Editor's Choice: January 15, 2000

Anthropology and the Environment

Affluence is killing us. The drive to accumulate more and more goods creates a ravaged environment in which valuable resources are exhausted and toxic wastes accumulate. Our "affluence" creates environmental conditions in which 40% of all deaths can be attributable to environmental factors. Yet nation-states and corporations of the affluent nations are doing everything they can to encourage the less affluent to emulate them. In the United States there is one automobile for every 1.7 persons; in China there is one automobile for every 680 persons. But the Chinese people (with the full support of the Chinese government, not to mention automobile manufacturers) want to have as many cars as Americans do. The result could be an ecological disaster. Global warming, some scientists say, is with us, and is responsible for the dramatic changes in weather patterns of the past few years; the depletion of the ozone layer is causing an epidemic of skin cancers; toxic wastes are rapidly washing over our living space, particularly in the developing world and in poor areas of the developed world. What can anthropology tell us about this self-destructive behavior? Are there ways to stop it?

There has been, of course, a powerful movement in the West to make people aware of the damage we are doing to our living space and to force nation-states to pass environmental legislation. But while concern for environmental destruction goes back at least until the nineteenth century, the modern environmental movement traces its origins to the 1960s when authors such as Rachel Carson in her book, Silent Spring, began warning of an ecological catastrophe. The movement has had some success in convincing governments to enact environmental legislation. But has it made a difference?

Interestingly there have been few studies to examine whether or not environmental legislation has made a difference. The only study to do that concludes that while we have slowed the rate of environmental destruction, it is nevertheless continuing. The report, discussed in Rachel's Environmental Weekly, finds that every major industrial country has suffered continuing environmental damage from 1970 to 1995. Part of the problem is that most people seem to think that serious pollution in the problem of others, often being unaware of environmental threats in their own communities. Local politicians and media don't often publicize instances of environmental pollutants in their communities. At the The Environmental Scorecard from The Environmental Defense Fund you can get a list of local polluters and what they are adding to the environment. Just type in your local zip code and get the information.

Three aspects of our culture make it unlikely that we can do anything to reverse the destruction of our living place. First, as we discussed in a previous Editor's Choice column on consumption, our economy, and our whole culture, depends on people buying more this year than last, and more next year than this. Our economy is built on the principle of perpetual growth. Members of our society begin early to learn the positive values we place on consumption. Yet there is lots of evidence that this behavior, not only is environmentally unsustainable, but harmful to individuals and families. You can find out more about the social damage of consumption in the article Population and Consumption: Redefining Happiness from the National Wildlife Federation.

The second feature of our culture that makes it unlikely that we can reverse environmental destruction is the power of corporations. To understand why corporations vehemently resist restrictions on their polluting practices, we need to digress a moment to the field of economics. Corporations derive much of their profit through a practice of "externalizing costs." This means that part of the cost of producing the product is not borne by the producer, but is somehow passed on the population as a whole. For example, automobile manufacturers could not exist unless the nation-state provided the infrastructure (e.g. roads, bridges, power, etc.) for automobiles to function. Tobacco companies produced and sold cigarettes, passing on (externalizing) the health costs of smoking to the rest of us. Oil companies pay virtually nothing for the pollution caused by their products. You can learn more about this process from a fascinating paper by Immanual Wallerstein, entitled Ecology and Capitalist Costs of Production: No Exit.

Because much of their profit comes from passing on the costs of pollution to others, corporations spend billions of dollars (far less than it would cost to reduce their pollution) to lobby legislators and to convince the public that they are good citizens. In the article, The Gathering Storm: Corporations and Climate Change from Corporate Watch you can learn how oil companies convinced the government of the United States to withhold support for the international Kyoto Protocol, and effort to get nation-states to support measures to reduce global warming. You can also find out how much money is given to legislators by corporations at National Institute for Money in State Politics, and at Public Campaign where they highlight the problem of corporate money in politics and suggest ways that the financial power of corporations can be curbed.   Particularly interesting is their Golden Leash Awards, given to congressional legislators whose actions are tied closely to those from whom they receive money.

In addition to using campaign funds to dissuade legislators to enact legislation to reduce pollution, corporations also employ thousands of public relations specialists to ensure that the public knows as little as possible about the damage corporations cause. In fact, there are far more public relations specialists in the United States than journalists. One of our favorite corporate efforts to convince the public that they do no harm can be found at the Web site for The Greening Earth Society. They explain that, not only is global warming not a problem, it is actually good for us.   Their motto is: "Greening Earth Society believes that humankind's industrial evolution is good, and using fossil fuels to enable our economic activity is as natural as breathing." However the site fails to mention that The Greening Earth Society shares offices and officers with the Western Fuel Association (and who should know more about global warming than coal producers).

A final reason why our culture ensures that we do little about environmental destruction is that the people who profit most from the pollution are better able to avoid it. That is, the values of our culture that tolerates poverty and discrimination, also ensure that the poor and maginalized members of our society are subject to greater exposure to environmental pollutants. Toxic waste disposals, dumps, polluting industries tend to be always located in areas where the population is politically and economically weak. You can find out more about it in the article Environmental Racism: A Primer by Beverly Wright  and Robert D. Bullard that documents the greater exposure of minorities and the poor to environmental pollution.

In sum, we have created, maintained, and propagated a culture that virtually requires the destruction of the environment and that prevents anything from being done about it. Whether or not we can change it is open to question. The public protest at the Seattle gathering of the World Trade Organization (discussed in a previous Editor's Choice) may signal the beginning of greater public concern over environmental destruction. But up to now, such protest has done little more than slow the rate of the destruction, it has neither stopped it nor reversed it.

You can find additional Web resources on the environment at the editor's Web site.

I'd also like to hear your reactions. Please email me at richard.robbins@plattsburgh.edu