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Foul Air, Fetid Water
Europe's leaders are not just concerned about the quality of life their peoples enjoy. They are above all worried about the health-destroying poisonous climate that increasing numbers of Europeans are forced to live in.
Industrialization has brought a higher material standard of living — but at a big price.
Take Europe's air, for example.
Madrid and Milan are in a race for the dubious honor of Europe's "smog capital."
Rapid industrialization, mushrooming population and a fantastic increase in car ownership by an expanding middle class are the ingredients for Madrid's befouled atmosphere. The city was once noted for its pure air.
In Milan, heart of Italy's industrial north, smog is so bad during the winter that some residents go about with handkerchiefs around their heads to cover nose and mouth. In the 1968-69 winter, 80 percent of Milan's children suffered respiratory ailments.
All across Italy, art treasures are being irreparably damaged by industrial air pollution and automobile exhausts. The problem is especially acute in Venice.
Europe's waters are reeling under an onslaught of industrial expansion. Most of Switzerland's big lakes are now polluted. Lake Zurich, once clean and productive, is now, according to a Council of Europe report, "an evil-smelling muddy sewer." Lake Constance is rapidly undergoing eutrophication. Lake Geneva is also suffering from pollution.
Swiss chemical and textile industries are given much of the blame.
Finland — the famous land of lakes — is under close scrutiny by ecologists. Already 10-15 percent of Finland's internal waters are polluted.
Finnish industry is confined to the south, where the population density is also greatest. Contrary to what might be supposed, Finland has a poor supply of drinking water, because the many lakes are shallow and subject to rapid eutrophication as a result of discharge of domestic and industrial waste matter. Helsinki is supplied with drinking water from a lake 160 miles away.
According to one Italian official, "a lot of Italian rivers have been changed into putrid reservoirs of sewage and industrial waste. Their waters can no longer be used even for irrigation."
Throughout Italy, household and industrial liquid waste is dumped into waters with virtually no treatment. In the whole of Italy there are only thirty-two purification plants — one plant for every thousand communities. Even the paltry few that exist are for the most part small and inefficient.
A Dutch report shows the far-reaching international effects of water pollution in Europe.
Seventy percent of the water in the Dutch river network comes from other countries and is thus already heavily polluted. The waters of the Rhine, for example, now show such an increase in chlorides that they are unsuitable for desalting the polders — making Dutch land reclamation efforts extremely difficult. Such chlorides are of mineral origin and are dumped into the river in German coal-mining areas where saline water is pumped from the mines.
Europe's Future "Lake Eries"
Water pollution doesn't end when Europe's filthy rivers reach the sea.
The Mediterranean and the Baltic Seas receive a good share of Europe's washed-in pollution. Parts of the two virtually landlocked inland seas, says one British official, could become as polluted as the eastern part of Lake Erie, where many feet of mucky sediment have accumulated.
A French specialist in marine pollution warns of unlimited construction and industrial expansion along France's Mediterranean shore. Unless firm measures are taken, he says, the continental shelf of France could become one sterile stretch of black muck from the Spanish to the Italian border.
Some fish species have already disappeared from accustomed grounds along the French Riviera. And along the coasts of Versilia, southern Tuscany, and Latium in Italy, marine pollution is killing coastal pines. Long adapted to saltwater spray, the pines there now are dying where the polluted spray hits them.
What to Do?
At the end of the Strasbourg conference, delegates endorsed a resolution calling for an urgent European ministerial meeting to coordinate existing international environmental projects.
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"Self-discipline, a return to reason is the mental revolution that the industrial world must accept . . ."
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The following are excerpts of a speech given by His Royal Highness Prince Albert of Liege at the opening ceremony of the European Conservation Conference.
We are here to launch a campaign which, we hope, will influence not only the action of governments but also and especially the behavior of individuals. For a year we in Europe shall be talking about nature, about that nature whose immutable laws man thought he could violate with impunity, and which is now beginning to take its revenge.
Today, those who know most about the matter have become frightened and are wondering what to do. . . . We must prevent the problems of environment, which are such a marvelous subject for speeches, being talked about so often that the public become bored with them and abandon them to the skeptics. That is a real danger that we have to avoid.
Let us be honest enough to get to the bottom of the matter and ask ourselves what has made the problem so acute during the last twenty-five years.
It is certainly the growth in population, but above all it is the technological upheaval which makes man hope for more material good fortune and therefore induces him to produce and consume still more. . . . The most serious thing for the community is not so much the constraints imposed by these new and often superfluous needs. It is not even that this artificial life makes man forget the simple pleasures. It is that, under our present system, each private producer manufactures what he thinks he can sell — and he hopes to be able to sell more and more of it — without considering the social cost of his activities, for that is traditionally the task of the public authorities.
What does it matter if millions of acres of land are converted into roads or car-parks, if millions of tons of rubbish are buried, burned or thrown into the sea?
What does it matter if ever-increasing quantities of raw materials are torn from the soil as if they were inexhaustible and as if their disappearance made no difference?
Mankind makes a god of economic growth and thinks only of speeding it up without, however, being willing to pay the price. Men seem to believe that if technology upsets nature, technology can also repair the damage or, if need be, can protect them from the results of this dangerous disorder. Will it be our lot one day to see the sorcerer's apprentices that we have become, going on our picnics dressed in space-suits like those worn by the cosmonauts?
I sincerely believe that the best of enterprises, such as your own, will remain a dead letter if we do not tackle the problem at its roots. There are some needs that are essential; some targets of progress are reasonable; but it is no longer healthy to accept this rat race to destruction in the name of so-called progress which is really anarchy. Man must learn to divide the spoils if the species are to survive, and to curb his appetites. Self-discipline, a return to reason is the mental revolution that the industrial world must accept, and which I believe will condition everything else.
May I now come back to my last point. Shall I be out of order if I suggest a new attitude to meet this frenzy of economic development? Am I naive to suppose that man will improve to the point of becoming less selfish and restraining his appetite for gain? Am I blind to the point of delusion in believing that when the human species scents danger it will react to ensure its survival?
I think not, so long as the threat is recognized and taken seriously. It is therefore imperative to state it clearly, completely and without pulling our punches to suit any particular vested interest.
It will certainly not be easy to promote a new attitude that will harmonize the desire for progress with the needs dictated by fact and reason, more especially as the necessarily universal and worldwide nature of any planned action and the financial sacrifices it involves will be such as to discourage the waverers.
But in all sincerity, have we any choice? Now that we are beginning to realize the magnitude and the gravity of the problem, dare we really let things slide and bequeath to future generations a completely artificial civilization in a poisoned and hostile environment which would leave precious little room for human beings?
To do that would be to renounce the dignity of man.
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It was proposed that such a high-level meeting seriously consider the establishment of a European political authority to supervise the management of the continent's environment.
But giant obstacles lie in the path of the establishment of such a supranational body with enough political muscle to act.
First, the experience in the United States proves the frustrating difficulty of coordinating efforts among states, counties and municipalities, to do battle with commonly shared pollution problems. In Europe, the problem is compounded by the existence of completely sovereign nations, each with its own goals and aims, quite often in conflict with neighboring states.
West Germany, for example, is not likely to sacrifice its industrial growth rate to solve Europe's environmental problems unless France, Italy and every other industrial competitor in Europe does likewise.
And the problem is compounded still further. Europe as a whole is not likely to sacrifice its industrial growth — industrial might means international power and prestige — unless its two chief world competitors, the United States and the Soviet Union, do likewise.
A British delegate warned that there was a danger of upsetting the structure of international industrial competition if industry in one country took anti-pollution measures which put up prices for its goods.
World Control Needed Most of All
Pollution is worldwide. The United States contributes a big share. So does Europe — both Western Europe and the Communist bloc in its haste for industrial expansion.
Pollution control must be tackled not on a national or continental front but on a world basis.
Yet, there is no single coordinated attack.
Instead there is a proliferation of various international bodies and organizations, each studying the environmental crisis, each recommending courses of action — with often contradictory conclusions — yet all with pitifully weak power to act.
The Common Market is investigating pollution in Europe. So is UNESCO. So is NATO — formerly restricted to defense matters. So is the Council of Europe.
What is really needed now is a world government. A government that stands above the conflicting selfish interests and wasteful pursuits of men and nations. And a government, furthermore, that shows man the right way to live and how to get in harmony with "immutable laws" — to use Prince Albert's phraseology. There are both spiritual laws governing human relationships and physical laws governing nature and the earth's life systems. But man — though reaping the penalty of breaking these laws — is woefully ignorant of them.
The PLAIN TRUTH is not alone in recognizing this compelling need for a world government. Norman Cousins, editor of Saturday Review recently put it this way:
"Humanity needs a world order. The fully sovereign nation is incapable of dealing with the poisoning of the environment. Worse than that, the national governments are an important part of the problem. They create anarchy on the very level where responsible centers and interrelationships are most needed.
. . . The nations in their external roles become irresponsible engines of spoilage and destruction.
"The management of the planet, therefore, whether we are talking about the need to prevent war or the need to prevent ultimate damage to the conditions of life, requires a world government."
The need was never more urgent.