Environmental Science: A Global Concern
At the same time, I cautioned that the 1990 book was not a
straightforward presentation of science, that it emphasized
social phenomena over scientific ones, and that it tried to
instill "politically correct" views of environmental matters. I
ended by stating my opinion that the book might better have been
called Environmental Social Studies.
The 1995 version reinforces that opinion. Environmental
Science: A Global Concern has now been updated and has been
slightly enlarged, but its fundamental structure and its teaching
approach have not been altered. It remains a well written, often
compelling textbook that seeks to unite social, political,
economic and scientific information, putting major emphasis on
the social and political. The writers assert that their goal is
to provide a foundation for understanding environmental problems
and "finding ways to progress toward a better future" (page
xvii), and they continue to emphasize doctrines of stewardship
and sustainability, which call for humans to be nature's partners
rather than nature's adversaries.
That is a valid perspective, with identifiable bases in science,
but the writers don't stop there. In this 1995 book, as in the
1990 version, they repeatedly go far beyond science (and mislead
students) by promoting ideological doctrines and other notions
that have no place in a science text. Such figments seem even
more conspicuous in the new book than they were in the older one.
For example, some silly flummery about "ecofeminism" has been
moved forward, so it now appears in the second chapter instead of
the last; there is an absurd ideological section about
"environmental justice," including an endorsement of the bogus
notion of "environmental racism"; and the writers now are
promoting the unsubstantiated notion that electromagnetic fields
cause cancer. I shall return to some of these matters later.
Like the 1990 version, the new book is divided into five major
parts, each covering a lot of material. Part One is an overview
of environmental concerns, resources, conservation,
environmental ethics, and some basic scientific principles. Part
Two looks at population biology, human population dynamics,
resource economics, and environmental health and toxicology.
Part Three focuses on biological resources, discussing human
nutrition, food sources, agriculture, and the use of forests and
rangelands. Part Four deals with "physical" (meaning nonliving)
resources: minerals, air, water and energy. Part Five explores
interactions among societies and environments, emphasizing
waste-handling methods, urbanization, and the concept of "a sustainable
future."
The sequence of the chapters has been revised to keep related
topics together and give even more emphasis to environmental
ethics and environmental activism. The extent to which the
individual chapters have been revised varies greatly. Some
chapters are nearly identical to ones in the 1990 version, while
others have been rewritten or combined. (The number of chapters
has been reduced by two, although the new book includes new
material and is longer by some 30 pages.) Even in sections where
changes to the text have been minimal, the 1995 book has a "new"
look. Many illustrations have been upgraded, and many charts and
diagrams have been altered to add color.
On the other side of the ledger, the writers do an unusually
fine job in their section "Science as a Way of Knowing," which
outlines some principles of scientific thinking and scientific
methods. They make a point of telling that not all scientific
work involves experiments, and that scientists can generate and
test hypotheses about natural systems even if the systems are not
amenable to experimentation. They also emphasize that science
does not "prove" things, that we never have "final proof" of
anything, and that all scientific findings are conditional and
are subject to modification in the light of new evidence. These
are points that must be taught to science students at all levels.
A more troubling defect is the retention of a lopsided,
misleading treatment of "chemicals" in the chapter on
"Environmental Health and Toxicology" (in Part Two). The book
continues to view chemicals only in terms of their toxic and
hazardous properties. Students read about chemicals that are
irritants, asphyxiants, mutagens, teratogens or carcinogens, but
there is nothing about the beneficial uses of these materials,
and the entire presentation remains somewhat sinister. (As I
asked when I reviewed the 1990 version: Do the writers really
want to enable students to evaluate chemical risks and hazards,
or do they just want to give students something to worry about?)
Here is another reason why this textbook should be used only by
students who already have had a course in chemistry. It would be
a shame if the students' only impressions of "chemicals" and
commercial chemistry were the impressions given in Part Two of
Environmental Science: A Global Concern.
On the other hand, the chapter called "Pest Control" (in Part
Three) provides a fine exposition of pesticides, with discussion
of both the hazards and the benefits that such substances
present.
The section about risk assessment has a new, baffling diagram --
evidently made by combining two illustrations from the 1990 book
-- which supposedly depicts the public's perceptions of various
environmental risks. The perceptions are represented by symbols
scattered on a grid whose vertical axis extends from "Not
observable" to "Observable" and whose other axis reaches from
"Controllable" to "Uncontrollable." I do not understand this
diagram (figure 9.14, page 189) and I do not know how the symbols
were assigned to their positions on the grid. The writers seem
to think that the diagram has something to do with a point that
appears in the text on page 187: Perceptions of risks are ruled
by emotion and ignorance, and they may have very little to do
with reality. The public may regard automobiles and bicycles as
benign, and may regard pesticides or DNA technology as loathsome
and dangerous, even though deaths or injuries related to
automobiles or bicycles are far more frequent than deaths or
injuries associated with pesticides or with genetic engineering.
Promoters of this fancy like to cite the fact that, in the United
States, many waste-disposal sites and "dirty" industrial plants
are in communities whose populations are largely black or
Hispanic. Then they invite us to believe that this condition has
been deliberately created by white racists, presumably as a way
of visiting chemical hazards and other dangers on members of
racial minorities. That alarming vision of cause and effect is
an inescapable implication of the term "environmental racism."
"Environmental racism" makes a good story that can stir the
emotions of ignorant audiences, but it is nothing more than that:
a story. There is no doubt that dirty industries are unusually
common in (or near) black or Hispanic communities, but this
doesn't mean that white racists have deliberately sought this
result; nor have the promoters of "environmental racism" produced
any evidence to support such an idea. If we recall how the
distribution of industrial plants or waste-disposal sites is
influenced by land costs, by transportation facilities, and by
the political power or political impotence of local residents, we
needn't invoke a special "environmental racist" conspiracy to
explain why dirty industrial operations are often found in
communities of people who are poor and powerless. The inventors
of "environmental racism" are in the business of using dubious
"studies" and outlandish claims to confuse correlation with
causation. The writers of Environmental Science: A Global
Concern have perpetuated that confusion instead of sorting things
out.
Later in their "Environmental Justice" section, the writers use
obscurity to misrepresent issues involving American Indians. A
photograph on page 38 shows an unidentified group of Indians
marching under a defaced American flag, and the caption says that
they are marching "in protest of toxic waste dumping on tribal
lands." The writers don't tell who these people are, where
their tribal lands are, what is being dumped, or who is doing the
dumping, but students can hardly fail to conclude that somebody
is abusing the Indians by discarding wastes on tribal lands
without the Indians' consent.
Can the writers cite a place where this is happening? I doubt
it. I know of cases in which tribal governments have considered
formal proposals to establish commercial dumps on tribal lands,
and I know that such projects have sometimes caused rancorous
political divisions within tribes, and I suspect that this is
what the photograph on page 38 really signifies. If those
Indians are really protesting against "toxic waste dumping on
tribal lands," their protest is almost certainly directed
against some decisions or actions taken by their own tribal
leaders. Students will not understand this, because the writers
of Environmental Science: A Global Concern have omitted all the
relevant information.
The conjecture was put forth, some 15 years ago, by the British
scientist James Lovelock. At its core lies the observation that
our planet, as a whole, apparently has some homeostatic
mechanisms that tend to preserve conditions favorable to life.
The mechanisms cited most frequently in this context are ones
that affect and moderate the composition of the atmosphere, the
temperature of Earth's surface, and the salinity of the oceans,
helping to keep them suitable for living things. Some of these
mechanisms involve chemical processes that are carried out by
organisms, so one implication of the Gaia conjecture is that
organisms help to maintain Earth in a state that is conducive to
their own survival.
So far, so good. Undeniably, global feedback mechanisms exist
that have global effects on life -- the flux of carbon dioxide
between the atmosphere and the oceans is a case in point -- and
it is good to study them.
What is not good is the way in which Lovelock's ideas (along
with the phenomena that he addressed) have been dragged out of
their scientific context and have been transformed, by ignorant
popularizers and sensationalists, into props for religious and
mystical notions. These include, for example, the idea that our
planet was purposefully planned and was created with purposeful
mechanisms which enable it to perform an ordained function --
i.e., serving as a home for organisms (or specifically for
humans). The Gaia conjecture can easily suggest that such ideas
are "scientific" (or it can easily be made to look like
"scientific" support for them) if it is presented ineptly in a
"science" book. Impressionable students can easily lose sight of
where science ends and where mysticism begins.
The writers of Environmental Science: A Global Concern seem to
encourage this result. Their material about the Gaia conjecture
appears in a box on page 53, with the headline "Does Earth Have a
Plan?" It is confused and misleading, and it is not redeemed
when the writers say, "Although Lovelock dissociates himself
from mysticism or religious implications of his theory [sic],
many people believe it suggests a design, purpose, and meaning in
the world." If the writers had to mention the Gaia conjecture at
all, they should have described it competently and should have
used it to teach about the nature and boundaries of science,
instead of mulling science with what "many people believe."
They also should have remembered what the word theory denotes.
The Gaia conjecture is not a theory, and calling it by that name
breeds more confusion.
Of course, it is absurd to declare that "there appears to be some
increased risk" if one knows that the data are "vague and often
contradictory," but the writers do not let such niceties stand in
their way. They launch into an enumeration of scary results
produced by various "studies," and then they prescribe
protective measures like these:
Enough! Before you try to move your house, and before you become
terrified of your bedside clock, you need to know that the most
notorious allegation about power lines and appliances -- the
claim that they cause cancers -- is not supported by evidence.
Alhough it has been widely publicized in recent years, and though
it now is being publicized again in Environmental Science: A
Global Concern, it apparently is nothing but Luddite nonsense.
In their zeal to make their book look trendy, the writers have
only made themselves look like fools. They should have waited to
see what respectable scientific analysis would disclose.
What respectable scientific analysis has disclosed has been
summarized in a report that was released in April 1995 by the
Council of the American Physical Society (529 Fourteenth Street,
NW; Washington, DC 20045). Let me quote from the Council's
introductory letter:
These unsubstantiated claims, however, have generated fears of
power lines in some communities, leading to expensive mitigation
efforts, and, in some cases, to lengthy and divisive court
proceedings. The costs of mitigation and litigation relating to
the power line-cancer connection have risen into the billions of
dollars and threaten to go much higher. The diversion of
these resources to eliminate a threat which has no persuasive
scientific basis is disturbing to us.
For scientific and historical insights into some claims about
electromagnetic fields and cancer, I recommend the Frontline
program "Currents of Fear," which was broadcast in June by many
public-television stations. My readers may be especially
interested in the segments that directly discredit two of the
scary "studies" that are cited in Environmental Science: A Global
Concern. One of these originated in Denver, Colorado; it was
just an amateurish invention, and it never had any scientific
respectability. The other study, originating in Sweden, was more
interesting. It included some statistical analysis performed by
experienced biostatisticians, and it seemed to show that
exposure to electromagnetic fields was linked to an elevated
incidence of leukemia. That correlation was false, however; it
had emerged because the statisticians had chosen to work with
only a small sample of the data that the study had generated.
(When some other samples of the data were analyzed by the same
methods, some of the results indicated that exposure to
electromagnetic fields was correlated with a reduced incidence of
leukemia! In other words, the fields now seemed to act as
cancer-prevention agents!) A videotape of "Currents of Fear" can
be purchased from PBS Video at Box 791, Alexandria, Virginia
22313. The price, with shipping, is $78.45.
The raving about electromagnetic fields in Environmental
Science: A Global Concern, like the cant about "environmental
racism," is the sort of material that shouldn't appear in any
book which has "science" in its title.
Max Rodel is a consulting environmental chemist and a registered
environmental assessor in the state of California. His major
professional interest is the chemistry of natural aquatic
systems, including the fates of pollutants. He lives and works
in Mill Valley.
Reviewing a science book for high-school honors courses
1995. 612 pages. ISBN: 0-697-15894-2.
Wm. C. Brown Publishers, 2460 Kerper Boulevard,
Dubuque, Iowa 52001.
A Suitable Book for Teaching
Faddish Fables and BaloneyMax G. Rodel
My review of the 1990 version of Wm. C. Brown's Environmental
Science: A Global Concern was generally favorable. I was
impressed by both the writing and the content that I found in
that book, and I said that Brown had produced a fine addition to
the array of science texts that were available for use by
advanced high-school students.
The writers assert that they have kept their text "simple and
nontechnical" and suitable for students who have "little or no
science background," but that claim is not substantiated by the
text itself. Part One includes a survey of fundamental
science -- ostensibly as a basis for understanding the scientific
material that will appear in later sections -- but the survey is feeble,
is given almost entirely to biological matters, and is blatantly
inadequate. The writers devote only one page to basic
chemistry, and in that one page they dash all the way from the
concept of the atom to a verbal description of the structure of
a nucleic acid (complete with jargon like "nitrogen-containing
ring structure" and "phosphate bridge," which will have no
meaning whatsoever to students who have "little or no science
background.") The survey does not equip students to understand
the chemical topics that will appear later in this book, and it
obviously does not equip students to understand the chemistry in
the "Further Readings" that are listed at the ends of chapters.
Therefore, students will not be able to use Environmental
Science: A Global Concern unless they already have taken
high-school chemistry. If they also have taken high-school biology,
then so much the better.
Some errors of fact that appeared in the 1990 book have been
carried into the 1995 version -- for example, the technical
definition of BOD (on page 423) is still incorrect.
The deepest failings of this book, however, are its promotion of
faddish silliness, its reciting of alarmist fables, and its
pretensions that invite the student to confuse science with
mysticism, religion, political ideology, and other things that
are not science at all. Let me describe, as examples, the book's
passages about "environmental racism," the Gaia hypothesis, and
imaginary hazards of electromagnetic fields:
"Environmental racism"
The 1990 version of Environmental Science: A Global Concern had a
mercifully brief section about an ideological notion called
"ecojustice." In the 1995 version there is a new, longer section
called "Environmental Justice," in which the writers cite some
genuine phenomena but surround them with ideological
interpretations that are distorted and dopey. The worst part of
this section comes where the writers promote the idea of
"environmental racism," a fancy that has become popular in some
quarters in recent years.
The Gaia hypothesis
The so-called Gaia hypothesis is not so much a hypothesis as a
body of conjecture. It has a basis in scientific observations,
but the observations have been extrapolated to support
unscientific conclusions and have become entangled with
cocktail-party mysticism. This seems to be the reason why the Gaia
conjecture, although it has nothing to contribute to a beginner's
understanding of environmental science, has shown up in various
environmental-science texts. It is trendy, and some writers
evidently think that its overtones of supernaturalism will make
it appealing to readers.
Electromagnetic fields
On page 180, a boxed article headlined "Electromagnetic Fields
and Your Health" demonstrates how textbook-writers can embarrass
themselves by telling trendy alarmist stories. The article
begins:
Many forms of technology seem scary and mysterious, but few seem
as insidious as potential dangers [a pun?] from invisible, unfelt
electric and magnetic fields associated with our use of
electricity. . . . Although the data are vague and often
contradictory, there appears to be some increased risk of
cancers, miscarriages, birth defects, and perhaps Alzheimer's
disease associated with exposure to these fields.
First of all, homes and schools should be at least one kilometer
away from high-voltage power lines. Electric distribution lines
that bring power into homes create much less powerful fields but
should still be shielded and routed away from the parts of houses
where people spend the most time. . . . Bedside appliances, such
as electric clocks, telephone answering machines, or anything
with an electric motor that runs continuously should be placed at
least a meter away from your head. Even better, why not place
them across the room? Other electric appliances . . . should be
used as briefly as possible and at the greatest distance from
your person as is feasible. . . .
The scientific literature and the reports of reviews by other
panels show no consistent, significant link between cancer and
power line fields. This literature includes epidemiological
studies, research on biological systems, and analyses of
theoretical interaction mechanisms. . . . From this standpoint,
the conjectures relating cancer to power line fields have not
been scientifically substantiated.
The 1995 version of Environmental Science: A Global Concern has
some considerable merit as a social-studies book, but as a
science book it is too deeply flawed by the writers' failure to
distinguish science from pseudoscience. It is an appropriate
tool only for teachers who suffer from a similar lack of
discernment and who want to advocate the kinds of environmental
ideology and environmental activism that the writers favor. I
find irony in the fact that this textbook includes a fine sidebar
about critical thinking, in which the writers warn against
accepting obscure statements, warn against accepting claims that
are not supported by evidence, and point out that a person who
promotes a particular view may have "an axe to grind or a
personal agenda." The writers ought to have practiced the
critical thinking that they preach, and they ought to have
stricken all the baloney from their book.
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