Though less than one percent of the more than 5,000 known
agricultural pests, some of these "super bugs" are destroying
important crops. The Colorado potato beetle, immune to virtually
everything thrown at it, is destroying Long Island's once huge
potato industry. Even more disturbing is the fact that
resistance extends to disease-carrying insects as well. In parts
of Central America, for example, farmers trying to increase
cotton yields have bathed their crops in as many as 50
applications of DDT, up from only eight in years past. Malaria,
once thought to be under control after a 21-year, $2 billion
campaign by the World Health Organization, is now recurring
because of the resistance to DDT developed by disease-carrying
mosquitos. 

The pesticide revolution, rather than improving living
conditions in the developing world, is making them worse.

The tragedy in Bhopal encapsulates the economic and
environmental implications of the pesticide industry. Located in
India by a U.S.-based company, Union Carbide, to take advantage
of the burgeoning developing world market in agrochemicals, the
Bhopal plant's safeguards reflected the lax regulatory structure
typical of Asian, African and South and Central American
nations.

When an explosion occurred at the Bhopal plant during a routine
process of making Aldicarb, massive amounts of methyl isocyanate
were released, converting to hydrogen cyanide gas and killing
more than 2000 people. Aldicarb is the pesticide implicated in
one of the largest contaminated produce recap emergencies ever,
when California melons were found to be contaminated in the
summer of 1985, causing roughly 50 million dollars in lost
sales. It is also one of the major pollutants found in Florida's
contaminated ground water. Throughout its entire cycle, from
production to contamination of food, soil and water, Aldicarb
has proven to be a classic example of an uncontrollable
chemical.

Today, the pesticide market is so large that production is
estimated to equal one pound of chemicals per year for every
man, woman and child on earth. Made from petroleum-based feed
stocks, the costs of agricultural chemicals rise with the world
price of oil. International trade in chemicals skyrocketed from
$4 billion in 1970 to roughly $30 billion today.

The agrochemical manufacturing industry is dominated by a small
number of multinationals based in Europe (largely the U.K. and
West Germany), the United States and Japan. The three biggest,
Monsanto, Bayer and Ciba-Geigy, accounted for 25 percent of
world agrochemical sales in 1983--a total of about three dozen
firms supply 90 percent of the global market.

One source of profit for these companies is the sale in
developing countries of chemicals banned or severely limited for
use in Europe and the United States, such as DDT, Chlordane,
Dieldrin and 2,4,5-T. While the full extent of this double
standard is still difficult to gauge, under the Carter
administration it was determined that fully 25 percent of the
chemicals sent abroad from the U.S. were banned, restricted or
unregistered (not yet regulated) domestically.

For this reason, these multinationals and their allies in
government have successfully fought U.N. and interest group
efforts to limit the export of hazardous chemicals. Even efforts
to compile a consolidate list of banned or severely restricted
pesticides have been hotly opposed by the industry and its
allies - in December, 1984, the United States cast the sole vote
in opposition to a U.N. proposal calling for a consolidated
list. 

The next step in curbing pesticide misuse - requiring "prior
informed consent" before allowing pesticides to be shipped
abroad - is being debated in the U.N. and the ten-nation
European Commission. European chemical companies are arguing
that, if the U.S. and Japan don't go along, such an initiative
would cripple their ability to sell competitively.

At a minimum, prior informed consent and the wide availability
of information on the effects and proper use of these chemicals
might help bring down the horrifying number of deaths and
injuries attributed to agrochemicals in the developing world.
While this region accounts for less than half the total global
consumption of pesticides, at least 75 percent of the poisonings
and deaths take place here. 

Chilling disasters such as the deaths of 500 Iraquis as a result
of eating contaminated bread in 1972 have brought the pesticide
problem into the public eye, but the day to day reality of
pesticide exposure is worse. The international relief
organization Oxfam estimates that agrochemicals kill between
14,000 and 29,000 people per year. The number of injuries is
thought to be as high as 2 million. 

In certain parts of rural Brazil, where DDT levels 10 times that
considered safe by the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization
have been found in mother's milk, 10 percent of the population
suffers from some mild, chronic form of toxic poisoning. Stomach
and colon cancer, virtually unheard of in Africa, has increased
5-fold in some countries. Levels of DDT 90 times higher than
those found in U.S. milk have been found in the milk sold in
Guatemala. 

Although drinking paraquat is a popular form of suicide in Sri
Lanka and Central and South America, it is mistakes and
carelessness caused by lack of training and poor information
that kill and injure most agricultural workers. During a 1984
tour of farms in the Culiacan Valley, California State
University at Sacramento Professor Angus Wright witnessed
workers spraying deadly chemicals with no protective clothing.
Jugs that once held pesticides were used for carrying drinking
water and washed out in a creek upstream from workers who were
cleaning and bathing.

In many countries, cultural differences make prudent use of
pesticides virtually impossible. The skull and crossbones, a
signal to "watch out" in most countries, is the trademark of a
particularly popular pesticide in southeast Asia. The color red,
also associated with danger in the west, connotes happiness
among mainland Chinese. In parts of South America, pesticides
are called plant medicine, and medicine is not considered
dangerous.

One and one-half years after its implementation, the U.N.-based
voluntary code of conduct for the distribution and use of
pesticides has accomplished little. Labelling and packaging
requirements are ignored in many Indonesian, Thai and Philippine
villages, according to a report in the New Scientist. Labels
that provided some information disappeared as soon as the
chemicals were repackaged and sold. 

Meanwhile, U.S. law requires only that exports be accompanied by
a warning if the pesticide is unregistered or its license has
been cancelled or voluntarily withdrawn. The container label
must describe, in the language of the importing country, the
proper handling of the chemical. "It's a token gesture, really.
The information doesn't filter down to the farm workers, many of
whom are not properly trained," says Greenpeace campaigner Jon
Hinck. "If the U.S., with its comprehensive pesticide control
laws, prohibits the use of these chemicals, how can we justify
sending them to nations which have no regulatory precautions at
all? This double standard of behavior is morally wrong and must
be stopped. Aside from the obvious human misery they are causing
developing countries, the banned pesticides are also ravaging
ecosystems by killing birds, tropical plants and marine life."

Today, global agriculture is becoming the victim of its own
addiction to chemicals. Despite the use of bill lions of dollars
worth of toxic chemicals, crop losses due to insect damage have
not decreased. Moreover, the legacy of the four-decade war is
poisoned water, soil and air, and the economics of international
agriculture seems to offer few alternatives to continued
chemical escalation. 

In fact, there is an ecologically sound alternative to the
pesticide treadmill, one that not only keeps crop losses to
pests low but also improves the health of the ecosystem. It lies
in understanding the ecology of the farm as a cooperative
complex of soil, microorganisms, plants, bugs and animals. 

One of the facts of the farm is that bugs eat other bugs and are
also vulnerable to natural insect diseases. More than 250
successful pest control programs have been implemented worldwide
based on introducing natural predators or diseases. In addition,
the vulnerability of monocrops--vast areas devoted to one
species of plant are easily overrun by pests and diseases - can
be reversed by intercropping (alternating small plots of
different plants) and polyculture (diversifying species within
the same crop type). 

Providing habitat for beneficial insects, rotating crops from
year to year, selecting plants for their resistance to pests,
timing the planting of crops to avoid attacks by pests or simply
planting certain crops in their appropriate climate are all non-
chemical methods that can reduce the loss of food to pests.
Humans will always compete with insects, funguses, bacteria and
the like for food. Reducing this loss requires solutions derived
from nature rather than the chemical companies.

Meanwhile, for the workers of Culiacan, the pesticide treadmill
has undergone a new and more hazardous twist. Fearful of losing
the lucrative U.S. markets, Mexican growers are shifting to a
class of chemicals that degrades quickly, thus leaving little
detectable residue, but is far more toxic. Parathion, a
organophosphate pesticide so lethal that a tablespoon on the
skin can be fatal, is replacing the milder but more persistent
organochlorine varieties such as chlordane and DDT. For the
grower, the reasoning is clear: if used properly, it gets by the
U.S. border inspections and, even if it is sixty times as
poisonous as DDT, it gets the job done - at least for a while. 


ANTARCTICA

World Park Antarctica

The Greenpeace wintering team has settled into their new
Antarctic home and begun research in support of Greenpeace's
Antarctica preservation efforts. The 19 Antarctic treaty
nations' tragic over-exploitation of the Antarctic Ocean's fish
stocks and their interest in mining the continent for oil and
minerals are raising concerns around the world about the future
of the world's last pristine wilderness. "I feel like we got
here just in time," said Antarctic campaigner Kelly Rigg, adding
"I just hope it's not too late." 

One of the goals of the campaigners is to monitor the debris and
garbage dumped by the neighboring bases. Because of the unique
climate of the Antarctic, even biodegradable waste does not
decompose but remains preserved for decades by the sub-freezing
temperatures. The Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parbes' (ATCPs)
Code of Conduct for Waste Disposal, considered a minimal
requirement for safeguarding the sensitive Antarctic
environment, is nevertheless routinely violated by the ATCPs in
the course of their research here. 

The Treaty nations' poor housekeeping record continues to raise
serious concern over their plans to begin drilling for oil in
the sensitive Antarctic environment. In March, the 19 nations
held a secret meeting designed to pave the way for a quick
agreement on how to divide up the spoils at the full minerals
meeting held in May in Uruguay.

"McMurdo is a mess. We are staggered by the impact on the local
environment," said Gudrun Gaudian, "One can imagine the scale of
damage that could be done by commercial mining and oil
interests." According to a study conducted by the U.S.
Department of State, an oil well blow-out "could create one of
the most serious environmental hazards that could occur from
mineral exploitation in Antarctica."

The ATCPs record on preserving the once abundant regional stocks
of fish and krill is equally dismal. Overfishing has led to the
commercial extinction of several species of fin fish in
Antarctic waters. According to a recent 3-month survey conducted
by the National Marine Fisheries Service, some species have been
so overfished that there are "no indications of recovery."

As fin fish stocks decline, fishing efforts are focusing on the
shrimp-like krill, a mainstay of the Antarctic ocean food chain.
Surveys in some areas are indicating a 60 percent drop in
population concentration over the last few years.

The Wintering Team Diary

In February, 1987, Greenpeace's World Park Base in Antarctica
was finished. Four volunteers will spend the 6-month Antarctic
winter there, monitoring the environmental impact of the
neighboring bases and conducting scientific research. The four
are: New Zealander Kevin Conaglen, team leader; West German Dr.
Gudrun Gaudian, marine biologist; New Zealander Justin Fawely,
radio operator and Dr. Cornelius van Dorp, base doctor. This is
an excerpt from the base camp diary. 

It's been seven weeks since the MV Greenpeace left Cape Evans.
This has been a perfect day, warm enough to walk around with a
pair of jeans, two jumpers plus a body warmer, not the usual
thick, cumbersome array of insulated jacket and down trousers.
Erebus, the volcano situated nearby, was spitting plumes of
smoke into an immaculate blue sky. Sixty miles away, the
transantarctic mountains were looming into the sky, appearing
remarkably clear and close. 

We've pretty much completed the long and arduous task of
unpacking and arranging. We've built shelves, rearranged the
layout of bedrooms. We are almost finished making this base as
close to home as possible. There is a lot of greenery future
peas, beans, herbs, cucumbers, tomatoes - in the corner opposite
the galley. 

One bedroom niche doubles as a laboratory, the desk covered with
sampling bottles full of ice, soil and water waiting to be
analyzed. Each day we collect data on the seals, penguins and
skuas (sea birds) that inhabit the area. Most of the animals are
leaving as the sea is freezing over. We are looking for trends,
and comparing these observations with similar data Scott
collected about 75 years ago. Some very interesting results are
showing up already.

A week ago the sun was setting over the mountains of Victoria
Land, but now her path is shorter and she is falling into Ross
Sea earlier and earlier in the day. Soon she will be gone for
three months. . .what a thought. What will it feel like, all
this darkness, only the moon out? What an amazing place. So full
of surprises and beauty. Often we stop and wonder at how
fortunate we are to be here.


BOB CUMMINGS: IN MEMORIAM 
by Steve Sawyer

I remember the kind words, warm smile and reassuring, gravelly
voice of this older man when I arrived, scared out of my mind,
to join the seal hunt campaign in St. John's, Newfoundland after
driving a rented truck for two days straight. I was wearing a
wet suit, accidentally soaked in gasoline, and wondering when I
would fall into the freezing water from the zodiacs preparing to
block the exit of the seal ships from the harbor. 

In the years that followed, I grew accustomed to the same
gravelly voice saying over and over, "Now I remember back in
'71, on the Phyllis Cormack on the way to Amchitka. . . And I
will best remember him grinning and chain smoking in the mess
room on the Rainbow Warrior, telling old war stories late into
the night to pass the time while the Warrior lay stuck in the
ice.

Bob Cummings, one of the founders of Greenpeace, died in March.


SEAL HUNT RESUMES

In March, Canadian sealers once again set sail for the
Newfoundland Front - the ice covered Atlantic coast of eastern
Canada where harp seal populations pup and breed. The vessels
Terra Nova and Chester, each capable of killing and skinning
1,000 seals a day, had not actively engaged in sealing since
1983, thanks to the efforts of environmentalists who secured a
ban on white coat pelts in the European Economic Community
(EEC). 

This time, their target was not the white coat pups of previous
years. To circumvent the EEC ban, the sealers waited until the
pups were over three weeks of age and had shed their white coats
for the pearly grey fur of "beaters." But thanks to heavy ice
and fog, and the expedition's late start, the two ships had
taken only 3,000 seals by the time the hunt officially ended
April 25. But large vessel sealing is back, to the dismay of
environmentalists, and Greenpeace Wildlife Campaigner Anne
Dingwall says, "If this is signalling the start of large-vessel
commercial sealing, it will also signal the resumption of
efforts to stop sealing once and for all."

Environmentalists believed they had scored a victory in December
1986 when the Royal Commission on Seals and the Sealing Industry
issued a report recommending that the commercial hunting of
white coats "is widely unacceptable to the public and should not
be permitted." Unfortunately, the Canadian government has chosen
to honor the report by continuing the hunt under false pretenses
- while the government announced the 1987 hunt would be limited
to adult seals, the sealers themselves confirmed that they would
be killing beater pups. 

Sealing, despite collapsed markets, is undergoing a resurgence
because of imbalances in the ocean ecosystem caused by poor
resources management. Marine mammals, rather than the rampant
over exploitation of fin fish stocks, are being blamed for
declining catches. And so, for the moment, the annual hunt
continues. 


DAVID ROBIE'S "EYES OF FIRE": A REVIEW

by Steve Sawyer

Among the many newspaper stories, films and books that followed
the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior and the murder of Fernando
Pereira by French secret service agents, David Robie's Eyes of
Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, stands alone.
While most accounts focus on the bombing, the ensuing spy
scandal and the political tumult in Paris, Robie's book places
the events of the summer and autumn of 1985 in the context of
the politics and people of the Pacific. He also delves into the
history of the Warrior and Greenpeace to divine the reasons,
however ill-considered, why the French felt it imperative to
blow up the organization's flagship and attempt to kill its
crew.

Robie is uniquely qualified to tell the story, as he sailed on
the Warrior's last voyage from Honolulu to New Zealand, via the
Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Vanuatu. During the long days at
sea he gained an intimate sense of the ship and her crew that
rings truer than the accounts of journalists who reconstructed
the events after the fact.

The book begins with a thumbnail sketch of the history of the
Greenpeace flagship--from her beginning as a fisheries research
trawler and her discovery by Greenpeace, rusting in a London
dockyard. He describes her renaissance as the brightly colored
flagship of the budding European Greenpeace movement, her daring
escape from incarceration by the Spanish navy in 1980 and her
arrival in North America in 1981.

With a new engine and the backing of a growing global
organization, the Rainbow Warrior spent the next two years
dashing up and down the eastern seaboard, into the Pacific and
Peru, up to the Bering Sea and to the Soviet Union, a campaign
highlighted by the now-famous escape from a Soviet warship after
documenting illegal Soviet whaling activities on the Siberian
coast.

The main focus of the book, however is the Rainbow Warrior's
last voyage. In late autumn of 1984, Greenpeace outfitted the
trawler with a large and innovative sail rig to give her
unlimited range in the vast Pacific. The ship's first mission in
the Marshall Islands was to evacuate the 304 residents of
Rongelap atoll, contaminated by U.S. atmospheric nuclear tests.
The evacuation, a deeply moving experience for the Greenpeace
crew and journalists aboard the Warrior, is sensitively and
compellingly retold by Robie. 

Robie accurately recounts the shock and the horror experienced
by the Greenpeace volunteers and friends in New Zealand after
the now-infamous act of state terrorism - the first attack on
New Zealand in its history as a sovereign nation. Robie's
analysis places the bombing squarely in the context of South
Pacific politics and people, providing a much needed human
backdrop to the soulless brinksmanship practiced in the South
Pacific by the superpowers. His story is at once a chronicle of
historical events and a moving companion to the cry of the
people of the region: "If it is safe, test it in the Paris, dump
it in Tokyo, store it in Washington . . . but keep my Pacific
nuclear-free!" 

Eyes of Fire is available in the U.S. from New Society
Publishers, 4722 Baltimore Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19143; $9.95
paperback, $29.95 hardcover plus $1.50 mailing charge for first
copy and 50 cents each additional copy. (A portion of the
royalties from the sale of the book goes to the Rongelap
resettlement fund).