9:48 AM Feb 5, 1997

MAN CAN'T DO WITH NATURE AS HE PLEASES

By Peter Montague*

Penang, Feb (TWN) -- It seems as if the entire 'developed' world is depending on rapid industrial innovation to pull its chestnuts out of the fire. The people who run the permanent government (they're not elected) seem stuck on the idea that tremendous growth will be required to solve the problems of poverty, well-being, and pollution within the US and throughout the world.

Even the Brundtland Commission -- the prestigious group that coined the phrase 'sustainable development' back in 1987 -- argued that the world's total economic activity would have to increase five-fold to 10-fold to lift all humans out of poverty. The need for growth has become an axiom of modern industrial/economic/political life.

A corollary to this axiom says that rapid technical innovation is the way to achieve growth. Therefore 'sustainable development' requires rapid growth, which in turn requires rapid technical innovation, according to the people who think themselves as managing the planet.

Obviously, this view creates an imperative to deploy new technologies - an imperative that is particularly visible, these days, in the fields of genetic engineering and materials science -- the systematic effort to create materials that nature never made, from which to construct next year's automobiles,airplanes, rockets, medical machinery, sky scrapers, foodstuffs, space stations, pesticides, communications and entertainment platforms, armaments etc.

But in the recent past the mad dashes towards new technologies have usually created serious trouble:

* Our oil-based civilization seemed like it was giving us a wonderful life until it started warming up of the planet: in 1995-96, the world's community of meteorologists reached consensus that our devotion to petroleum has ominous implications for the kind of the world we will leave to our children.

* For 50 years, new uses of mercury proved to be very productive in scientific instruments, silent light switches, latex paints, pesticides, and more. But now we find that the mercury content of the world's atmosphere has nearly doubled and consequently the fish in most of our fresh waters have become poisonous from a build-up of toxic mercury in their tissues.

* Lead is a superb pesticide, gasoline additive, paint supplement, and glaze for pottery. But now we find that, millions - literally millions - of children in the US and abroad are having their intellectual capacity permanently diminished by lead poisoning.

* The invention of DDT made it possible to control malaria-bearing mosquitoes without understanding the life-cycle of the mosquitoes. DDT made mosquito control so easy that we forgot how to employ knowledge of mosquito ecology to control malaria, relying instead on the heavy hand of DDT. Now that the side-effects of DDT have become apparent -- disruptiuon of hormones of wildlife and contaminating humans on a global scale -- DDT is being phased out and malaria, the number one killer worldwide, is resurgent. Other infectious diseases are spreading as well, because of environmental dislocations caused by human technologies.

* Learning how to 'fix' nitrogen from the atmosphere was a marvellous innovation, leading to artificial fertilisers, increased per-acre agricultural yields, and green lawns. But new environmental disruption caused by a planetary overload of nitrogen is emerging as a new global concern (William K. Stevens, 'Too much of a Good Thing makes Benign Nitrogen a Triple Threat', New York Times 10.12.96) - a triple threat,warming the Earth, contributing to the destruction of the ozone layer, and diminishing valuable biodiversity.

* Nuclear energy was sold to taxpayers with the promise of electricity 'too cheap to meter' and nuclear weapons as so horrific that they would make war unthinkable. Nuclear energy turned out to be expensive, and today war is hardly unthinkable. Furthermore, the US Secretary of Energy declared, "The arms race is over. Our struggle now is to get rid of this sea of plutonium". The world's 700-ton stockpile of plutonium - an element described by its discover, Glenn Seaborg, as 'fiendishly toxic' - has created what the New York Times calls 'one of the most intractable problems of the post-Cold-War era.'

The list could really be extended, but the point is probably clear.

Now, driven by the perceived need for rapid innovation to promote economic growth, we find that 'We are in the midst of a second industrial revolution, one in which new high-tech materials are entering the workplace at an almost overwhelming rate," says Tai Chan, programme manager of occupational health and safety research for General Motors. Ofcourse, after they enter the workplace, high-tech materials enter commerce and eventually enter the general environment.

A recent article in Environmental Health Perspectives (a US government scientific journal) says, "Seeking an elusive combination of high strength and light weight has driven engineers to develop a staggering variety of new fibres and particles... (And) unfortunately many of the most desirable man-made fibres have many of the least desirable health-related characteristics...

"Typically composed of various combinations of ceramics, polymers, and metals, these composites can pose a health risk to workers who inhale fibres and particulates, and may present health hazards as serious as those of asbestos.... In fact ... researchers don't have a good understanding of the mechanisms that may contribute to the toxicity of ultrafine materials...."

Caroll Pursell, a technology historian at Case Western Reserve University, says: "Technology should be about the exercise of prudence. But economic considerations usually push new developments forward."

This is certainly the case with genetic engineering. The genetic engineering industry hit its stride in 1995-96 when US regulators (Food and Drug Administration, and Environmental Protection Agency) approved the commercialisation of half a dozen new genetically engineered crop species, which are now being dispersed into the environment by farmers on a large scale. Soon these species will be sold abroad.

For the first three billions years of life on Earth, genes could only be shared among species that were similar enough to mate and reproduce. There was no way dog genes could get into cats, or corn genes into wheat. The gene pool of the mating species limited the genetic information that any species could contain. Natural genetic variations have always occurred, and those that promote survival may endure and eventually cause a species to evolve. But the process up until now has been glacially slow.

What is new about genetic engineering is that it allows genes to be shared among completely unrelated species. And quickly, Genes from a trout can be put into a tomato, for example, to give the tomato some desirable characteristic that only the trout used to have. Species created in this way are known as 'transgeic species' or 'living modified organisms' (LMOs). Now, literally for $68 any microbiolgy graduate student can purchase a gene splicing kit and start transplanting tobacco genes into mosquitoes, or shark genes into lady bugs to see what will happen.

In 1996, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) published a book urging caution as transgenic species are released into the environment. The book basically asks, "What will it mean to have a steady stream of animal and microbial genes entering the gene pools of plants in wild ecosystems?" Based on principles of ecology, principles derived from observing the way nature works, UCS warns of the following scenarios:

** Gene flow, in which new genes from insect-, disease-, or herbicide-resistant species flow to wild plant relatives and weeds, causing agricultural and ecological havoc unless effective controls are available and affordable.

** Harms to non-target species arising, for example, from new gene products with toxic qualities being ingested by birds and other feeders in the region where LMOs are cultivated.

** Cascading effects on an ecosystem triggered by the introduction of LMOs, such as pests developing resistance to Bt in transgenic plants or being diverted to other food sources.

** Loss of biological diversity arising when LMOs displace other species, a particularly acute problem in the Third World nations that possess great crop diversity but lack the infrastructure and expertise to prevent losses.

We must ask, why do we create such similar problems again and again? Why do we never seem to learn?

It is because, most fundamentally, we believe we are the master species, and that the rest of creation exists for our benefit. We are free to do with it as we please.

Secondly, we have set up our rules so that the people who perpetrate new technological mistakes profit from them in the short term, leaving the long-term costs to be borne by others.

What could we do differently? We could put the burden of proof on those who want to deploy new technologies, similar to the way we put the burden of proof on people who want to sell new pharmaceutical drugs.

An elegant, conservative scheme for shifting the burden of proof has been proposed by economist Robert Constanza. He calls it the 'precautionary polluter pays principle'. Basically, it would require technical innovators to post a performance bond up front, to cover the worst-case costs of what they are about to unleash on the world. Would it slow the pace of technical innovation. Surely it would. Do we need such a slowing? Only if we desire a future for humans.

(* Peter Montague is director of the Environmental Research Foundation in Annapolis, Maryland, USA and editor of Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly)