Endangered Earth Update the Fight to Save the Planet

By Thomas A. Sancton

As a follow-up to our Jan. 2, 1989, Planet of the Year issue, TIME invited 14 environment experts and policymakers to Alexandria, Va., for a one-day conference. Its aim was twofold: to take stock of the environmental progress that had been made around the world during the year, and to develop an agenda for the future. This special report sums up our conclusions -- and some proposals for action.

"When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight," Samuel Johnson once wrote, "it concentrates his mind wonderfully." The threat of impending ecological doom seems to be having the same effect on public opinion. If historians remember 1989 as the year the Iron Curtain collapsed, it has also been the year that concern for the environment reached a new peak.

No single incident did more to raise that consciousness than the Exxon Valdez disaster, which last March disgorged nearly 262,000 bbl. of crude oil into the pristine waters of Alaska's Prince William Sound. The images of dead birds and sea otters and miles of tar-smeared beaches graphically illustrated mankind's capacity to foul its environment. Coming in the wake of 1988, with its devastating droughts, mega-forest fires and record high temperatures, the Valdez spill convinced all but the most skeptical observers that humanity was courting ecological disaster.

Yet the Valdez spill was only a trivial occurrence compared with the far- reaching, perhaps irreversible processes that were unfolding around the world. The earth's population, now 5.2 billion, rose in 1989 an estimated 87.5 million, maintaining a growth rate that could double the number of human beings by the year 2025. Deforestation and burning of fossil fuels spewed at least 19 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, aggravating the global warming process that could cause the average worldwide temperature to rise as much as 4.5 degrees C (8 degrees F) within the next 60 years. Another 11.3 million hectares (28 million acres) of tropical forest were destroyed. The ozone hole over Antarctica remained alarmingly large, and scientists reported evidence that a second hole was developing over the Arctic. Whether or not all of the dire predictions come to pass, they underscore a chilling message: the planet is in grave trouble. If nations do not take drastic action, it could one day be unfit as a human habitat.

All around the world, there were signs that people were beginning to heed that message. In the U.S. a Gallup poll indicated that 3 of every 4 Americans consider themselves environmentalists. The level of public concern is so high, says Republican Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island, that pro-environmental bills now get "a tidal wave" of support in Congress. In elections to the European Parliament, Green parties scored impressive gains. In Hungary protests from local environmentalists led the government to cancel a $ controversial multibillion-dollar hydroelectric-dam project. And in the Soviet Union the budding Green movement showed its muscle by shutting down a new chemical-weapons dismantling facility in the Siberian town of Chapayevsk. "In the future," said Soviet People's Deputy Alexei Yablokov, "the Green movement may be so strong that without its support, no government can do anything sound."

Such grass-roots pressure gave added impetus to some major international initiatives. In Basel last March, 105 nations tentatively agreed to place strict curbs on international shipments of hazardous waste. Meeting in Helsinki in May, representatives of 86 countries declared their intention to phase out their production and use of ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the year 2000. All this is encouraging. But make no mistake: these are only the opening skirmishes in what may prove to be mankind's ultimate battle for survival. Mostafa Tolba, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), put the matter starkly in his keynote speech before TIME's Alexandria conference: "Addressing the global environmental crisis requires nothing less than a radical change in the conduct of world policy and the world economy."

Most of all, it requires international cooperation on an unprecedented scale. No nation can cordon itself off from the effects of its neighbors' pollution. Radioactive fallout from Chernobyl swept across most of the European continent. Canadian lakes are being poisoned by the belchings of U.S. smokestacks. The torching of Brazil's tropical forests each year accounts for some 6% of all the CO2 that is pumped into the atmosphere. Deforestation in Haiti and drought in Africa have prompted large cross-border refugee movements -- just a foretaste, perhaps, of the mass migrations that could result if runaway population growth outstrips world food and energy resources.

International efforts to preserve the biosphere will not succeed unless the Third World goes along with them. The irony is that the laissez-faire, free- market rules that allowed the industrial world to prosper must now be suspended. "If the developing nations, home to 8 out of 10 people, repeat the pattern of development of the North," warns UNEP's Tolba, "if they reach the North's levels of consumer goods and fuel consumption, and if they continue to clear the forests, then our mutual destruction is assured."

The industrialized nations must therefore persuade the Third World to % embrace the goal of sustainable development -- economic growth that relies only on renewable resources and does not permanently damage the environment. But the debt-burdened developing nations cannot be expected to do so without an enormous influx of funds and technology from the North. According to Kenneth Piddington, director of the World Bank's Environment Department, the crucial question is, "Are the rich countries of a mind to organize the transfer of resources in such a way that the Thailands and Indonesias of this world are actually going to benefit materially from the way they have dealt with their environmental agenda?" Arranging such a transfusion is perhaps the central challenge facing all the nations of the world today.

As humanity moves into the final decade of the 20th century, many experts believe the next few years will be the turning point. In order to avert the catastrophes that threaten the earth, immediate action must be taken in several key areas. Among the international initiatives currently under way:

Climate Change. This month UNEP, the Climate Institute and the government of Egypt will sponsor a World Climate Conference in Cairo. Its aim: to begin laying the groundwork for a global convention to limit the emission of greenhouse gases and stabilize the world's climate.

Ozone Depletion. Next April, representatives from scores of countries will meet in London to complete the agreement to phase out CFC production by the year 2000. But unless all major nations accept the ban, efforts to halt ozone depletion may prove fruitless.

Biodiversity. UNEP is drafting an international biodiversity-conservation treaty. Among other things, it could provide financial incentives to protect tropical forests, whose destruction threatens thousands of life-forms with extinction.

In these and other areas, America must play a leading role. Not only is the U.S., as a wealthy, technologically advanced nation, in a position to help others achieve sustainable development; the country also has a moral responsibility to do so. After all, the U.S. consumes a disproportionate amount of the world's resources and has inflicted more than its share of environmental damage. But perhaps the strongest argument for American leadership on the environment is an idealistic one. Ronald Reagan loved to sing paeans to America's unique role as "a city on a hill" -- an inspiring model of democracy and free enterprise. Now that much of the world seems to be moving in a democratic direction, the U.S. should set its sights on an even loftier, more urgent mission: saving the planet.