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Environment

Mother Nature's Tenuous Respite

Insights: Forty years of environmental protection is showing some benefits


by Stephen K. Ritter
June 7, 2010 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 88, Issue 23

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Credit: © Tina Manley
Dead trees stand out on the slopes of Mount Mitchell.
Credit: © Tina Manley
Dead trees stand out on the slopes of Mount Mitchell.

One of the great ideas in U.S. history is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which was signed into law in 1970. The act declared it a national policy “to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony.” It also led to creation of the Environmental Protection Agency to implement that policy.

Forty years ago, we were littering our highways and byways with trash; pumping increasing amounts of carbon dioxide, sulfur and nitrogen oxides, ozone-depleting compounds, and particulate matter into the atmosphere; and releasing increasing amounts of industrial chemicals into waterways. We were extensively compromising the two things we need the most: clean air and clean water.

“Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s,” Neil Young wrote in the lyrics of his 1970 song “After the Gold Rush.” Young’s song is an apocalyptic dream about how people were ruining the planet and chasing Mother Nature into exile. The dream’s persona hoped that the environmental onslaught could be stopped and the damage undone before we would be forced to board silver spaceships and abandon Earth for a new home elsewhere in the universe.

Thanks to EPA, many of the environmental problems of 1970 are now being held in check, if not undone.

One example is acid rain. In 1970, I first heard about acid rain and its growing impact on Appalachian forests. One of the hardest hit areas would become Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in the eastern U.S., which is located in North Carolina, where I grew up.

Rain is naturally acidic, with a pH of about 5.0 to 5.5, because it absorbs acid-producing carbon dioxide, ammonia, and other compounds from the atmosphere. But sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions stemming from man-made sources such as cars and coal-fired power plants form additional acids that can reduce the pH to 4.5 or less. When it rains or snows, the acidic precipitation, in combination with acidic dust that has settled out from the air, damages buildings, cars, and the natural environment.

Acid rain has its greatest impact on aquatic life—an impact that’s mostly invisible to us. But by 1970, acid rain was causing visible damage to trees, especially red spruces and Fraser firs in the unique spruce-fir forests that dot the higher elevations of the Appalachian chain from Canada to Georgia. It stresses the trees by damaging their tender new needles, especially when they are bathed by fog. In addition, the acidic runoff depletes nutrients in the soil and mobilizes aluminum, which is toxic to the trees and aquatic creatures.

Acid rain also weakens the trees’ defenses against severe winter weather and insect pests—in particular, the balsam woolly adelgid, an invasive aphidlike insect from Europe with a preference for Fraser firs. By 1970, isolated dead trees became conspicuous on the dark green slopes of Mount Mitchell; by the mid-1980s, whole stands of trees were rendered into spindly gray ghosts.

[+]Enlarge
Credit: © Tina Manley
A combination of acid rain and the balsam woolly adelgid wiped out many of the trees in North Carolina's Mount Mitchell State Park.
Credit: © Tina Manley
A combination of acid rain and the balsam woolly adelgid wiped out many of the trees in North Carolina's Mount Mitchell State Park.

Young’s lyrics and acid rain bring to mind “The Tragedy of the Commons,” a 1968 essay by ecologist and bioethicist Garrett J. Hardin of the University of California, Santa Barbara (Science 1968, 162, 1243). Hardin argued that rational individuals will use common resources in an irrational and destructive way as each person pursues her or his own best interests. The only recourse, Hardin wrote, is to fence off the commons and regulate its use toward the benefit of everyone.

Hardin was right, and enacting NEPA was equivalent to building a fence to protect the environment. Since 1970, our efforts to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions have diminished the effects of acid rain. Mount Mitchell and other areas of the Appalachians seem to be slowly recovering and are looking modestly greener. We have also accomplished a lot in helping the ozone hole to start recovering, and our air and water are relatively cleaner.

Our environmental abuse has slowed down enough so that Mother Nature has a chance to catch her breath. At the same time, we are waking up to the idea of sustainability, which transforms the commons from a finite pool of natural resources, as Hardin described, to a replenishable reservoir. If we can continue on a path to develop solar energy and biomass-derived chemicals and transportation fuels to meet our needs, the tragedy of the commons could evolve into the success of the commons.

We still have a lot to do in preventing pollution and cleaning the environment, ranging from stopping smokers who still flick their cigarette butts on the ground to understanding the toxicology of man-made chemicals and their metabolites that we are exposed to in our daily lives. And as the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil leak is showing us, accidents can bring our progress to a screeching halt.

This year, the U.S. is poised to pass regulatory and legislative reforms regarding three of the chemical industry’s biggest concerns: greenhouse gas emissions, energy production, and the Toxic Substances Control Act. It could be an opportunity to repair and strengthen the NEPA fence by being a shade more precautionary and a bit less reactionary when it comes to environmental protection. If embraced by the chemical enterprise, the changes could promote “creative destruction,” a process by which we can replace old modes of chemical production with greener and more sustainable technologies, creating new jobs in the process. The outcome could determine if Mother Nature will ever be able to stop running.

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