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The story is no better outside the U.S. Efforts to come to grips with global climate change amount to a desultory drift from conference to conference, without international leadership or any agreement about what should be done. The destruction of tropical rain forests continues unabated. All around the world, the expectations of Earth Day have given way to enervating debate and procrastination.
Environmentalists must share part of the blame: they have not offered a coherent plan of action either domestically or internationally. Admits Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute: "The agenda is fairly confused. A number of environmental groups have grown up independently, with their own memberships, their own budgets and their own objectives." Thomas Lovejoy of the Smithsonian Institution is worried that the cacophony of environmental lobbying is beginning to be counterproductive. Says he: "I sense a real frustration among the more concerned and active members of Congress about enough being enough. If you wear out your best friends, you've got a problem."
Unfortunately, ecological ills do not go into remission simply because environmentalists cannot get their act together or because congressional attention is focused elsewhere. As time passes without meaningful action, options disappear, and the costs to present and future generations continue to rise. The urgency of the problems is too easily forgotten. "To some people, the whole concept ((of environmentalism)) is a luxury," says Madeline Albright, professor of international relations at Georgetown University. "In the future, as the economy tightens up, it is conceivable that people will think we can't afford environmental improvements."
But failing to protect the environment is ultimately more costly than preserving it. Consider the case of Eastern Europe. For decades, the communist-bloc countries stoked their industrial production without regard for the environmental consequences. Only this year was the scope of the resulting ecocatastrophe revealed to the world. Zoltan Illes, Hungary's Deputy State Secretary for Environment and Nature Protection, estimates that health problems and loss of production because of air and water pollution reduce his nation's gross domestic product more than 6%.
The fall of the Iron Curtain could spur a cleanup. West Europeans lead the world in environmental consciousness because they have suffered egregious homegrown pollution as well as grime floating in from the east. Expenditures on environmental protection in Western Europe have increased from $46 billion in 1987 to $73 billion this year, and are expected to rise 75% more by the year 2000. Additional funds and technology will undoubtedly go to help neighbors to the east modernize their industries and fight pollution. Both Sweden and the Netherlands, for example, have offered to help Poland cleanse its air. Klaus Matthiesen, environment minister of the German state North Rhine-Westphalia, notes that spending on environmental preservation "must be regarded as an important motor of economic change."