QUAKER ECO-BULLETIN #4 January-February, 1999 A project of the Environmental Working Group of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting TOWARD A FRIENDS ECOLOGICAL WITNESS ON NATIONAL POLICY A GATHERING OF FRIENDS IN CHICAGO MAY 14 TO 17. The Environmental Working Group is sponsoring a Gathering of Friends in Chicago to help develop a Friends ecological witness on national policy. It will be held in conjunction with a conference for eco-justice coordinators sponsored by the National Council of Churches Eco-Justice Working Group. Gene Hillman, the Friends United Meeting representative to the Eco-Justice Working Group, and several other Friends will help EWG plan the agenda. To receive a mailing about the Chicago gathering, call or e-mail Ed Dreby (609/261-8190, ). Among the questions to be considered by Friends in Chicago is what distinctive contribution a Friends ecological witness on national policy can make. Specifically, how should Friends decide which issues to become involved with? Here are three items relating to ecological sustainability. They each have their own significance. They may also be useful for thinking about this question. YUCCA MOUNTAIN. In the last session of Congress, a proposed Nuclear Waste Policy Act was narrowly defeated. The bill would have established an interim storage facility for commercial high level nuclear wastes at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Shipments to the site would have begun this year. In 1997, Friends Committee on National Legislation urged Friends to oppose this bill for several reasons: * the risk of accident during transport; * circumventing existing environmental laws for site review; * shifting costs, liability and responsibility from corporations to taxpayers; * disregard of a treaty with the Western Shoshone nation. On the first day of the new Congress, House members Upton (R-MI) and Towns (D-NY) introduced HR 45, nearly identical to the previous House bill, but with a new date of 2003 for opening a centralized storage site. It is likely that Sen Murkowski (R-AK) will introduce similar legislation in the Senate soon. The administration wants Congress to pass a bill providing for interim storage. Otherwise nuclear plant owners may sue the government on the grounds that it already has a legal responsibility to receive their nuclear wastes. There are no differences between the previous bill and the new one that affect the reasons to oppose the Yucca Mountain site. Furthermore, the region is tectonically active; seven quakes have occurred there during the past month. What to do with nuclear wastes is a stark instance of what characterizes so many environmental battles. There is no safe solution to the problem of nuclear wastes. Sooner or later some community will "lose" the fight to distance itself from them. In the meantime more wastes are produced, increasing the risks to all living organisms. How can the production of such dangerous wastes be reduced, and eventually stopped? THE NATURAL STEP. Ten years ago a Swedish cancer researcher, Karl-Henrick Robert asked himself what could be done about the race toward "...world-wide poverty in a monstrous, poisonous garbage dump." He began by defining four principles of ecological sustainability on which scientists can agree: 1) Substances from the earth's crust must not systematically increase in nature. 2) Substances produced by society must not systematically increase in nature. 3) The physical basis for the productivity and diversity of nature must not be systematically diminished. 4) We must be fair and efficient in meeting basic human needs. From these principles, Robert and a growing number of colleagues have created movements in the US and eight other countries to promote The Natural Step, and many companies, including several large corporations, have voluntarily agreed to work toward integrating its four principles into their business activities. The resulting systemic changes have invariably proven to be profitable. How can a commitment to this kind of systemic change be cultivated not just within a particular corporation but within whole economies? ELIMINATING POPS. Among the agreements at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 was a plan to deal with the health risks posed by persistent organic pollutants (POPs). POPs bioaccumulate - that is, living organisms retain them and acquire them through the food they eat - and they all have known and/or suspected effects on one or more of the body's three integrating networks, the endocrine, immune, and nervous systems. In 1995, a resolution adopted by the UN Environmental Program quickly led to identifying a short list of the twelve most dangerous POPs - insecticides, industrial chemicals, and chemical by-products including DDT, PCBs and dioxins. Within a year the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety concluded that the risks they pose could only be dealt with through a binding international agreement. In 1997 representatives of 100 governments met in Nairobi, Kenya to begin work on a legally binding global treaty. The resulting International Negotiating Committee just concluded its second session and expects to complete negotiations by 2000 on an international convention that can be submitted to governments. Physicians for Social Responsibility, together with over 100 other NGOs, has created an International POPs Elimination Network. It insists that the ultimate goal of the treaty must be not better management but the complete elimination of POPs. The emerging agreements include both commitment to a phased elimination of the list of twelve, and a criteria-based procedure to add other POPs to the elimination process as their dangers become more clearly demonstrated. PSR reports that the US negotiators are actively moving both these elements forward, in spite of a strong chemical industry presence at the negotiations. Of course US participation in any POPs treaty requires that it be signed by the President and ratified by the Senate. Perhaps because the power of corporations and the ecological impacts of human activities now transcend national boundaries, we will all come to understand as never before that to salvage the home we've been given we must all act together for the common good. * FOR INFORMATION AND LEGISLATIVE ACTION ALERTS ON YUCCA MOUNTAIN, contact Brad Morse at the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (202/833-4668, ), Auke Piersma at Public Citizen (202/546-4996), or Aura Kanegis at Friends Committee on National Legislation (202/547-6000, ). * FOR MORE ABOUT THE NATURAL STEP, contact TNS, POBox 29327, San Fransisco, CA 94129, 415/561-3344, , www.naturalstep.org. * FOR MORE ABOUT ELIMINATING POPs, contact Karen Perry, Physicians for Social Responsibility, 1101 14th St NW, Wash DC, 20005, 202/898-0150, .