INTRODUCTION
“One guy. One guy and a fish.”
In a very real sense Ralph Nader and Barry Commoner haven’t done anything new. In
this sense they are just old-time muckrakers carrying on, in America’s best national tradition, the
literature of exposure.
However as we look to the matter more closely we see that this view of Nader and
Commoner obscures much that is important about their work. Nader and Commoner differ in
profound ways from the muckrakers of the first period, 1902 through 1912.
True, the early muckrakers treated many of the same subjects that Nader and Commoner
have written about in recent years. For example, with only minor changes this description of the
early muckrakers might be applied to Nader and Commoner (and their associates):1
The muckrake touched practically every phase of American life; nothing
was immune from it. The flaws were photographed, analyzed, pinpointed. The
men engaged in muckraking were bold. Their accusations were specific, direct.
Names were named. They pointed to sore spots in business, in politics. They
found food adulteration, unscrupulous practices in finance and insurance
companies, fraudulent claims for and injurious ingredients in patent medicines,
rape of natural resources, bureaucracy, prostitution, a link between government
and vice. Prison conditions were exposed as were newspapers and their
domination by advertisers. The church was not spared from the muckrakers’
probing. . . . The evils of child labor were exposed.
If it is true, as Harvey Swados has said, that “The [main] issues which exercised these
[early muckraking] writers were three: corruption in government, the irresponsibility of the
trusts, and the exploitation of women and children,” 2 then we can continue to draw close parallel
between Nader and Commoner and the early muckrakers. The differences are in emphasis:
Nader gives prime focus to the trusts (now called oligopolistic multinational corporations) and
the ways in which these corporations have corrupted government regulatory agencies and now
seem to exploit almost everyone.
Both Nader and Commoner share with their forerunners a strong moral commitment. Mr.
Nader has described his approach to consumer problems as essentially “ethical” rather than
“ideological”3 and Dr. Commoner has discussed the matter at some length:4
In recent times the gap between traditional moral principles and the
realities of modern life has become so large as to precipitate, beginning in the
Catholic church, and less spectacularly in other religious denominations, urgent
demands for renewal—for the development of statements of moral purpose which
are directly relevant to the modern world. But in the modern world the substance
of moral issues cannot be perceived in terms of the casting of stones or the theft of
a neighbor’s ox. The moral issues of the modern world are embedded in the
complex substance of science and technology. The exercise of morality now
requires the determination of right between the farmers whose pesticides poison
the water and the fishermen whose livelihood may thereby be destroyed. . . .The
ethical principles involved are no different from those invoked in earlier times,
but the moral issues cannot be discerned unless the new substance in which they
are expressed is understood. And since the substance of science is still often
poorly perceived by most citizens, the technical content of the issues of the
modern world shields them from moral judgment. [Emphasis added.]
As is obvious, Dr. Commoner’s analysis leads him to try to bring information to the
public. Thus Dr. Commoner is known as the father of the “scientific information movement”
(which is discussed below). He has said that the movement aims to create “the Jeffersonian
concept of an educated, informed electorate . . .”5 and he has said, “I am fully convinced that the
citizen can and must study and come to understand the underlying facts about modern
technological problems.”6
For his part Mr. Nader has continually stressed the need for giving citizens access to
information. Toward this end one of the earliest task forces of “Nader’s raiders” produced a
critique of shortcomings in the federal Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Reacting to
this early report, the Washington Post noted that Nader’s people had “rendered a real and vital
public service, a service that should have been rendered by a free press.”7
This passage implies one of the signal differences between Mr. Nader and his muckraker
predecessors. The early muckrakers were members of the American press corps. They
published their investigative reports and their indictments in the then-new mass-circulation
magazines (McClure’s, Cosmopolitan, Collier’s, Hampton’s, American, Everybody’s). As
muckrakers they were frequently employed by the magazines in which their work appeared. In
contrast, the new muckrakers are independent. The new muckrakers supplement the press corps.
We shall return to this important point below.
Probably the key difference between the new muckrakers and the old can be found in the
analysis, which underlies the work of the new muckrakers. Both Dr. Commoner and Mr. Nader
2
are convinced, thoroughly convinced, that we have about one generation -- 25 years—to solve
our major problems. If we fail, the species homo sapiens may well be doomed to extinction from
the earth. No muckraker between 1902 and 1912 could say, as Dr. Commoner has said, “The
time is at hand to devote the wisdom of science and the power of technology not simply to the
welfare but to the survival of man.”8 No earlier muckraker could say, as Dr. Commoner has
said, “Thus, I believe that we have, as of now, a single decade in which to design the
fundamental changes in technology that we must put into effect in the 1980s—if we are to
survive.”9
This sense of urgency suffuses all of Mr. Nader’s activities; he says that he, personally,
no longer can justify taking time out for hikes or for any sort of recreation.10 He works a 100hour week himself (and accepts nothing less than a 70-hour week from his associates). He lives
in an $80-a-month room in northwest Washington, D.C. and directs most of his diverse activities
from a payphone in the hallway. He does not own an automobile. In this sense, Mr. Nader lives
an alternative to the affluent “system” and thus escapes the criticism which Lewis Mumford
leveled (with perspicuity) against the old muckrakers: “Life was more complicated in America
but not more significant; life was richer in material goods but not in creative energies. These
eager and relentless journalists were unaware of the necessity for establishing different kinds of
goods than the existing ones; they had no notion of other values, other modes, other forms of
activity than those practiced by the society around them.”11 Mr. Nader has some idea of other
modes and he lives them.
A more immediately important distinction between the old muckrakers and the new is
their differing relations to the press. The old muckrakers published their work mainly in a group
of magazines which built their circulations upon the salability of the expose’. This meant that
the magazines (and the muckraking writers who depended upon them for sustenance) were
vulnerable to focused pressures from their opposition.
Upton Sinclair, reminiscing upon the time of the great muckrakers, said that some of the
magazines, such as Everybody’s and American, disappeared because banks cut off their lines of
credit.12 In a more complex analysis Professor Jacob Sher of Northwestern University attributes
the end of the muckraking period to four causes: (1) WW I turned the public’s attention from
national to foreign affairs; (2) Wilson’s New Freedom put into practice (or at least convincing
3
preachment) many of the reforms which seemed to hold promise of relieving the worst social
evils the muckrakers had revealed; (3) advertisers withdrew from muckraking magazines, thus
depriving the muckraking writers of their base of support; and (4) the era of the press agent
emerged with Rockefeller’s employment of Ivy Lee and thenceforward made it possible for big
business “to unsell the public on almost anything”.13
This last point is the most telling, in this writer’s opinion. The point has been
emphasized by Professor Eric Goldman of Princeton University:14
Perhaps the most helpful point I could make about the muckrakers is their
critically important role in discovering “publicity.” . . .Up to the early 1900’s,
most Americans, including much of American industry, considered publicity a
bad thing. The idea was to operate in secrecy. Then T.R. led in discovering
publicity as a political weapon. The muckrakers used publicity as an antibusiness weapon and industry, in direct reply to the muckrakers, began to feel that
if publicity could be used against them, it could also be used for them. Hence the
birth of the whole public relations industry.
In contrast to the original muckrakers the new muckrakers do not depend upon any single
group of publications for their support. Dr. Commoner and his associates in St. Louis started a
small magazine, Nuclear Information, in 1958; it has since changed names twice, first to
Scientist and Citizen, finally to Environment, and its circulation has grown steadily (to the
present 25,000 paid subscribers). But only a handful of editors make their living putting out
Environment and it is not a mass-circulation magazine. In addition, Environment accepts no
advertising. Basically Environment is subsidized by philanthropic foundations, and by research
monies, which trickle down to it through the federally supported scientific research industry.
Mr. Nader for his part has started no new publications whatever. He apparently
perceived early in his public career (which can be dated from the 1965 publication of Unsafe at
Any Speed) that the so-called establishment media (the major east-coast newspapers and the
national wire services) would pick up and publicize almost anything he had to say if he would
just give his words a bold, factually-accurate tenor and a dramatic inflection. Thus Mr. Nader
casts his reports in terms which fit the current definitions of “news” and he makes headlines on
the east coast an average of three or four times each week. The major media are starved for
investigative reports based on solid, factual data; they haven’t the money or the technical
expertise to produce the reports themselves but they’re perfectly willing to take Mr. Nader’s
4
work and fill their columns with it. Thus Mr. Nader gets his ideas before the public and runs
little risk of being cut off by rancorous advertisers or banks.
Dr. Commoner has apparently come to share Mr. Nader’s perception of the press. In a
recent interview with a radical young journalist, Dr. Commoner said, “You can set up, let’s say,
in Berkeley, with people ranging from the high schools right up to the professors, you can set up
a vast, well equipped and supplied organization for describing the California environment. Just
think of it. You could be grinding out data day after day, issuing reports that will stand the
newspapers on their heads. That’s what I would call taking power.”15
Issuing reports that stand the newspapers on their heads has been Mr. Nader’s chief
strategy since 1965 when he published Unsafe at Any Speed. This impeccably documented
expose’ revealed that the nation’s largest manufacturing firm (General Motors) had been
operating for years almost without regard for the precepts of fairness, safety and service to the
consuming public.
The final passage in Unsafe at Any Speed gives us the flavor of Nader’s language (and
nearly mirrors the ideas that Dr. Commoner expressed [above] regarding morality and
technology):16
The gap between existing design and attainable safety [in American automobiles]
has widened enormously in the post-war period. As these attainable levels of
safety rise, so do the moral imperatives to use them. For the tremendous range of
opportunity of science-technology—by providing easier and better solutions—
serves to clarify ethical choices and to ease the conditions for their exercise by the
manufacturers. There are men in the automobile industry who know both the
technical capability and appreciate the moral imperatives. But their timidity and
conformity to the rigidities of the corporate bureaucracies have prevailed. When
and if the automobile is designed to free millions of human beings from
unnecessary mutilation, these men, like their counterparts in universities and
government who knew of the suppression of safer automobile development yet
remained silent year after year, will look back with shame on the time when
common candor was considered courage.
Unsafe at Any Speed turned out to be the opening shot in what has become the most
significant attack ever launched against the multinational corporations. The book succeeded
spectacularly for Mr. Nader in at least three ways. First, it gave Mr. Nader sufficient funds to
begin establishing an independent organization to investigate consumer problems. Second, the
book succeeded in getting America’s largest manufacturer to withdraw one of its automobiles
5
from production (the Corvair), thus indicating that Nader had, in fact, been right and that the
manufacturer—General Motors, with gross sales in 1969 of $24 billion—the nation’s largest
automobile manufacturer had been wrong, culpably wrong, guilty of irresponsible, dishonest,
venal behavior at the expense of the health, the safety and the purse of Mr. and Mrs. American
Housefamily. Third, the book succeeded for Mr. Nader because GM reacted to Nader’s attack
by ordering Nader followed and harassed, thus focusing attention on the corporation as Goliath
attacking virtue. Nader says he has succeeded at least partly because America is “starved for
acts of the individual in a conflict situation outside the sports arena.”17
Mr. Nader’s first team of “raiders” numbered only six, and they took on the job of
studying a major Washington bureaucracy, the Federal Trade Commission. These first six (in
the summer of 1968) set the pattern for subsequent teams of “raiders,” investigating the agency’s
activities with a thoroughness that stunned the bureaucrats. When the first taskforce report was
issued, it spared nothing and no one. It described the agency’s ineptitude, timidity, venality,
inefficiency, and ineffectiveness. It called for a total revamping of agency practices and
personnel.
FTC Chairman Paul Rand Dixon described the Nader report this way for the Wall Street
Journal: “A hysterical anti-business diatribe and a scurrilous, untruthful attack on the [FTC’s]
career personnel and an arrogant demand for my resignation.”18 Mark Green, writing in the
Village Voice, quotes an even more outlandish response by Mr. Dixon; Dixon allegedly
described the group of “raiders” (who did indeed call for his resignation) as “smart aleck
pricks.”19
For a time the FTC rocked in the winds; then President Nixon urged the American Bar
Association to undertake an independent investigation of the FTC. The Bar Association’s report
painted conclusions even more dismal than the Nader team had presented. Mr. Dixon resigned.
When, under the new leadership of Casper W. Weinberger, reforms began taking place within
the FTC, the New York Times announced the fact this way in a front-page headline (June 9,
1970):
“F.T.C. MAPS CHANGE TO AID CONSUMER
Major Reorganization Set by Chairman—
Agency was Nader Target”
6
It was a second major success for Mr. Nader and it assured that his name would be kept
before the American public as a “consumer crusader.” After Mr. Nader’s FTC success Life
magazine began using the term Nader-ism without enclosing the word in quotation marks.20
After the FTC report, Mr. Nader continued issuing a series of bulky, thoroughly
documented reports produced by other teams of “raiders.” These reports included the following
titles: The Interstate Commerce Omission; Vanishing Air; The Chemical Feast; Water
Wasteland; The Water Lords; Nursing Homes for the Aged: The Agony of One Million
Americans; One Life—One Physician; Sowing the Wind: Pesticides, Meat, and the Public
Interest; Power and Land in California; and The Closed Enterprise System.21
In these reports Mr. Nader repeatedly demonstrates the need for profound reforms in our
corporate and governmental/regulatory institutions. And he has developed a program for reform.
This program definitely sets Mr. Nader apart from his muckraker forebears; the first muckrakers
are notable for their consistent refusal (if you will, failure) to suggest remedies for the evils they
described. In contrast, Mr. Nader has given specific suggestions for correcting the evils of the
marketplace as he sees them. These reforms are discussed below.
Of course Mr. Nader is not the only, or even the first, observer to see the need for reform
in the marketplace. Just to make the point that Mr. Nader does not stand alone with his analysis,
here is a random collection of facts and descriptions culled from the so-called establishment
media:
President Nixon’s special advisor on consumer affairs, Mrs. Virginia Knauer, recently
described the American scene from the average consumer’s viewpoint:22
Today I want to talk about [the American] marketplace, not only as it
relates to the consumer in the cities, but to the consumer. . .on the farm and in the
rural communities. The problems are the same: Unsafe products. Shoddy
merchandise. Shabby repair work. Poor service. Questionable business
practices. Outright swindles. These problems have caused the consumer
revolution we are now witnessing.
--Dr. Henry F. Simmons, director of the FDA’s Bureau of Drugs, estimates that
Americans are spending $500 million each year for prescription drugs “for which there is at
present no valid proof of efficacy.” Dr. Simmons adds, “[W]hether a drug is effective or
ineffective it can still cause adverse [so-called side-effect] reactions and not infrequently does.”
7
The Washington Post goes on to quote Dr. Simmons to the effect that 40% of the nation’s bestselling prescription drugs are combinations of ingredients mixed in fixed ratios; according to Dr.
Simmons these combinations “make it virtually impossible to practice good therapeutics.”23
--Each year some 67 million automobile owners pay a total of $20 to $25 billion for
automobile repairs.24
--According to reports now circulating within the Federal Trade Commission in
Washington, shortweighting by retailers annually costs the American consumer $800 million.25
--According to Representative Fred B. Rooney (D-Penna.) fraudulent door-to-door
magazine sales cost consumers “several hundred million dollars” annually.26
--The National Commission on Product Safety said last year that 30,000 Americans are
killed each year and 110,000 permanently disabled in the home “as a result of incidents
connected with consumer products.”27
A few of these dangerous products are as follows: television sets, 10,000 of which
caught fire during 1969; glass doors without safety glaze, through which 100,000 Americans
walked during 1969; floor furnace grills, seriously burning 30,000 to 60,000 Americans during
1969; ladders, injuring up to 200,000 and killing at least 600; power lawn mowers, maiming at
least 140,000 each year; toys, injuring 700,000 children each year.
--In 1969 Consumers Union tested a large sample of new automobiles. It found an
average of 36 defects, minor to serious, in each new car.
The Missouri Chapter of the American Automobile Association checked 10,000 new and
used cars between 1967 and 1969. Just under on half of all the cars were found to have
“potentially dangerous defects.”28
--Automobile crashes killed 56,400 Americans in 1969 and injured 4.5 million. The
American automobile spills more American blood every week than the fighting in Vietnam spills
in a year.29
Former Food and Drug Commission Herbert Ley (who quit his post because, as he
announced to the press, the FDA simply hadn’t sufficient fund to operate as mandated by law):
“People think the FDA is protecting them --it isn’t. What the FDA is doing and what the public
think it is doing are as different as night and day.”30
8
--In the summer of 1970, 25 patients at a Baltimore nursing home died because of
salmonella contamination of their food. On September 17, 1970, the FDA announced finding
salmonella in 5,000 cases of O’Henry candy bars. Less than a month later the FDA announced
the recall of 433,000 Hollywood Butternut candy bars because they were known to contain
rodent hairs. Unfortunately, the FDA discovered, 375,400 of the candy bars had already been
eaten.31
--Sixty-one per cent of all the food processing plants inspected by FDA during 1969
failed to meet minimum health standards.32
--U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors found insect parts, inset larvae and rodent
hairs in sausage in April, 1969, and on that same date a consumers Union report disclosed that 30
per cent of all federally inspected sausage fails federal tests for filth or bacteria counts.33
--Representative Benjamin Rosenthal revealed in mid-1968 that much of the food that
fails to pass federal inspection eventually ends up being re-routed onto supermarket shelves
anyway.34
--American consumers annually pay $32 million dollars for water that is pumped into
poultry and hams by meat processors simply to add weight.35
--America’s packaged breakfast foods are nutritionally empty.36
--The New York Times editorialized on June 13, 1970, that the fabrics which consumers
buy—draperies for their homes, seat-covers for their cars—catch fire and cause an estimated
3,000 deaths and 250,000 serious injuries each year. Said the Times, “Until the Administration
and congress recognize that the consumer is buying unsafe, untested merchandise and that
redress is essential, valuable reports such as the one by the National Commission on Product
Safety will continue to be swept under the inflammable rug.”37
This random sample of consumer horror stories comes from outside the immediate Nader
context (though admittedly Nader was influential in forcing disclosure of much of the
information). The realization of corporate abuse of the average consumer is evidently now
widespread throughout American society.
What is not yet so widely understood is the extent to which corporate practices have
apparently brought the earth’s ecological systems to the brink of collapse. For a discussion of
9
this point, we now turn our focus to Dr. Barry Commoner. Later we will return to Mr. Nader for
a review of the specific reforms which he advocates.
* * *
Dr. Barry Commoner is a professor of botany, an academician best known to his
colleagues as the father of the “scientific information movement.” But Dr. Commoner’s central
message, which he has developed during the past 15 years and which he has recently begun to
publish for a wide reading public—this message is profoundly alarming:38
We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and
of the world as a suitable place of human habitation. Environmental pollution is
not be regarded as an unfortunate but incidental by-product of the growth of
population, the intensification of production, or of technological progress. It is
rather an intrinsic feature of the very technology which we have developed to
enhance productivity. Our technology is enormously successful in producing
material goods, but too often is disastrously incompatible with natural
environmental systems. . . .
[U]nless we start now with a fundamental attack on the environmental
crisis, we will find ourselves, in a decade, locked into an irreversible, selfdestructive course.
Dr. Commoner has recently repeated this warning numerous times; in June, 1970, Dr.
Commoner called upon the President of the United States to declare a national ecological
emergency.39 At that time he said, “The environmental crisis has brought us to the most
awesome turning point in our history.” And he said, “We must dramatically reorganize our
national priorities.”40
More recently, in a two-part series for the New Yorker magazine, Dr. Commoner restated
his warning: “The present system of production is self-destructive.”41 And he said, “. . . [T]he
vaunted ‘progress’ of modern civilization is a thin cloak for global catastrophe.”42
In April, 1970, Dr. Commoner offered his opinion that we have one decade, 10 years, in
which to prepare for the major social and economic adjustments which are necessary:43
My own estimate [said Dr. Commoner] is that if we are to avoid environmental
catastrophe by the 1980s we will need to begin the vast process of correcting the
fundamental incompatibilities of major technologies with the demands of the
ecosystem.
Dr. Commoner’s analysis of our present situation derives from his training as a plant
physiologist and from his subsequent work in biochemistry and ecology. Dr. Commoner
10
presently directs the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Washington University in St.
Louis.
Dr. Commoner first became alarmed about human intrusions into natural systems when
he and a small group of other scientists in the St. Louis area began studying the biological effects
of nuclear radiation.
Between 1945 and 1954 the United States government tested a series of nuclear explosive
devices in the earth’s atmosphere, but the government refused to release any data about these
experiments to the general scientific community. In 1954 the government partially lifted the
curtain of secrecy that had surrounded these experiments and the general scientific community
then had an opportunity to make independent assessments of what the government had been
doing. The official government attitude toward nuclear explosions in the earth’s atmosphere was
summed up by President Eisenhower in October of 1956: “The continuance of the present rate
of H-bomb testing, by the most sober and responsible scientific judgment . . . does not imperil
the health of humantiy.”44
Independent scientific investigation of nuclear explosions, however, revealed that
assessments by the “most sober and responsible” government scientists had been wrong,
dangerously wrong, on several counts. The government scientists had failed to recognize, for
example, that strontium-90 from fallout would enter the food chain(s) leading to human beings
and begin to accumulate dangerously in human bones. Mammalian biological systems are
unable to distinguish between strontium-90 and calcium, so when mammals ingest strontium-90
it is stored in the bones right along with calcium. In 1953 the Atomic Energy Commission
assessed the danger of strontium-90 fallout to human beings, saying that the only possible hazard
to humans would arise from “the ingestion of bone splinters which might be intermingled with
muscle tissue during butchering and cutting of the meat.” The AEC scientists who offered that
judgment had simply failed to recognize that stronium-90 would also masquerade as calcium in
the milk of mammals such as cows and be ingested by humans in massive quantities from that
source.45
As independent scientists began studying the government’s position on radioactive
elements released into the biosphere from nuclear explosions, it became obvious that numerous
other serious errors encumbered the government’s position.
11
As Dr. Commoner pointed out in his first book, Science and Survival (1966), between
1945 and 1954 the amount of only one nuclear fallout component (strontium-90) artificially
introduced into the earth’s biosphere equaled the radioactivity of one billion grams of radium.
Prior to World War II the entire world supply of radium had totaled about 10 grams.46
Our technologists undertook this massive biological experiment on mankind without
understanding the possible effects of what they were doing. Yet in the eight years following
President Eisenhower’s bland pronouncement that nuclear tests didn’t threaten human health,
independent scientific evaluations of strontium-90, iodine-131, and cesium-137 utterly reversed
the picture. And thus in October, 1964, President Johnson signed a nuclear test-ban treaty
saying,47
This treaty has halted the steady, menacing increase of radioactive fallout. The
deadly products of atomic explosions were poisoning our soil and our food and
the milk our children drank and the air we all breathe. Radioactive deposits were
being formed in increasing quantity in the teeth and bones of young Americans.
Radioactive poisons were beginning to threaten the safety of people throughout
the world. They were a growing menace to the health of every unborn child.
As it became obvious to increasing numbers of independent scientists that science had
created a nuclear monster, a monster, which threatened biological systems on a worldwide scale,
this knowledge caused deep rifts to open up within the community of scientists. The nuclear
bomb forced the reassessment of broad philosophical questions, the central one being this: What
is the proper role of the modern scientist in relation to society? The well-known anthropologist,
Dr. Margaret Mead, says that reassessment of this question caused “a considerable hassle” within
the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the late 1950s.48
In 1957 the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Interim Committee
on the Social Aspects of Science published a report, saying:49
We are now in the midst of a new and unprecedented scientific revolution which
promises to bring about profound changes in the condition of human life. The
forces and processes now coming under human control are beginning to match in
size and intensity those of nature itself, and our total environment is now subject
to human influence. In this situation it becomes imperative to determine that
these new powers shall be used for the maximum human good, for, if the benefits
to be derived from them are great, the possibility of harm is correspondingly
serious.
The Interim Committee went on to pinpoint the problem further:50
12
[T]here is an impending crisis in the relationships between science and American
society. This crisis is being generated by a basic disparity. At a time when
decisive economic, political, and social processes have become profoundly
dependent on science, the discipline has failed to attain its appropriate place in the
management of public affairs.
The Interim Committee did not recommend a solution to this perceived difficulty, but the
AAAS continued to reverberate with the issues the Committee had described. The Interim
Committee was abolished but in its place a new Committee on Science in the Promotion of
Human Welfare was mandated by the AAAS to pursue the issues and offer some resolution.51
No one can doubt that the issues in 1960 were real. Although the general environmental
crisis had not yet made itself clearly felt among the scientific community, still the nuclear crisis
was very apparent. Many scientists were aware that, when the decision to drop the first
thermonuclear device had to be made, it was the military authorities who at first wanted to hold
back and it was the scientific advisory board—Enrico Fermi, Ernest O. Lawrence, J. Robert
Oppenheimer, and Arthur H. Compton—who successfully urged the President to drop the first
Bomb on the city of Hiroshima.52
In December on 1961 the AAAS Committee on Science in the Promotion of Human
Welfare said:53
War is today a social problem of catastrophic force and overshadowing
urgency. The basis of war is power, and power is a product of science. Science is
therefore deeply involved in this problem, and scientists have a particular duty
toward its solution. For the establishment of national policy on war --or peace—
the public needs to learn the relevant facts and discuss their meaning. We believe
that it is the obligation of scientists to make these facts known, to estimate the
consequences of alternative policies, and, if need be, to see new solutions.
The Committee went on to review the known data relevant to nuclear war and to discuss
the probable effects of nuclear warfare upon American society and upon the rest of mankind.
The Committee then concluded,54
Even if by some unforeseen development we could tomorrow discover
how to survive a nuclear war, the basic problem will remain, for other kinds of
equally devastating wars are also possible. Shelters that might protect from the
blast, fire, and radiation of nuclear war could get remain vulnerable to an attack
with chemical agents. If a way were found for defense against chemical assault,
farmlands would remain unshielded from fertility-destroying agents. Science has
now achieved such mastery of nature as to place in human hands the power to end
human life.
13
We must conclude that society can no longer be defended by an unlimited
war. . . . If we permit such a war to occur in the future course of human history,
we run the risk of ending human history altogether.
This is a major transformation in the human condition, and in the nature of
human society.
The Committee members went on to spell out the special role they saw for scientists in
helping mankind adapt to this “major transformation in the human condition”:55
. . . Whether society shall continue to rely on war—which is now so dangerously
unfit for its protective function—is a social decision in which scientists have no
greater or lesser rights and duties than other citizens. But, in the discussions,
which must precede this decision, and in the development of the means for putting
it into effect, science has a special duty and an historic opportunity.
If this crisis is to be resolved by rational social action, the public must
become aware of it, understand its dimensions, and appraise the possible
solutions. For all these purposes, the public must have the relevant technical
facts. Scientists, who are the custodians of this information, must be prepared to
bring it before the public.
This, then, was the resolution of the “considerable hassle” within the AAAS which Dr.
Mead referred to (above): what is the role of the scientist as citizen in the nuclear age? It is the
role of information disseminator.
The AAAS Committee on Science in the Promotion of Human Welfare had produced a
position paper in mid-1960 in which the Committee spelled out the intellectual rationale behind
this information-dissemination role for scientists. Here is a lengthy quotation from that
important position paper:56
With respect to the process of decision-making the scientist’s role is
simply that of an informed citizen. Like any other citizen, the scientist is free to
express his opinions regarding alternative solutions for matters of public policy
and will perhaps join with like-minded citizens in a group effort to foster the
solution he prefers. This role does not derive from the scientist’s professional
competence but only from his citizenship. . . .
But in the matter of providing citizens with the knowledge required to
make informed decisions on science-related public issues, the scientist and his
organizations have both a unique competence and a special responsibility. As the
producer and custodian of scientific knowledge, the scientific community has the
obligation to impart such knowledge to the public.
14
The scientific community has another special competence . . . for
attempting to detect incipient problems before they become unnecessarily acute. .
..
Early detection of such problems is one of the most important direct
contributions science can make toward their solution. Too often the most serious
obstacle to the solution of such issues is that they are recognized only after the
commitment of massive and essentially irreversible economic and social
investments. . . .
. . . In dealing with social issues, the scientific community must
demonstrate its responsibility and its inherent regard for truth and objectivity and
must zealously preserve the freedom of thought and communication that is
essential to the pursuit of these goals. Accordingly, we believe that the scientific
community ought to assume, on its own initiative, an independent and active
informative role, whether or not other social agencies see any immediate
advantage in hearing what the scientist has to say.
We believe, also, that what scientists have to say about the social
implications of science should be addressed directly to the general public. Our
traditional preference for democratic procedures requires that the citizen be
sufficiently informed to decide for himself what is to be done about the issues that
scientific progress has thrust upon us. . . .
In sum, we conclude that the scientific community should, on its own
initiative, assume on obligation to call to public attention those issues of public
policy which relate to science, and to provide for the general public the facts and
estimates of the effects of alternative policies which the citizen must have if he is
to participate intelligently in the solution of these problems. A citizenry thus
informed is, we believe, the chief assurance that science will be devoted to the
promotion of human welfare.
That was the first core statement of what has become the “scientific information
movement”. Although the origins of the information movement might be traced back to the
April, 1958, creation of the Greater St. Louis Citizens’ Committee for Nuclear Information in St.
Louis, Missouri, and the creation, shortly thereafter, of the New York-based Scientists’
Committee for Radiation Information, still the “information movement” had no formal national
structure until the National Conference for Scientific Information which convened in New York
in 1963. That Conference brought together 82 individuals—most of them well-known
scientists—for this stated purpose:57
. . .[T]o call to the attention of the public the readiness of groups of
scientists across the country to respond on a volunteer basis to the layman’s
growing need for scientific information on major issues of social concern; to
15
increase the awareness of the scientific community of its responsibility in meeting
the public’s need for scientific information; and to consider means by which
scientific information activities in local communities and the nation might be
extended and improved.
The 1963 Conference resolved to create a central information resource group, the
Scientists’ Institute for Public Information (SIPI). SIPI is functioning today in New York City;
SIPI maintains a library, and answers technical questions by mail. In addition, the 1963
Conference energized the creation of autonomous local groups of scientists in many parts of the
U.S., all committed to the ideal of information-dissemination on science-related public policy
issues.
Dr. Commoner’s role in this movement has been central from the earliest days when he
and a handful of others created the Greater St. Louis Citizens’ Committee for Nuclear
Information. In the early 1960s Dr. Commoner served as chairman of the AAAS Committee on
Science in the Promotion of Human Welfare, during the period of the “considerable hassle.”
From that time onward Dr. Commoner has continually provided key direction for the
information movement. He has done this through publications, such as his brief, persuasive
book, Science and Survival. Science and Survival, in this writer’s view, weaned the information
movement away from its preoccupation with nuclear disasters. The 1960 statement by the
AAAS Committee on Science in the Promotion of Human Welfare had mentioned other sorts of
problems that needed attention from scientists (food additives and insecticides, the significance
of space exploration, the nature of modern warfare, and the population question)58 but it
remained for Science and Survival to develop full arguments for turning the resources of the
“information movement” to more general questions of environmental stress and human survival.
There seems to be little need to recapitulate the arguments put forth in Science and
Survival. As Dr. Commoner says of the book, “. . . I feel that Science and Survival was
something that, when it came out, was ahead of its time. Now the times have quickly caught up
with it.”59
Rather than recapitulate Science and Survival, I will try to briefly summarize Dr.
Commoner’s latest thinking, relying mainly on articles he has published during the past 18
months.
16
Dr. Commoner’s view of our present situation derives from his perspective as an
ecologist. Ecology is a branch of biology. Biology is the study of living organisms, and ecology
is the study of relationships between living organisms and the earth-house they inhabit. Here is a
quotation which captures the essence of Dr. Commoner’s fundamental perspective:60
All living things, including man, and all human activities on the surface of
the earth, including all of our technology, industry, and agriculture, are dependent
on the great interwoven cyclical processes [which are] followed by the four
elements that make up the major portion of living things and the environment:
carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. All of these cycles are driven by the
action of living things: green plants convert carbon dioxide into food, fiber and
fuel; at the same time they produce oxygen, so that the total oxygen supply in our
atmosphere is the product of plant activity. Plants also convert inorganic nutrients
[carbon dioxide, nitrates and phosphates] into food-stuffs [for animals]. Animals,
basically, live on plant-produced food; in turn they regenerate the inorganic
materials—carbon dioxide, nitrates and phosphates—which must support plant
life. Also involved are myriads of microorganisms in the soil and water.
Altogether this vast web of biological interactions generates the very physical
system in which we live: the soil and the air. It maintains the purity of surface
waters and by governing the movement of water in the soil and its evaporation
into the air regulates the weather. This is the environment. It is a place created
by living things, maintained by living things, and through the marvelous
reciprocities of biological evolution is essential to the support of living things.
This earthly environment (also called the ecosphere or ecosystem or biosphere) is the
result of evolutionary development; the first living things appeared on the earth between two and
three billion years ago.61 As Dr. Commoner has said,62
On the time scale of human life the evolutionary development of the ecosphere
has been very slow and irreversible. Hence, the ecosphere is irreplaceable; if it
should be destroyed, it could never be reconstituted or replaced either by natural
processes or by human effort.
The basic functional element of the ecosphere is the ecological cycle, in
which each element influences the behavior of the rest of the cycle, and is in turn
itself influenced by it. For example, in surface waters fish excrete organic waste,
which is converted by bacteria to inorganic products [carbon dioxide, nitrates and
phosphates]; in turn the latter are nutrients for algal growth; the algae are eaten by
the fish, and the cycle is complete. Such a cyclical process accomplishes the selfpurification of the ecosystem, in that wastes produced in one step in the cycle
become the necessary raw materials for the next step. Such cycles are
cybernetically self-governed, dynamically maintaining a steady state condition of
indefinite duration. However if sufficiently stressed by an external agency, the
ecosystem may exceed the limits of self-adjustment and eventually collapse. . . .
17
Unlike other animals, humans have the unique capacity to exert environmental stresses,
which extend far beyond their influence as individual biological organisms. Humans stress the
environment in two important ways; first, by interrupting natural cycles (for example, by
dumping waste products into the earth’s water system instead of reintroducing them into the
soil—thus contributing simultaneously to depletion of the soil’s fertility, and to the water
system’s inability to cleanse itself). And, second, humans introduce wholly foreign substances
into the ecosphere (artificial radioisotopes, detergents, pesticides, plastics, a variety of toxic
metals such as lead and mercury, and a broad range of synthetic organic chemical substances).
As Dr. Commoner has recently pointed out,63
Water pollution is a signal that the natural, self-purifying aquatic ecological cycle
has broken down. Similarly, air pollution is a sign that human activities have
overloaded the self-cleansing capacity of the weather system to the point at which
the natural winds, rain and snow are no longer capable of cleaning the air. The
deterioration ot [sic] the soil shows that the soil system is being overdriven, that
organic matter, in the form of food, is being extracted from the cycle at a rate
which exceeds the rate of rebuilding of the soil’s humus. The technical expedient
of attempting to evade this problem by loading the soil with inorganic fertilizer is
capable of restoring the crop yield—but at the expense of increasing pollution of
the water and the air. Pollution by man-made synthetics, such as pesticides,
detergents, and plastics, and by the dissemination of materials not naturally part of
the environmental system, such as lead and mercury, is a sign that these materials
cannot be accommodated by the self-purifying capabilities of the natural system.
As a result they accumulate in places harmful to the ecosystem and to man.
It hardly seems necessary at this juncture to document the widely-recognized fact that
pollutants are now accumulating in places harmful to the ecosystem and to man. Just a brief
rundown on some pollution highlights should suffice.
**A report to the Federal Council for Science and Technology by the Committee on
Pollution (Washington, D.C.: publication 1400 of the National Research Council, National
Academy of Sciences) in 1966 warned that, at the present rate of accumulation of pollutants,
virtually the entire surface water system of the U.S. will lose its biological capacity for selfpurification within 20 years.64
**Irwin Auerbach, Special Assistant for Legislative Affairs of the National Air Pollution
Control Administration, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, commented recently on a
piece of federal legislation intended to establish a pollution disaster fund. Auerbach’s comment
18
was as follows:65
A pollution disaster area is defined in the bill as one in which the air or water is in
imminent danger of becoming unsuitable or harmful for the uses traditionally
made of it. By that definition, many of the Nation’s large urban areas already are
air pollution disaster areas, since the air in many of them already can be
considered unsuitable for breathing and can be shown to be harmful to human
health and welfare.
**The amount of DDT found in the fat tissues of the average American in 1958 was
between 5 and 6 parts per million. In 1963 the average had risen to 12 parts per million. These
averages are found in Americans who have had no occupational exposure to DDT.66 Although
DDT has, for a long time, been considered harmless to humans except in massive doses, much
recent evidence from laboratory experiments with animals leads to the conclusion that DDT
causes infertility, stunted growth and a variety of biochemical changes at levels of concentration
to which all Americans are exposed.67
**As is shown later in this dissertation the extremely poisonous metal, mercury, has been
widely distributed through the American environment in recent years with uncertain, but
alarming, consequences.
**The 1970 Study of Critical Environmental Problems, sponsored by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, concluded that the combustion of fossil fuels has been “steadily
increasing [the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2)] in the atmosphere at 0.2 per cent per year since
1958 [when reliable measurements began]. Half of the amount man puts into the atmosphere
stays and produces this rise in concentration.” The Report of the Study of Critical
Environmental Problems goes on to say,68
A projected 18 per cent increase resulting from fossil fuel combustion to
the year 2000 (from 320 ppm [parts per million] to 379 ppm) might increase the
surface temperature of the earth 0.5 degrees centigrade; a doubling of the CO2
might increase mean annual surface temperatures 2 degrees centigrade. This
latter change could lead to long-term warming of the planet [with possible
resultant melting of the polar ice caps, among other effects].
Although we conclude that the probability of direct climate change in this
century resulting from CO2 is small, we stress that the long-term potential
consequences of CO2 effects on the climate or of societal reaction to such threats
are so serious that much more must be learned about future trends of climate
change.
19
There can be little doubt that man is stressing the ecosphere’s capacity to function. Dr.
Commoner has begun to analyze the specific ways in which man has been doing this. His
answer, in a word, is technology:69
In sum, [says Dr. Commoner] the environment makes up a huge
enormously complex living machine—the ecosphere—and every human activity
depends on the integrity and proper functioning of that machine. Without the
photosynthetic activity of green plants there would be no oxygen for our smelters
and furnaces, let alone to support human and animal life. Without the action of
plants and animals in aquatic systems, we can have no pure water to supply
agriculture, industry, and the cities. Without the biological processes that have
gone on in the soil for thousands of years, we would have neither food crops, oil,
nor coal. This machine is our biological capital, the basic apparatus on which our
total productivity depends. If we destroy it, our most advanced technology will
come to naught and any economic and political system which depends on it will
founder. Yet, the major threat to the integrity of this biological capital is
technology itself.
With the single exception of consumer electronics (TVs, sound systems), the most
damaging technologies are those that have developed most rapidly since World War II; in fact
Dr. Commoner goes so far as to say that every pollution problem we’re concerned with
originated in the period 1945 to 1950.70 He points to the displacement of less-polluting
technologies by more-polluting technologies. Specifically, these:
--Replacement of natural fibers (cotton, wool) by synthetic fibers (nylon, dacron).
--Replacement of lumber and steel by aluminum, cement and plastics.
--Replacement of rail freight by motor freight.
--Replacement of soap by detergents.
--Replacement of low-intensity farm production by high-intensity methods requiring vast
quantities of nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides.
Such technological displacements are directly and indirectly damaging to the
environment. For example, one indirect effect is a rapid rise in electric power consumption as a
result of the new technologies. Electric power consumption is doubling every 7 to 8 years in the
U.S.; thermal electric power generation requires the production of waste heat and of dangerous
air pollutants (sulfur oxides, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, poisonous trace metals, et cetera).
20
Here is a brief discussion of each major category of technological displacement that has
taken place since World War II.
Since 1950, the per capita consumption of fiber in the U.S. has increased only slightly,
from 45 pounds per capita to 49 pounds per capita. But, as the following figures show, the type
of fiber has changed significantly:71
1950
1968
45 pounds of fiber per capita
49 pounds of fiber per capita total
35 lb. cotton and wool
22 lb. cotton and wool
9 lb. modified cellulosic
9 lb. modified cellulosic
1 lb. wholly synthetic
18 lb. wholly synthetic
Secondary effects of the technological changes reflected in these figures include an increase in
demand for power (because of high temperatures required in at least a half dozen stages in the
manufacture of synthetic fibers); and an increase in either air pollution or in trash when it comes
time to dispose of the wholly synthetic fibers. Synthetic polymers are nearly indestructible;72
they must be burned to destroy them (thus polluting the air) or they mount up somewhere as part
of a growing junk pile. In addition, the production of synthetic fibers employs a great quantity of
chlorine as a catalytic agent; and the production of chlorine employs large quantities of metal
mercury. When the mercury escapes into the environment it acts in several harmful ways
(described later in this dissertation). Thus increased mercury pollution is an environmental cost
of recent changes in fiber-production technology.
Since World War II the per capita consumption of steel has remained constant and the
use of lumber has declined by 1%. However the use of cement (in concrete) has increased
150%; the use of aluminum has increased 680%; the use of plastics has increased 1960%.73
A pound of steel requires 4,615 BTUs (British Thermal Units) of heat to produce; in
contrast, a pound of aluminum requires 29,860 BTUs to produce. Taking into account the
difference in weight between steel and aluminum, Dr. Commoner has calculated that production
of an aluminum can requires 1.7 times as much energy (calculated as BTUs) as production of a
21
steel can.74 The production of aluminum, cement and chemicals accounts for 56% of all
industrial uses of electricity in the U.S.75
The shift from rail freight to motor freight has been significant since World War II. Rail
freight requires only 624 BTUs per ton/mile while motor freight require 3,462 BTUs per
ton/mile. Such changes account for increasing air pollution in parts of our cities. In addition, the
different requirements of concrete highways and steel rails account for some of our increasing
electricity requirements. A single railroad line requires 2.66 billion BTUs per mile in the
production of steel; a two-lane highway requires 9.43 billion BTUs per mile in the manufacture
of the required concrete and steel.76
Detergents began replacing soap shortly after World War II. As a consequence, the
phosphorus (phosphate) output of municipal sewage systems increased from 40 million pounds
in 1940 to 300 million pounds in 1970.77 Until 1965 detergents were non-biodegradable. That
is, their molecular structure was such that they could not be attacked by bacteria or enzyme
systems and they, thus, remained in the biosphere indefinitely, causing foam to appear in many
of the nation’s rivers and lakes. The detergent industry changed over to biodegradable products
in 1965 (under threat of federal legislation). Thus the newer detergents will not cause the
unsightly foam. However, as Dr. Commoner points out, the benzene unit at one end of the
degradable detergent molecule can be converted in aquatic systems to phenol (carbolic acid),
which is a relatively toxic agent and thus the newer detergents are more likely to kill fish than the
old ones were.78 In addition, unlike soap production, the production of detergents requires the
use of chlorine, which means that the production of detergents contributes mercury pollution to
the environment.79 In addition, pound-for-pound, production of the active cleansing agent in
detergents require 3 times the amount of energy required to produce the oil for soap; and so the
air pollution impact of detergent-manufacturing is triple that of soap-manufacturing.80
Farm technologies have changed radically in the past 25 years. Between 1949 and 1968
America’s harvested acreage dropped by 16%; in the same period, average yield-per-acre
increased by 77%.81 This means that the soil is being used much more intensively, thus requiring
the addition of large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer to the soil. In 1949, U.S. farmers employed
11,000 tons of nitrogen fertilizer per unit of crop yield; in 1968 the same unit of crop yield used
57,000 tons of nitrogen fertilizer.82 The use of nitrogen fertilizer per capita increased 534%,
22
1946 to 1968.83 Since perhaps 25% of this nitrogen fertilizer gets washed off farmers’ fields and
into the surface water system, America’s new agricultural technology accounts for a significant
portion of the nation’s critical water-pollution problem.
DDT was first widely used as an insecticide in 1944. Between 1950 and 1967 the use of
pesticides on all crops increased 168% per unit of crop production.84 Environmental pollution by
pesticides has now been recognized as a global problem, threatening the reproductive systems of
birds and other wildlife on a massive scale.85 As noted above, recent evidence now indicates that
human beings are threatened too.
Finally, the introduction of feedlots is a major change in American agricultural
technology, and a major source of pollution. In 1966 there were 10 million cattle in American
feedlots, an increase of 66% since 1958.86 Cattle in feedlots cannot return their waste products to
the soil, so the soil must be artificially replenished with nitrogen fertilizers. Cattle in feedlots are
fattened on grain instead of on forage. The intensive production of grain removes humus from
the soil, thus requiring further reliance on nitrogen fertilizers.
In addition, feedlots now produce more waste products themselves than all of America’s
cities combined.87 In many cases these feedlot wastes are treated like municipal sewage; the
ecological improprieties of municipal sewage-treatment have been discussed at length by Dr.
Commoner. Here is a pertinent quotation:88
[Modern municipal sewage treatment] makes use of the ecological
processes which occur in surface waters, such as lakes and rivers. This is the
cycle which links aquatic animals to their organic wastes; [links] these wastes to
the oxygen-requiring microorganisms that convert them into inorganic nitrate,
phosphate, and carbon dioxide; [links] the inorganic nutrients to the algae which
photosynthetically convert them into organic substances (thereby also adding to
the oxygen content of the water and so providing support for the animals and the
organisms of decay); and [which links] algal organic matter to the chain of
animals which feed on it, thus completing the cycle.
This cycle operates continually, until it becomes unbalanced by introduction of organic
matter (such as human wastes) into aquatic systems. The introduction of massive amounts of
organic wastes feeds decay-bacteria and eventually causes them to demand more oxygen than the
water system contains. When the oxygen content of the water system falls to zero, the decaybacteria die off, the biological cycle breaks down and the organic wastes accumulate. The water
becomes “polluted.”
23
To avoid this problem, modern sewage treatment plants are designed to break down
human organic wastes into their harmless inorganic products. By artificially domesticating
microorganisms and feeding human sewage to them, the modern sewage-treatment plant
converts almost 100% of the organic materials to inorganic materials. As Dr. Commoner has
pointed out, this sewage treatment technology reflects an excellent understanding of part of the
aquatic cycle. It fails, however, to consider the full cycle.
What happens when the inorganic wastes are dumped out of the sewage-treatment plant
and into the nation’s surface waters? The inorganic wastes serve as food for algae; the algae
then convert the inorganic products into organic products. When the algae die and their
substance begins to decay, this decay process reimposes the oxygen demand, which the sewage
treatment was supposed to alleviate. As Dr. Commoner says, ”In effect, the modern system of
sewage technology has failed in its stated aim of reducing the organic oxygen demand on surface
waters because it did not take into account the circularity of the ecological system on which it
intruded. . . . The price we pay for this defect is the nearly catastrophic pollution of our surface
waters.”89
Water pollution is caused by other agents than just feedlot wastes and human wastes.
We’ve already noted that detergents contribute phosphates (which serve as plant nutrients) and
nitrogen fertilizer contributes nitrates (which serve equally well as plant nutrients).
Another major source of water pollution is the automobile. The American automobile
produces tremendous quantities of nitrogen oxides. In the air nitrogen oxides are readily
converted into nitrates; in this form they are washed out of the atmosphere by rain and snow.
One study cited by Dr. Commoner has estimated that the cars and trucks which travel the roads
in New Jersey add about 25 pounds of nitrates per acre per year to New Jersey’s farms. This is a
significant amount of nitrogen fertilizer, and doubtless contributes to our national water pollution
problem.90
The automobile is, of course, better-known as a source of air pollution. The automobile
is responsible for creating a unique combination of pollutants, which, together, are known as
photochemical smog.
Smog first appeared between 1942 and 1944 in Los Angeles when people there began to
notice that their eyes would sting if they stayed outdoors for very long. By 1947 smog had been
24
analyzed and described: it is the result of unburned hydrocarbons (from auto exhausts), and
nitrogen oxides (also from auto exhausts, and from any other high-temperature combustion
process such as the burning of coal or oil). When acted upon by sunlight these chemicals create
a noxious agent called PAN (short for peroxyacetyl nitrate) -- and there you have the main
constituents of breath-taking, eye-stinging, disease-producing smog.
In analyzing the impact of technology on the environment, Dr. Commoner has developed
what he terms an Environmental Impact Index. The automobile is a good case for illustrating the
Environmental Impact Index.91
The Index has three components: a population component, an affluence component, and
a technological component. By using these three components it is possible to show why we have
the pollution problems that we do today.
Between 1946 and 1967 the population of the U.S. increased by 41%. During the same
period the number of vehicle-miles traveled by each person increased by 100%.92 These, then,
are the first two components of the automobile air-pollution problem. Do they account for the
increase in smog production evident now in even the nation’s smaller cities such as Tucson and
Albuquerque? They do not. Dr. Commoner estimates that smog production has increased
approximately 1,000%.93
To explain the increase in smog production we must look beyond population-increase,
and beyond an increase in affluence (measured as more vehicle-miles driven by each person each
year).
The technological component of the automobile’s Environmental Impact Index is the
largest component. To begin with, automobile mileage-per-gallon of fuel decreased between
1946 and 1967 (from 14.97 to 14.08 miles per gallon, a 6% decrease), mostly because
horsepower of the average engine increased from 100 to 240 HP during the period.94 To obtain
the large power increases, engine manufacturers had to increase the pressure inside the
combustion chamber. This caused a dramatic increase in the production of nitrogen oxides (and
also required a large increase in the use of the polluting additive, tetraethyl lead). In 1946 the
average automobile put out 500 ppm (parts per million) of nitrogen oxides; in 1968 the average
car put out 1,200 ppm of the same poisonous gases.95
25
Thus the 240% increase in nitrogen oxide emissions per mile of vehicle travel is the
biggest single component of the automobile’s Environmental Impact Index. The technological
changes which the automobile underwent between 1946 and 1968 account for more smog than
either the increase in affluence or the increase in population.
As noted above, a related technological change—the increase in the lead content of
gasoline—was required by the higher-horsepower engine. In 1946 American automobiles
spewed out 50,000 tons of lead into the environment; in 1968 the figure had jumped to 260,000
tons of lead released annually from exhausts.96 As has been known since the golden age of
Greece, lead is a toxic metal. In the American environment, thanks largely to recent automotive
technology, poisonous lead is now ubiquitous.* * *
Dr. Commoner does not believe that the solution to our environmental crisis depends
upon an end to technology, a return to some “primitive” life-style. The solution to the crisis
depends, instead, upon development of numerous wholly-new technologies. Here is a brief list
of the technologies that Dr. Commoner has suggested need developing:
1. We need essentially emissionless versions of power plants, refineries, smelters, steel
mills and chemical plants. We must contain and reclaim the wastes from all these processes.
2. Agricultural technology will need to find ways to sustain productivity without
breaking down the soil and without disrupting the natural control systems that used to hold insect
pests in check. Essentially these reforms require an end to the use of nitrogen fertilizers and
chemical pesticides.
3. Sewage and garbage treatment plants will have to be redesigned to return organic
wastes to the soil.
4. Vegetation -- trees and grass -- will have to be massively reintroduced into our cities.97
5. Synthetic materials will have to be replaced by natural ones (nylon by cotton and
wool, for example).
6. We will have to sharply curtail the use of biologically active synthetic organic agents
(such as detergents).
7. We must develop recycling techniques for essentially all metals, ceramics and paper.
26
8. We must discourage power-consumptive industries.
9. We must develop land-transport systems, which operate at maximum fuel efficiency
and low combustion temperatures.98
As is obvious, Dr. Commoner believes that we must make radical changes in our way of
doing things and in our social organizations. He says as much: “What is required is nothing less
than a change in the course of history.”99 Dr. Commoner believes that we need “. . . very
profound social change”100 if we are to survive as a species. He says, “Human beings have
broken out of the circle of life, driven not by biological need but by the social organizations that
they have devised to ‘conquer nature.’”101
Will changes in our social organization require changes in our economic system? Dr.
Commoner answers this question circumspectly. He says,102
On purely theoretical grounds it is self-evident that any economic system which is
impelled to grow by constantly increasing the rate at which it extracts wealth from
the ecosystem must eventually drive the ecosystem to a state of collapse.
And he notes that the ecosystem will, therefore, eventually limit the possible growth of any
economic system; and he says, “. . . such a limit may arise much more rapidly if the growth in
the output of goods by the economic system is dependent on productive technologies which are
especially destructive of the stability of the ecosystem. . . . [T]his is precisely the situation in a
modern, industrialized country such as the United States.”103
The new technologies which emerged after World War II, and which Dr. Commoner
considers centrally responsible for the environmental crisis, happen also to be much more
profitable (in dollar returns) than the technologies which they replaced.104 The new farm
technology is dependent upon fertilizer and pesticides; fertilizer is a $2 billion per year industry,
and pesticides are a $1.7 billion per year industry, and both are growing rapidly.105
In 1947 the cleaning-products industry, then producing essentially no detergents, showed
a 30% profit on sales. In 1967, manufacturing 2/3 detergents and 1/3 soap products, the
cleaning-products industry showed a profit of 42% on sales. The detergent portion of the
industry brought a profit of 52% on sales.106
The profit-margin on low-power cars is much lower than the profit margin on high-power
cars.107 The same holds true of other recent technological displacements. Here is a chart which
27
shows the percentage of profit in relation to sales for five industries—lumber and steel, and the 3
industries that have made such headway toward replacing lumber and steel in many
applications:108
Steel from blast furnaces
Lumber
Aluminum
Cement
Plastics and resins
15.4%
12.5%
25.7%
37.4%
21.4%
Whether these figures demonstrate conclusively that the present economic system and the
new destructive technologies are indissolubly linked, Dr. Commoner does not presume to
conclude. He does say, however, that “The economic theory of the private-enterprise system is
based very substantially on the advantage of growth.”109 And, he adds, “If the accumulation of
capital, through profit, is a basic driving force of this [economic] system, as it seems to be, it is
difficult to see how the system can continue to operate under conditions of no growth.”110
In any case, it is clear to Dr. Commoner that “. . . [T]he emergence of an ecological crisis
must be regarded as the signal of an emerging crisis in our economic system.”111
And, thus, “We are going to have to make our economic and political system responsive
to the need for reorganizing things.”112
Precisely how this is to happen Dr. Commoner has not made clear. He has said that the
scientific information movement is the “crucial step. . . to bring the power of people to bear at
the social level”113 but beyond this statement Dr. Commoner has not published very direct
prescriptions for social change. Even if he had worked out prescriptions for change, Dr.
Commoner most likely would not press them on the public. He feels that, the idea that scientists
have some special competence to judge social issues is destructive of democracy and of the
integrity of science.114 He says,115
”. . . [t]he citizen and the government official whose task it is to make the
judgments cannot do so in the absence of the necessary facts and relevant
evaluations. Where these are matters of science, the scientist as the custodian of
this knowledge has a profound duty to impart as much of it as he can to his fellow
citizens. But in doing so, he must guard against false pretensions and avoid
claiming for science that which belongs to the conscience. By this means
scientists can place the decisions on the grave issues which they have helped
create in the proper hands—the hands of an informed citizenry.
What is to be done? [asks Dr. Commoner116] What can be done? Although we
are on a path which can only lead to self-destruction, I am also convinced that we
28
have not yet passed the point of no return. We have time—perhaps a
generation—in which to save the environment from the final effects of the
violence we have already done to it, and to save ourselves from our own suicidal
folly. But this is a very short time to achieve the massive environmental repair
that is needed. We will need to start, now, on a new path.
* * *
It is obvious that the differing analyses of Mr. Nader and Dr. Commoner meet at one
crucial point: they focus attention on the modern corporation. Almost without exception,
corporate decision-making has evidently created the problems pinpointed by these two
contemporary muckrakers.
Dr. Commoner, for reasons outlined above, has not published prescriptions for dealing
with corporate behavior. Mr. Nader, on the other hand, published a preliminary program for
reform in December, 1968. Entitled “Protecting the Consumer” and subtitled “Toward a Just
Economy” the program itself begins with a fairly long introductory statement, much of it worth
quoting here:117
‘Consumerism’ is a term given vogue recently by business spokesmen to
describe what they believe is a concerted, disruptive ideology concocted by selfappointed bleeding hearts and politicians who find it pays off to attack the
corporations. ‘Consumerism,’ they say, undermines public confidence in the
business system, deprives the consumer of freedom of choice, weakens state and
local authority through Federal usurpation, bureaucratizes the marketplace, and
stifles innovation. These complaints have all been made in speeches, in the trade
press, and in Congressional testimony against such Federal bills as truth in
lending, truth in packaging, gas pipeline safety, radiation protection, auto, tire,
drug, and fire safety legislation, and meat and fish inspection.
But what most troubles the corporations is the consumer movement’s
relentless documentation that consumers are being manipulated, defrauded, and
injured not just by marginal businesses or fly-by-night hucksters, but by the U.S.
blue-chip business firms whose practices are unchecked by the older regulatory
agencies. Since the consumer movement can cite statistics showing that these
practices have reduced real income and raised the rates of mortality and disease, it
is not difficult to understand the growing corporate concern. . . .
One result of the detailed Congressional hearings has been a broader
definition of legitimate consumer rights and interests. It is becoming clear that
consumers must not only be protected from the dangers of voluntary use of a
product, such as flammable material, but also from involuntary consumption of
industrial by-products such as air and water pollutants, excessive pesticide and
nitrate residues in foods, and antibiotics in meat. A more concrete idea of a just
economy is thus beginning to emerge, while, at the same time, the assortment of
29
groups that comprise the ‘consumer’s movement’ is moving in directions that
seem to me quite different from the ones that similar groups have followed in the
past. Their demands are ethical rather than ideological. Their principles and
proposals are being derived from solid documentation of common abuses whose
origins are being traced directly to the policies of powerful corporations. . . .
The 10-point program itself contains these “ten major forces or techniques, which now
exist in some form but [which] greatly need to be strengthened”:
1. “Rapid disclosure of the facts relating to the quantity, quality and safety of a product
is essential to a just market place.”
2. The practices of refunding dollars to consumers who have been bilked and recalling
defective products are finally becoming recognized as principles of deterrence and justice. The
discussion of item (2) contains two other practices Mr. Nader commends: filing treble-damage
suits against violators of anti-trust laws; and filing class action suits, in which suit is filed on
behalf of large numbers of people who have been mistreated in the same way.
3. “Disputes in courts and other judicial forums must be conducted under fairer ground
rules and with adequate representation for buyers.” Nader goes on to call for reforms of laws,
courtroom procedures, and remedies, reforms within the law schools, and “wholly new and more
informed ways of resolving conflicts . . . such as neighborhood arbitration units which are open
in the evenings . . .” In Nader’s view the purpose of these reforms would be to alleviate “the
persisting venality of the market place and the generally hopeless legal position of the consumer
who is victimized by it.”
4. Government should establish safety standards for consumer products and periodically
change them to reflect new technology.
5. To make item (4) effective, the government will have to have sufficient funds to carry
out, or contract for, adequate research. Only with adequate factual data can intelligent
consumer-product standards be set. The money for research must be made available.
6. “Price-fixing, either by conspiracy or by mutually understood cues, is rampant
throughout the economy. . . . [but] the restraint of innovation is becoming far more important to
big business than the control of prices. New inventions—steam or electric engines, longer
lasting light bulbs and paints, and cheaper construction materials—can shake an industry to its
most stagnant foundations.”
30
7. “Professional and technical societies may be sleeping giants where the
protection of the consumer is concerned. Heretofore groups like the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Chemical Society, and the
American Society of Safety Engineers have been little more than trade
associations for the industries that employ their members. It is shocking, for
example, that none of these technical societies have done much to work out public
polices to deal with the polluted environment and with such new technological
hazards as atomic energy plants and radioactive waste disposal. Except in a few
cases, the independent professions of law and medicine have done little to fulfill
their professional obligations to protect the public from victimization. They have
done less to encourage their colleagues in science and engineering to free
themselves from subservience to corporate disciplines. Surely, for example, the
supersonic transport [SST] program, with its huge government subsidies and
intolerable sonic boom, should have been exposed to careful public scrutiny by
engineers and scientists long before the government rather secretively allowed it
to get under way.
The engineers and scientists, however, had no organization nor procedure
for doing this. None of the professions will be able to meet its public
responsibilities unless it is willing to gather facts and take action in the public
interest. Such small but determined groups as the Committee for Environmental
Information in St. Louis, headed by Prof. Barry Commoner, and the Physicians
for Automotive Safety in New Jersey have shown how people with tiny resources
can accomplish much in public education and action. If such efforts are to be
enlarged, however, the legal, medical, engineering, and scientific departments of
universities must recognize the importance of preparing their graduates for fulltime careers in organizations devoted to shaping public policy; for it is clear that
professionals serving clients in private practice will not be adequate to this task.
Had such organizations existed two or three decades ago, the hazards of the
industrial age might have been foreseen, diagnosed, exposed, and to some extent
prevented. . . .
8. During the past two decades, the courts have been making important if little
noticed rulings that give injured people fairer chances of recovering damages.
These include the elimination of ‘privity’ or the need to prove a contractual
relation with the person sued; the expansion of the ‘implied warranty’
accompanying items purchased to include not only the ‘reasonable’ functioning of
those items but also the claims made in deceptive advertising of them; and the
imposition of ‘strict liability’ which dispenses with the need to prove negligence
if one has been injured through the use of a defective product. At the same time,
the laws of evidence have been considerably liberalized.
This reform of the common law of ‘bodily rights’—far in advance of other
common-law nations such as Great Britain and Canada—has been followed by
some spectacular jury verdicts and court decisions in favor of the injured. These
are routinely cited by insurance companies as a rationale for increasing premiums.
The fact is, however, that these victories still are rare exceptions, and for obvious
reasons. Winning such cases requires a huge investment in time and money. . . .
31
9. “One of the more promising developments of the last two years is the growing belief
that new institutions are needed within the government whose sole function would be to advocate
consumer interests.”
10. I have already pointed out the need for independent organizations of
professionals—engineers, lawyers, doctors, economists, scientists, and others—
which could undertake work of this kind. But they do not as yet exist. Still, we
can draw some idea of their potential from the example of people like Dr.
Commoner and his associates who have managed to stir up strong public
opposition to government and private interest while working in their spare time.
Similarly, other small groups of professionals have saved natural resources from
destruction or pollution; they have stopped unjust increases in auto-insurance
rates; they have defeated a plan for an atomic explosion to create a natural gas
storage area under public land, showing that excessive safety risks were involved.
...
Certainly there is a clear case for setting up professional firms to act in the
public interest at Federal and local levels. While thousands of engineers work for
private industry, a few hundred should be working out the technical plans for
obtaining clean air and water, and demanding that these plans be followed. While
many thousands of lawyers serve private clients, several hundred should be
working in public interest firms which would pursue legal actions and reforms of
the kind I have outlined here. Support for such firms could come from
foundations, private gifts, dues paid by consumers and the professions, or from
government subsidies. There is already a precedent for the latter in the financing
of the Neighborhood Legal Services, not to mention the billions of dollars in
subsidies now awarded to commerce and industry. In addition, groups that now
make up the consumers’ movement badly need the services of professional
economists, lawyers, engineers, and others if they are to develop local consumer
service institutions that could handle complaints, dispense information, and work
out strategies for public action. . . .
While he has been developing his analysis, Mr. Nader has simultaneously been
developing a dramatic rhetoric, which has captured the ear of America’s newspaper and
magazine editors. Here is a sample of the Nader rhetoric:
Nader: “There is a growing consumer constituency in this country and it will move from
hope to disillusionment, despair and worse unless it has an effective advocate in government.”118
Nader: “Other issues such as Vietnam and civil rights have divided the country into
camps. Granted that sellers and buyers are opposed in the consumer movement, but there’s no
split at the grass roots level. It’s a ‘people’s movement.’”119
32
Nader: Banks and car dealers are engaged, together, in “a nationwide billion-dollar steal
. . .”120
Nader: The Interior Department and the coal industry are “lawless” and West Virginia is
a colony.121
Nader: Less is known about the inner workings of corporations than about the workings
of any other American institution, including our national security agencies.122
Nader: Business crime and corporate intransigence are the really urgent manace to law
and order in America.123
Nader: The “silent violence” of corporations arises because corporations “have no moral
and legal responsibility to the man on the street.”124
Nader: American industry must give up the conception of “economic and technologic
feasibility”—the two criteria most often employed to prevent technologic innovation.125
Nader: Pollution is a crime compounded of ignorance and avarice.126
Nader: . . . Corporate violence, contrived anarchy, anarchy controlled by the
perpetrators of pollution . . .127
Nader: “. . . the urgent problems of controlling corporate behavior. . .”128
Nader: “The consumer movement will show that industry and commerce have been
living a lie and that they’re the greatest subverters of the free enterprise system that there are.
The leftist radicals don’t even come close in terms of daily destruction of the system.”129
Nader: It has become apparent that the reform of consumer abuses and the reform of
corporate power are different sides of the same coin and that new approaches to the enforcement
of the rights of others are necessary.130
Nader: The analysis of institutions is in its infancy . . . we need a new kind of citizenship
. . . a new kind of citizenship around an old kind of private government—the large
corporation.131
Nader: The consumer’s dollar is eroded, lowered in value, more by “waste, fraud and
price-fixing” than by inflation.132
33
Nader: The automobile, detergent, and baby-food industries are guilty of “massive
lying.”133
Nader: Restore free competition in surface transportation . . .
Nader: . . . Expose to the nation “the fiction of shareholder democracy.”134
Nader: The ICC should clearly identify, through its own research, the nation’s surface
transportation needs and then compel the several industries to meet the needs . . .135
Nader: The burden of establishing food-safety should fall upon the company that wishes
to introduce a new chemical into the American diet . . .136
Nader: The Food and Drug Administration’s scientific independence from industry must
be established. Two possible remedies present themselves: either an independent, governmentrun research lab, or a referral board, to act as an umpire over privately-operated testing labs . .
.137
Nader: We must increase the number of self-executing, mandatory provisions of the law
. . . cut down the discretionary powers of politically-appointed administrators . . .138
Nader: Corporate executives should risk real jail sentences when they perpetrate crimes
against the consuming public . . .139
Mr. Nader’s people have evolved a style that the corporations and government regulatory
commissions find hard to beat. Here are a few of the modes of operation evolved by “Nader’s
raiders”:140
** Be courteous, well-dressed, patient . . . above all, without being pushy be persistent . .
.
** When investigating any bureaucracy, whether corporate or governmental, insist on
interviewing personnel at all levels, on down the line of authority . . .
** In the solution of any problem, a vital point of leverage must be identified.
** Remain free from special interests.
** Maintain the highest accuracy in the smallest detail. Sift through a mountain of
evidence before reaching conclusions.
34
** Develop interdisciplinary task forces to talk back to the experts in their own language.
** Name names . . . it’s one of the best weapons.
Mr. Nader “plays a game anyone can play,” says Harrison Wellford, one of Mr. Nader’s
top consultants. In truth, Mr. Nader uses forces that can be made available to any citizen: the
law and public opinion.
Whether these forces will in fact become widely accessible to citizens remains a moot
point. The answer depends upon Mr. Nader’s success in institutionalizing his perspective and
upon our willingness, as citizens, to follow his demanding example.
Mr. Nader has created, or funded or otherwise stimulated the creation of, several
organizations.141 The Center for the Study of Responsive Law in Washington, D.C. remains Mr.
Nader’s principal investigative organization. The Center—under the direction of Mr. Theodore
Jacobs—has charge of all teams of “raiders” and issues all of Mr. Nader’s task force reports. But
in addition to this group (which comprises approximately 20 attorneys, engineers, medical
specialists and scholars), Mr. Nader has associations with several others. The group called The
Center For Auto Safety, with a staff of six, handles all of Mr. Nader’s automobile-related
activities, receiving, classifying, filing, and answering some 15,000 complaint-letters from
consumers annually.
The Center for Law and Social Policy was inspired by Mr. Nader and Mr. Nader still
consults with the group. This Center has brought three major lawsuits since its creation in
August, 1969: the Trans-Alaska Pipeline suit, the Anti-DDT suit, and the much-publicized
General Motors: defective wheel suit.
Mr. Nader’s principal “action arm” (his phrase142) is the Public Interest Research Group
(PIRG) headquartered in Washington, D.C. PIRG was funded by the $425,000 which General
Motors paid Mr. Nader in settling (out of court) the case in which Mr. Nader accused GM of
harassing him in violation of his rights. (In settling for this generous sum, GM maintained firmly
its complete innocence of the charge.)145
The main function of PIRG seems to be the creation of other PIRGs in Mr. Nader’s first
move outside Washington, D.C. These new research-and-litigation organizations are to be based
on campuses across America.
35
The idea behind PIRG seems simple enough. Students will fund the new organizations
by assessing themselves $1.00 per student per semester as part of their regular activities fee.
With the money, the students will hire a staff of full-time professionals (lawyers, engineers,
publicists, or whatever seems required). This staff will be directed by a board of students who
are elected to their controlling position by a student referendum.
The research and litigation staffs will focus on social and environmental problems,
corporate responsibility, product safety, and racial and sex discrimination, for example.144 By
this means Mr. Nader hopes to give continuity to student bodies; the professional staff will
presumably remain on campus longer than individual students, yet will respond to the immediate
needs and desires of the on-campus population.
PIRGs are going full steam now in Minnesota, Oregon and Ohio, and they are beginning
to get underway on a dozen or more other campuses.145
Mr. Nader has demonstrated conclusively that his techniques work. In a few short years
of intensive effort he has forced reform in more than a dozen important federal agencies. He has
been influential (in many cases key) in passage of half a dozen pieces of major federal legislation
(among them meat inspection, occupational health and safety, automobile safety, and truth-inlending).146
Despite his impressive record of successes, however, Mr. Nader’s techniques cannot be
assumed sufficient to turn America from her present evidently-suicidal course. To do that will,
in this writer’s opinion, require a massive individual commitment by knowledgeable people, a
massive personal commitment to extending and developing Mr. Nader’s techniques at the local
level, back home. (Electing Mr. Nader President of the United States will definitely not, by
itself, suffice.)
As Mr. Nader himself has said, we should look to Dr. Commoner’s tiny group in St.
Louis when we want models for our behavior. And so, as we offer the reader the following three
studies which were inspired by Mr. Nader and Dr. Commoner—a study of farm subsidy
programs, a study of mercury pollution, and a study of the use of the persistent pesticide,
Toxaphene, in northeastern New Mexico—we wish to leave the reader with these important
remarks by Dr. Commoner:147
36
I’m very upset by people who say there’s a crisis of survival and if we
don’t make it by 1972 we ought to give up. I think that is a disastrous approach.
I take the position that we are in charge. We’re human beings. We have the
resources, we have the knowledge, by God we will do it. . . .
One zoology graduate [student] at a Canadian university got one pickerel
and measured the mercury content—it was way above the standards. Chemical
Engineering News says he torpedoed a half billion dollar a year industry as a
result of that one measurement, [and] a letter he wrote to the Canadian Ministry;
the entire fishing industry in the area closed down. Two chemical companies
have been pinpointed as the source of the mercury, and the Canadian Ministry has
now proposed that they pay recompense to the fisherman. One guy. One guy and
a fish.
Now I don’t buy this business that we’re helpless. . . .
37
END NOTES
1 Arthur and Lila Weinberg (eds.), The Muckrakers (New York, 1961), p. xix.
2 Harvey Swados (ed.) Years of Conscience (Cleveland and New York, 1962), pp. 2021.
3
4
5
6
7
Ralph Nader, “Protecting the Consumer,” Current, CII (December 1968), 16.
Barry Commoner, Science and Survival (New York, 1966), pp. 131-32.
Ibid., p. 120.
Ibid., p. 107.
“The Currency of Power,” Washington Post, August 29, 1969, p. A-22. Emphasis
added.
8 Barry Commoner, “Super Technology . . . Will It End the Good Life?,” Field and
Stream, LXXV (June 1970), 40.
9 Barry Commoner, “Soil and Fresh Water: Damaged Global Fabric,” Environment,
XII (April 1970), 10.
10 Paul Dickson, “The Nader Story: What Makes Ralph Run?,” Congressional Record,
February 24, 1970, p. S2224. [A reprint from the January, 1970, Progressive.]
11 Lewis Mumford quoted in Harvey Swados, cited above, p. 15.
12 Upton Sinclair quoted in Arthur and Lila Weinberg, cited above, p. xxiii.
13 Jacob Scher quoted in Arthur and Lila Weinberg, cited above, p. xxii.
14 Eric Goldman quoted in Arthur and Lila Weinberg, cited above, pp. xx-xxi.
15 Barry Commoner quoted in Stephanie Mills, “Earth Times Interview: Barry
Commoner,” Earth Times, I (June 1970), 19.
16 Ralph Nader, Unsafe at Any Speed (New York, 1965; edn. cited, New York: Simon
and Schuster, Pocket Books Division, 1966), p. 258.
17 Ralph Nader quoted in Paul Dickson, cited above, p. S2224.
18 Paul Rand Dixon quoted in Ronald Shafer, “Nader’s Raiders Stir Bureaucratic
Concern in Washington Again,” Wall Street Journal, July 7, 1969, p. ].
19 Paul Rand Dixon quoted in Mark Green, [Review of “The Nader Report” on the
Federal Trade Commission], Village Voice, November 13, 1969, p. 7.
20 Paul Dickson, cited above, p. S2223.
21 Robert C. Fellmeth, The Interstate Commerce Omission (New York, 1970); John C.
Esposito, Vanishing Air (New York, 1970); James S. Turner, The Chemical Feast (New York,
1970); David R. Zwick, Water Wasteland (Preliminary Draft, 2 volumes, Washington, D.C.:
Center for Study of Responsive Law, 1971); [James M. Fallows], The Water Lords (Preliminary
Draft, Washington, D.C.: Center for Study of Responsive Law, 1971); Claire Townsend,
Nursing Homes for the Aged: The Agony of One Million Americans (Preliminary Draft,
Washington, D.C.: Center for Study of Responsive Law, 1971): Harrison Wellford, Sowing the
Wind: Pesticides, Meat and the Public Interest (Preliminary Draft, Washington, D.C.: Center
for Study of Responsive Law, 1971); Robert S. McCleery, One Life—One Physician
(Preliminary Draft, Washington, D.C.: Center for Study of Responsive Law, 1971); Mark J.
Green, The Closed Enterprise System (Preliminary Draft, 2 volumes, Washington, D.C.: Center
for Study of Responsive Law, 1971); Robert C. Fellmeth, Power and Land in California
(Preliminary Draft, 2 volumes, Washington, D.C.: Center for Study of Responsive Law, 1971);
and, David Leinsdorf, Citibank (Preliminary Draft, Washington, D.C.: Center for Study of
Responsive Law, 1971).
38
22 Virginia H. Knauer, “A Look Ahead,” speech delivered to 47th Annual Agricultural
Outlook Conference, Washington, D.C., February 16, 1970.
23 United Press International, “Transport Department Cites GM, Chevy Defects,”
Washington Post, November 3, 1970, p. A-2.
24 Lucia Mouat, “Consumer Revolt, Part 2: Auto Repairs,” Congressional Record,
March 26, 1970, p. E2605.
25 Stanley E. Cohen, [untitled article], Washington briefing for marketing executives, I
(April 15, 1970), 1.
26 United Press International, “Salesmen’s Tactics Draw Congressman’s, FTC’s Ire,”
Albuquerque Journal, November 4, 1970, p. A-2.
27 Coleman McCarthy, “The Consumer Shows His Ire,” Washing-ton Post, October 6,
1970, p. A-20.
28 Coleman McCarthy, “Recalling the Facts on Automobile Re-call,” Washington Post,
October 27, 1970, p. A-18.
29 Ibid.
30 Herbert Ley quoted in “Release of Nader Student Project on Food Protection and the
FDA, April 8, 1970,” in typescript (Washington, D.C.: Center for Study of Responsive Law), p.
[2].
31 John Hanrahan, “Reforms Asked in Epidemic, Report Cites ‘Bureaucracy’ in 25
Deaths,” Washington Post, October 28, 1970, p. C-1, and United States Press International,
“Rodent Hairs Found in Candy,” Albuquerque Journal, October 16, 1970, p. E-6.
32 David E. Rosenbaum, “F.D.A. Called Tool of Food Industry,” New York Times,
April 9, 1970, p. 17.
33 Associated Press, “Hair and Insects are Discovered in Sau-sage Meat,” Albuquerque
Journal, April 20, 1969, p. A-19.
34 Benjamin Rosenthal quoted in Ralph Nader, “Protecting the Consumer,” Current, CII
(December, 1968), 16.
35 Lucia Mouat, cited above.
36 Ralph Nader quoted in Isadore Barmash, “Nader Brands Ads of Large Concerns as
‘Massive Lying,’” New York Times, May 12, 1970, p. 57. Mr. Robert Choate made numerous
national headlines during the summer of 1970 documenting the charge which was first made by
Mr. Nader. See, for example, New York Times, June 13, 1970, p. 30.
37 “The Endangered Consumer . . . and F.T.C. Reforms,” New York Times, June 13,
1970, p. 30.
38 Barry Commoner, “Soil and Fresh Water: Damaged Global Fabric,” Environment,
XII (April 1970), 6.
39 Barry Commoner, “Super Technology . . . Will It End the Good Life?,” Field and
Stream, LXXV (June 1970), 40.
40 Ibid.
41 Barry Commoner, “A REPORTER AT LARGE, The Closing Circle--II,” New
Yorker, October 2, 1971, p. 90.
42 Ibid.
43 Barry Commoner, “Soil and Fresh Water: Damaged Global Fabric,” Environment,
XII (April 1970), 10.
39
44 Dwight Eisenhower quoted in Barry Commoner, Science and Survival (New York,
1966), p. 14.
45 Ibid., p. 17.
46 Ibid., p. 14.
47 Lyndon Johnson quoted in Ibid., pp. 14-15.
48 Margaret Mead, “Opening Address of the Conference,” in Ralph McAllister and
Diana Brown (eds.), National Conference for Scientific Information, New York City, February
16 and 17, 1963 (New York: Scientists Institute for Public Information, 1963), p. 5.
49 “Social Aspects of Science,” Science, CXXV (January 25, 1957), 143. Members of
this committee were: Ward Pigman, associate professor of biochemistry, University of Alabama
Medical Center, chairman; Barry Commoner, professor of botany, Washington University;
Gabriel Lasker, associate professor of anatomy, Wayne State University; Chauncey D. Leake,
professor of pharmacology, Ohio State University; Benjamin H. Williams, Industrial College of
the Armed Forces.
50 Ibid.
51 Members of the Committee on Science in the Promotion of Human Welfare were:
Barry Commoner, Washington University, chair-man; Robert C. Brode, University of California,
Berkeley; Harrison Brown, California Institute of Technology; T.C. Byerly, Agricultural
Research Service; Laurence K. Frank, 25 Clark St., Belmont, Mass.; J. Jack Geiger, Harvard
Medical School; Frank W. Notestein, Population Council, New York; Margaret Mead, American
Museum of Natural History (ex officio Board representative); and Dael Wolfle, AAAS (ex
officio).
52 Lewis S. Feuer, The Scientific Intellectual (New York, London, 1963), p. 394.
53 American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS] Committee on
Science in the Promotion of Human Welfare, “Science and Human Survival,” Science, CXXXIV
(December 29, 1969), 2080 ff.
54 Ibid., p. 2080
55 Ibid., pp. 2082-2083.
56 American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS] Committee on
Science in the Promotion of Human Welfare, “Science and Human Welfare,” Science, CXXXII
(July 8, 1960), 69-71.
57 Ralph McAllister and Diana Brown (eds.), National Confer-ence for Scientific
Information, New York City, February 16 and 17, 1963 (New York: Scientists’ Institute for
Public Information, 1963), p. iv.
58 AAAS Committee on Science in the Promotion of Human Wel-fare, “Science and
Human Welfare,” Science, CXXXII (July 8, 1960), p. 70, n. 21.
59 Barry Commoner quoted in Stephanie Mills, “Earth Times Interview: Barry
Commoner,” Earth Times, I (June 1970), 9.
60 Barry Commoner, “Soil and Fresh Water: Damaged Global Fa-bric,” Environment,
XII (April 1970), 9.
61 Barry Commoner, “A REPORTER AT LARGE, The Closing Circle--I,” New
Yorker, September 25, 1971, p. 50.
62 Barry Commoner, “Hidden Cost of Economic Growth,” CBNS [Center for the
Biology of Natural Systems] Notes, IV (July-August, 1971), pp. 1-2.
63 Ibid., pp. 2-3.
40
64 Waste Management and Control (Washington D.C.: National Academy of Sciences,
National Research Council, 1966), quoted in Barry Commoner, Science and Survival (New
York, 1966), p. 144.
65 Irwin Auerbach quoted in John C. Esposito, Vanishing Air (New York, 1970), p. 7.
66 Robert L. Rudd, Pesticides and the Living Landscape (Madison, Wisconsin, 1966),
pp. 159-160. See also Morton W. Miller and George G. Berg, Chemical Fallout, Current
Research on Persistent Pesticides (Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1969), p. 297 ff.
Hereafter cited as Chemical Fallout.
67 Julian McAull, “Questions for an Old Friend,” Environment, XIII (July-August,
1971), 2-9.
68 Man’s Impact on the Global Environment, Report of the Study of Critical
Environmental Problems (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Press, 1970), pp. 11-12.
69 Barry Commoner, “Soil and Fresh Water: Damaged Global Fabric,” Environment,
XII (April 1970), 6-7.
70 Barry Commoner quoted in Stephanie Mills, “Earth Times Interview: Barry
Commoner,” Earth Times, I (June 1970), 16.
71 Barry Commoner, “A REPORTER AT LARGE, The Closing Circle--II,” New
Yorker, October 2, 1971, p. 64.
72 Barry Commoner, “Hidden Cost of Economic Growth,” CBNS [Center for the
Biology of Natural Systems] Notes, IV (July-August, 1971), p. 12.
73 Barry Commoner, “A REPORTER AT LARGE, The Closing Circle--I,” New
Yorker, October 2, 1971, p. 52.
74 Barry Commoner, “The Environmental Cost of Economic Growth,” paper presented
to Resources for the Future Forum on Energy, Economic Growth and the Environment,
Washington, D.C., April 20, 1971; see chart following p. 66. The first half of this paper has been
published in CBNS [Center for the Biology of Natural Systems]Notes, IV (July-August, 1971),
and the second half will be published, perhaps in slightly revised form, in the December, 1971
issue of CBNS Notes.
75 Barry Commoner, “Hidden Cost of Economic Growth,” CBNS Notes, IV (JulyAugust, 1971), pp. 13.
76 Barry Commoner, “The Environmental Cost of Economic Growth,” paper presented
to Resources for the Future Forum on Energy, Economic Growth and the Environment,
Washington, D.C., April 20, 1971; see chart following p. 66.
77 Barry Commoner, “Hidden Cost of Economic Growth,” cited above, pp. 4-5.
78 Barry Commoner, “A REPORTER AT LARGE, The Closing Circle--II,” cited
above, p. 62.
79 Ibid., p. 74.
80 Ibid., p. 62.
81 Ibid., pp. 56-58.
82 Barry Commoner, “Hidden Cost of Economic Growth,” cited above, p. 8.
83 Barry Commoner, Michael Corr, and Paul J. Stamler, “The Causes of Pollution,”
Environment, XIII (April, 1971), p. 11.
84 Barry Commoner, “A REPORTER AT LARGE, The Closing Circle--II,” cited
above, p. 45; and, Barry Commoner, “Hidden Cost of Economic Growth,” cited above, p. 10.
85 Chemical Fallout, cited above, pp. 468 ff.
41
86 Barry Commoner, “A REPORTER AT LARGE, The Closing—II,” cited above, p.
56.
87 Barry Commoner, “Hidden Cost of Economic Growth,” cited above, p. 11.
88 Barry Commoner, “Soil and Fresh Water: Damaged Global Fabric,” cited above, p.
7.
89 Ibid., p. 8.
90 Ibid.
91 The Index is described in Barry Commoner, “Hidden Cost of Economic Growth,”
cited above, p. 4.
92 Ibid., p. 15.
93 Barry Commoner, Michael Corr and Paul J. Stamler, “The Causes of Pollution,”
cited above p. 4.
94 Barry Commoner, “Hidden Cost of Economic Growth,” cited above, p. 15.
95 Barry Commoner, “A REPORTER AT LARGE, The Closing Circle--II,” cited
above, p. 78.
96 Ibid., p. 76.
97 Barry Commoner, “The Environmental Cost of Economic Growth,” cited above, p.
63.
98 Barry Commoner, “A REPORTER AT LARGE, The Closing Circle--II,” cited
above, p. 89.
99 Ibid., p. 91.
100 Barry Commoner quoted in Stephanie Mills, cited above, p. 19.
101 Barry Commoner, “A REPORTER AT LARGE, The Closing Circle--II,” cited
above, p. 91.
102 Barry Commoner, “Hidden Cost of Economic Growth,” cited above, p. 2.
103 Ibid.
104 Barry Commoner, “The Environmental Cost of Economic Growth,” cited above, p.
64.
105 Barry Commoner, “A REPORTER AT LARGE, The Closing Circle--I,” cited
above, p. 85; see also John Neumeyer, Donald Gibbons and Harry Trask, “Pesticides,” Chemical
Week, April 12, 1969, pp. 38-39 ff.
106 Barry Commoner, “A REPORTER AT LARGE, The Closing Circle--II,” cited
above, p. 86.
107 Ibid.
108 Ibid.
109 Ibid.
110 Ibid., p. 88.
111 Ibid.
112 Barry Commoner quoted in Stephanie Mills, cited above, p. 18.
113 Ibid., p. 19.
114 Barry Commoner, Science and Survival, cited above, pp. 106-109.
115 Ibid., p. 109.
116 Barry Commoner, “Soil and Fresh Water: Damaged Global Fabric,” cited above, p.
10.
117 Ralph Nader, “Protecting the Consumer,” Current, CII (December 1968), 15-24.
42
118 United Press International, “Waste, Fraud, Price Fixing Lower Dollars, says
Nader,” Albuquerque Journal, April 19, 1970, p. F-6.
119 Lucia Mouat, cited above, p. E2605.
120 Associated Press, “Banks and Car Dealers Attacked by Nader,” Albuquerque
Journal, January 22, 1970, p. B-8.
121 Frank C. Porter, “Nader Accuses Interior of Evading Mine Safety Law,”
Washington Post, August 7, 1970, p. A-8; and, Philip D. Carter, “W. Va. Mine Conditions
Assailed,” Washington Post, July 26, 1970, p. A-3.
122 Benjamin Rosenthal, “Campaign GM,” Congressional Record, February 24, 1970,
p. E1266.
123 Current, CII (December 1968) 24.
124 Marti Mueller, “Nader: From Auto Safety to a Permanent Crusade,” Science,
November 21, 1969, p. 981.
125 Associated Press, “Nader Requests Timetable to Aid U.S. Cleanup,” Albuquerque
Journal, June 26, 1970, p. C-2.
126 Harrison Wellford and others, “On How to Be a Constructive Nuisance,” in Garrett
de Bell (ed.), The Environmental Hand-book (New York, 1970), p. 273. Mr. Wellford served as
the first Executive Director of Mr. Nader’s Center for Study of Responsive Law in Washington,
D.C. and he still serves as a consultant to that organization.
127 “Statement of Ralph Nader, pursuant to release of the Task Force Report on Air
Pollution, May 12, 1970, Washington, D.C.,” in typescript (Washington, D.C.: Center for Study
of Responsive Law, 1970).
128 “Thematic Outline of Citizens Handbook on the Federal Regulatory Agencies,” in
typescript (Washington, D.C.: Center for Study of Responsive Law, 1970), p. [1].
129 Lucia Mouat, cited above.
130 Current, CII (December 1968), 16.
131 “Impromptu Remarks by Ralph Nader Delivered at Franklin Pierce College
Commencement May 3, 1970,” in typescript (Washing-ton, D.C.: Center for Study of
Responsive Law, 1970), p. [6]; and, Benjamin Rosenthal, “Campaign GM,” Congressional
Record, February 24, 1970, p. E1266.
132 United Press International, “Waste, Fraud, Price Fixing Lower Dollar, says Nader,”
Albuquerque Journal, April 19, 1970, p. F-6.
133 Isadore Barmash, “Nader Brands Ads of Large Concerns as ‘Massive Lying,’” New
York Times, May 12, 1970, p. 57.
134 Benjamin Rosenthal, “Campaign GM,” Congressional Record, February 24, 1970,
p. E1266.
135 Christopher Lydon, “Abolition of ICC Urged in Report by Nader Unit,” New York
Times, March 17, 1970, p. 67.
136 “Release of Nader Student Project on Food Protection and the FDA, April 8, 1970,”
in typescript (Washington, D.C.: Center for Study of Responsive Law, 1970), p. [4].
137 Ibid.
138 Ibid.
139 Ralph Nader, public address delivered at University of New Mexico, October 3,
1970.
140 Harrison Wellford, cited above, pp. 268-284.
43
141 Mr. Nader’s organizations are discussed in two recent articles: Eliot Marshall, “St.
Nader and His Evangelists,” New Re-public, October 23, 1971, pp. 13-14; and, William
Clairbourne, “Tedious Study is Key Tool of Ralph Nader,” Washington Post, August 16, 1971,
p. A-3.
142 Personal communication from Mr. Nader, August 13, 1970.
143 The GM case is discussed in Associated Press, “GM Settles Nader Suit for
$425,000,” Albuquerque Journal, August 14, 1970, p. B-6; and Craig R. Whitney, “G.M. Settles
Nader Suit on Privacy for $425,000,” New York Times, August 14, 1970, p. 1; and Philip Greer,
“Nader Gets $425,000 in Suit Against GM,” Washington Post, August 14, 1970, p. A-1.
144 PIRGs are discussed in Morton Mintz, “Nader Asks Students to Give to Public
Interest Projects,” Washington Post, November 16, 1970, p. A-3.
145 Eliot Marshall, “St. Nader and His Evangelists,” New Republic, October 23, 1971,
p.13.
146 Robert Dietsch, “How Crusader Ralph Nader ‘Raids’ For Consumer,”
Congressional Record, August 3, 1970, p. E7284.
147 Barry Commoner quoted in Stephanie Mills, “Earth Times Interview: Barry
Commoner,” Earth Times, I (June 1970), 18.
44