For Whom The Polls Tell

For Whom The Polls Tell

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A satirical look

at the environmental sciences

Tom Davey

For Whom the Polls Tell A collection of environmental satires

Tom Davey ISBN 0-920891-02-0

Š 1996,For Whom The Polls Tell by Tom Davey published by Environmental Science & Engineering Publications Inc. No

part of this book may be reproduced by any means without written permission of the publisher, except reviewers who may quote brief passages in their reviews.

Orders from ES&E Publications Inc,220 Industrial Parkway South, Unit 30, Aurora, Ontario, L4G 3V6, Canada FAX (905)841-7271 (ISBN 0-920891-02-0)

Printed on acid free Canadian made sheet by Mothersill Printing (1988) Inc. Bowmanville, Ontario.

Also by the author: All the Views Fit to Print

A book of satirical essays(ISBN 0-920891-00-4) and contributor to

Crisis,

(Environmental anthology published by MacMillan of Canada Library of Congress catalogue card 70-151172)

Principal author of Recollections, an environmental history, published by the Water Environment Association of Ontario.

Final layout and typesetting by Kathleen Carignan.

Cover drawing by Rachel Rosen.

For Whom The Polls Tell A satirical look

at the environmental sciences

by Tom Davey

Published by ES&E Publications Inc.

Acknowledgements

Many years ago I took a course at the University of Toronto taught by Royd Beamish,a journalist at Maclean Hunter. His course was the most profound learning experience I have ever encountered. I remain indebted to his teaching and en thusiastic devotion to reportorial skills. Later I worked with Dr. Wilfred Coxon,author, scientist, chemical engineer, and publisher in London's Fleet Street. In his youth. Dr. Coxon had been one of those madcap 'boffins' developing off-beat weaponry during World War II. Author Nevil Shute also worked on this team of'boffins,'and his scientific background is apparent in his novels.

While Dr. Coxon launched several publications and published some textbooks in the energy sector, he enjoyed humour and gave his writers astonishing freedom. I have very fond memories of this scientist and author.

In more recent years, I have had wonderful assistance from Canadian environmental engineers and scientists including: Jack Norman,Ph.D., P.Eng.; George V. Crawford, M.A.Sc.,P.Eng.; Bob Goodings,P.Eng.;Peter Laughton,DEE, P.Eng.;Rod Holme,P.Eng.;Pierre Beaumier,Ph.D.,C.Chem.; and Jim Bishop, C. Chem. At least two of the pieces in this book stem from hilarious lunches with Jim.

Foreword by Gerry Nunn I was Tom Davey's publisher at Southam Communications Inc., where he edited and wrote for several publications. Tom became the first Canadian writer to win a J.H. Neal Award in New York from the American Business Press in 1970. Af

ter he left Southam and formed Davcom Inc., I invited him to continue as an editor and columnist for Southam on con

tract - an unusual arrangement at that time.

My decision was vindicated in Las Vegas in 1980 when the Water Environment Federation presented him with its Schlenz Medal for his writing, his second international hon our. Tom was the first non-American to win that honour.

Since then, two other Canadians, Michael Keating, then environment reporter for the Globe & Mail,and John Jackson, President of the Ontario Toxic Waste Research Coalition,have

also brought Schlenz Medals to Canada.

When I became Manager of Southam's Subscription Department, I invited Tom to compile his columns into a book as a joint venture between Southam and Davcom Inc. Davcom retained copyrights and took responsibility for the book, which was published as All The Views Fit To Print.

Tom's son,Steve, also worked for me at Southam,later

becoming managing editor of two magazines and winning a Southam Award of Excellence. Steve also left Southam to

form his own company. Steve later proposed that Davcom Inc. publish a new environmental magazine. I had retired by then and advised against the proposal, pointing out the high failure rate of new magazines.

While the venture was undeniably risky,the family had plenty of experience in publishing. For many years Tom's wife,Sandra,had edited scientific papers for the University of Toronto,government agencies,and consultants in the pri vate sector, winning awards for her work. She had also ed ited three books, one on medical photography, the other for

a major New York publisher on waste treatment research, a third on environmental history. Steve had worked on many editing assignments including a CIDA report on water and sanitation services for Third World Countries.

Acting on Steve's initiative, Davcom Inc. launched Environmental Science & Engineering(ES&E)magazine in late 1987 with Steve as president. Confounding the traditional theories that new magazines must sustain losses before showing profits, ES&E ended its first publishing year well into the black. In the magazine's seventh year,the 115-yearold American Water WorksAssociation presented ES&E with a citation for its searching commentaries on important environ mental issues.

In 1993, after almost 20 years of diverse publishing projects, Davcom changed its name to Environmental Sci ence & Engineering Publications Inc. ES&E Publications Inc. is involved in several other publishing endeavours besides the magazine.

In February 1995, Tom's daughter. Penny, became the first woman president of the Ontario Pollution Control Equipment Association; and in April, Steve became presi dent of the Water Environment Association of Ontario. In

February 1996, Penny concluded her term as President but remained on the OPCEA Board. In 1996 Steve began a three year term as a Director of the Canadian Water & Wastewater Association.

While my predictions about launching Environmental Science & Engineering happily proved inaccurate, I predict that most readers - except for a few politicians and some radical activists - will really enjoy this book.

Gerald Nunn was a reporter in England before joining the Royal Air Force. He earned his wings in Canada before returning to England where he became aflying instructorjvr the RAF. Later he returned to Canada and became a publisher, then circulation manager, at Southam Commu nications Inc.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgement

2

Foreword

3

Introduction

8

Noise pollution - music to woo certain maidens by

11

Noise and chemicals can cause neurotoxicity What about the voice appropriation of environmental professionals?

14

Could anti-logging spiking be considered arboreal acupuncture?...

Rent-A-Mob - Canada's free trade edge "Where death is no longer natural and someone must be blamed"- Margaret in Disneyland

I was only kidding Have you heard these dirty stories about water?

The courage, wit and elegance of Malcolm Muggeridge - writer par excellence A great writer was felled by an early Punch Was Greenpeace a 'David" armed with a media AK-47?

McMillan replays Macbeth. There's no biz like ecological show biz

16

20 24

28

30 31 34 36 41

44

Are environmentalists green or pink?

The inside story 47 Honestly I'm lying - my political career depends on it.... 49 While reason sleeps, monster landfill sites are breeding Solace in Blunderland as Red Queen gets Health folio

Horror stories of past obscured by images of rustic living Art,language and the environmental sciences need they be in conflict?

51 56

58 62

Why are hot dog vendors and hairdressers licenced while chemists aren't?

68

Tina's terrible trauma, as rare element discovered in Ontario lab When the PCS circus went international

71 73

Saliva without nourishment- a legacy from the media's conditioned reflexes

Where's the X in adsorbable organic halide?

Journalists flock to greenhouse conference No free lunches in NDP's free fridges Will the real environmentalists please stand up?

For whom the polls tell - when news gatherers become news makers

Sure your mother loves you,but check it out anyway

76

79 80 82 86 88

92

A Hamlet without the Prince - or an omelette

without eggheads?

Why I am buying the Ontario Waste Management Corporation?

Mission Improbable - three film suggestions for Hollywood North For 30 grand we should be able to reincarnate Albert Einstein

Does fashion adversely affect the environment?

95

97

102 105

108

Tories should have checked the records of their

Big Blue Machine Voice of Fire became a Quest for Ire when pollution became an art form

Ill 114

The incredible shrinking pie syndrome 118 The environmental evangelists 121 Space age technologies at dirt cheap prices 125 Power without responsibility - a harlot's prerogative....128 Some urban barbarians are also scientific illiterates

131

Girdling the globe with garbage The Dead (beat) Poets Society The utility of oblivion

133 135 138

The ten specifications Why low bid systems are bad for Canada's environment

142 145

Sewer 'speed bumps' give severe headaches to taxpayers

148

Marxism - Groucho or Karl?

152

Fantasyland on the Rideau America's tragic cycle - from the Lunar Rover to assembling Third World bikes

155

The write stuff

160

Wise and witty words on low bidding from three artistic giants of the past Big mother is not watching you Collective noun urgently needed for lawyers

163 167 170

About the Author

174

Glossary

176

156

Introduction

While environmental problems are threatening our health and economic future, the voices of our highly educated sci

entists, chemists and engineers are usually ignored by poli ticians in favour of self-anointed single-issue pressure groups.

The cost of government policies, federal and provin cial, is staggering. Some of my essays deal with such issues as $17.5 million of funding on a Water Interpretation Centre on a former Expo '67 island site, surrounded by highly pol luted water. Then there was the funding for a study: A

Bioregionalist Approach to the Settlement Story in Prairie Fic tion. Both were fimded by Green Plan monies. There's more, hundreds of millions of dollars more,in fact.

There's the Ontario Waste Management Corporation, launched in a blaze of environmental fervour 15 years ago.

OWMC spent some $140 million before its main project, a toxic waste incinerator, was rejected by the Environmental Assessment Board - a rejection confirmed by the Ontario Cabinet in 1995.

Ontario's Interim Waste Authority (IWA) had spent some $80 million in the Greater Toronto Area by the end of 1994, seeking sites for three monster garbage dumps. An other $15 million was slated to defend objections to these three sites,located on some of the best arable land in Canada.

Rejected out of hand were proposals to ship the garbage to an old mine in Kirkland Lake, or to use incineration meth

ods that would also generate energy. Not counted in these millions are the imtold funds that recalcitrant munipalities have allocated to fight IWA proposals. Millions have been spent without a single bag of garbage going into the groimd.

Media hype has caused many costly fiascos -PCBs be-

ing a prime example. Yes, PCBs are toxic, but the; do r . . rate the hysteria and anxiety they create in the pubik k mind, thanks to media manipulation by both reporters and Picd- ists. There are many more chemicals in common use ti > 11 are far more lethal to humans and the environment than

PCBs. In fact I have yet to see any epidemiology attributing a single death to the PCBs - which have so dominated the media while more serious environmental problems wore neglected. Media hype in London's newspapers spurred demonstrations in both the UK and Canada and resulted in

a shipment of PCB wastes being turned back by London dockers. After a ten thousand kilometre round trip across the Atlantic,violent demonstrators attempted to prevent the

ship unloading at Baie Comeau,Quebec.

Butenvironmental rehabilitation will notcome justfrom

lawyers litigating, protestors pontificating, or prelates preaching. Progress in water and air quality can only come from the scientific and technical skills of the environmental

professionals who transmute research data into viable treat ment projects. They were often ignored over a century ago when they began to practise what was then called sanitary engineering. In spite of saving millions of lives since then through improvements in drinking water safety and sanita tion, the achievements of our environmental professionals are largely unknown to the general public.

Sanitary, from the latin sanitas, means health - a good name, yet one seldom used by today's environmental pro fessionals.

— Tom Davey, speaking at Trent University, February 1996.

To Sandra,Steve,

and Penny

10

Noise pollution - music to woo certain maidens by.

Dozing off on a languid summer's day,I was brutally awak ened by the strident blasts of a car horn. Even in an age where drivers routinely honk away during their trivial pur suits, this acoustical vandalism was excessive. Now aroused,

still sleepy but angry,I confronted the driver, whose car held three youths clad in leather jackets. It was clear that this group would prove barren ground for society columnists; nor was it likely they could be found in the Canadian Who's Who.

An insolent smirk greeted my protest. "What do you think GM put this horn here for?" he leered. I replied that, according to various Highway Traffic Acts,they were instru ments of warning for emergencies,not mating calls for juve nile delinquents. Blows might then have been exchanged, but for the timely arrival of his girl friend.

When I saw the object of his acoustical entreaties,I con ceded to myself that his modus operandi was not entirely with out logic. A balcony and classical guitar might well be inap propriate to woo this particular maiden. Indeed,she looked like the sort of woman who might be won over by a car's brassy, single-note instrument, able to sustain 110 decibels on the 'A'scale for long periods. While this would not be a marriage made in heaven,these were louts clearly made for each other.

But noise pollution is not confined to boorish ruffians.

Many civilized people who profess their devotion to reli gion,as well as an affinity for the arts, often cause great pain and inconvenience to their neighbours by blasting away on auto horns at all hours. In dense urban concentrations, a

single thoughtless blast can disturb the sleep of hundreds of people,possibly at great social and financial cost to the comn

munity.

William Shakespeare accurately described sleep as "nature's sweet restorer." But it is a fragile healer. There are thousands of tired, nervous people who, having finally dropped off to sleep are jolted awake by the hooting horns and squealing tires of nocturnal motorists. Then there are babies, shift workers, and sick people, deservedly enjoying the healing balm of a daytime nap, only to be disturbed by the random use of an instrument that was specially designed to warn and alarm.

The problem appears to be increasing. Taxis now rou tinely show up in the early hours, soimding their horns to let fares know they have arrived; and it is becoming com mon for house guests to conclude their nocturnal farewells with two or three loud blasts as they drive away. Indeed, many intelligent people profess surprise when they leam that such practices are not only bad manners, but also illegal.

There is also an especially effective instrument of tor ture currently in vogue-the bulb-operated bicycle horn. For a mere five bucks or so,any energetic kid,simply by squeez ing a rubber bulb,can saturate an entire neighbourhood with a persistent yapping sound; it's the equivalent of poking thistles in the surrounding population's ear drums.

Lawn care also has become a persistent source of noise pollution that has grown dramatically in recent years. By itself, one gas powered lawn mower is bearable, but the cu mulative effect of several mowers can drench entire subdi

visions with industrial strength noise for several hours. If a new factory were to emit such protracted noise levels near a residential area, it is certain that indignant demonstrations would erupt at municipal offices.

More acoustical horrors have lately added to the bo tanical cacophony. These include gas powered lawn-edging tools, rotary grass trimmers, and - worst of all - leaf blow ers, which combine a jet-like whine with a raucous engine 12

noise. Quite often entire neighbourhoods are seriously dis turbed for quite trivial gardening chores. In an environmen tal audit, these three gardening activities would collectively total the biggest domestic nuisance for the least benefit.

Air pollution,too,from gas powered gardening equip ment can be surprisingly serious. Designers of an experi mental Saab,with a GM developed microprocessor,recently claimed there would be less air pollution driving this car across North America than operating a lawn mower for two hours.

Unnecessary noise pollution is a largely unrecognized problem. There are thoughtful parents who go to church, give to the United Appeal, and are generally solid citizens.

While they would be mortified if their children burped at the dinner table, they seem unaware of the pain and suffer ing noise inflicts on their fellow citizens through thought less actions.

There are tremendous financial costs to unnecessary noise. Years ago I visited the National Research Council in Ottawa to do a feature on sleep experiments being conducted there. Scientists told me that many people whose sleep is disturbed by noise pollution, frequently go into shallower, less desirable sleep patterns,without ever knowing that their slumbers had been disturbed. Next day they may wonder why they felt tired after a 'good night's sleep,' never realiz ing they were victims of unwelcome noise intrusion. It robbed them of a deep, health-restoring sleep,just as surely as if they had been burglarized.

If the real costs of absenteeism,lower productivity, and other health related effects of noise pollution were added up and published, I suspect there would be a national outcry against unnecessary and selfish practices. Any benefits that selfish individuals get from their cavalier honking are both minute and fleeting. Their effect on society is painful, pro longed and far-reaching.

13

Noise and chemicals can cause neurotoxicity

Articles, government sponsored ads, and public announce ments all warn of the dangers of second-hand cigarette smoke. But second-hand noise can also cause deafness,raise

pulse rates, disturb sleep,and seriously affect human health in diverse ways. Researchers at the Medical Research Council in Surrey, England, identified a link between noise and the brain's susceptibility to damage from toxic chemicals.

Dr. John Cavanagh first identified a potential link be tween sound and chemical neurotoxicity in rats. When rats were exposed to the chemical 1,3-dinitrobenzene(DNB)in a quiet environment,it caused barely any brain damage. DNB was markedly more damaging to the rats when also exposed to a moderately noisy environment. Rats developed fewer lesions when sound levels were reduced. Cavanagh's col league, Dr. David Ray,later wrote in MRC News that, when the rats were exposed once again to normal laboratory noise in both ears,lesions again appeared in areas previously pro tected from noise.

Support for their hypothesis has come from Brazil, where workers exposed to toluene (commonly used in in dustry) have been found to experience greater hearing loss and balance problems in noisy environments.

But casualties seem heaviest on the domestic scene. At

least protective gear is required for industrial workers. Do mestic residents, however,are scandalously unprotected. In the last six years,17 people in England and Wales were mur dered or committed suicide because of noise problems from neighbours. This probably represents the tip of the acousti cal iceberg as these are cases where noise was the official cause of the 17 deaths.

Professor Dylan Jones,a University of Cardiff psychol14

ogy professor, puts it this way: "Hearing is the sentinel of the senses. It keeps us on the alert, unlike sight, which switches off for eight hours of the day. It is adapted to listen for danger in the primevaljungle and is intimately connected to the arousal system. Soimd is very, very intrusive; it has privileged access to our thoughts."

In the UK,domestic noise complaints have risen by 390

percent to more than 88,000 a year. Lynne Edmonds, writ ing in the Daily Telegraph, says that noise is the scourge of city dwellers everywhere and getting worse. She says that it is loud music and barking dogs - rather than traffic, air craft noise, or trains - that drive apparently normal people to the brink of breakdowns or violence.

The 17 cases of death, detailed in the London Indepen

dent, were all based on loud music or barking dogs. Perhaps

the most pathetic was that of 47-year-old Valerie Edwards, who died of pneumonia in Bristol. She had been sitting in a park near her home for several nights in the cold and rain to avoid noise from her neighbour Jayne Burston. Her hus band had called environmental health officers 20 times in 18

months. Ms. Burston was charged with playing music too

loudly in defiance of three noise abatement notices. She was given a conditional discharge.

While the law has clearly failed to suppress unneces

sary noise, there is a chance that the teaching profession might succeed where police and government agencies have failed. Educators could teach that all intrusive noise stems

from habits which violate the ethics and manners of good

environmental practices. If this message is heard, we might yet be spared the mounting cacophony currently blighting most of our urban communities.

15

What about the voice appropriation of environmental professionals?

The world of arts and letters has entered a new area of con

troversy: voice appropriation, the very latest fashion in politi cal correctness. Apparently women should not appropriate the voices of men when they create fiction; black men should not capture the voices of white males; and presumably tall men should not write about short men.

If a picture can be worth a thousand words, then a re jected painting vividly illustrates the voice appropriation phenomenon. Artist Lyn Robichaud was told that,as a white woman,she "ought not to be painting coloured women at all."

Writers also received similar strictures.

The Canada Council, the closest thing to cultural na tionalization that we have, has examined the voice appro priation issue. One report stated that, while formal guide lines were not the answer, ''there should be a recognition that cultural appropriation is a serious issue and requires ongoing debate by staff, juries and advisory committees, as well as the artistic community at large."

As Canada Council juries judge funding applications, the directive is a compelling warning to those writers and artists who are not yet fully weaned from their state step mother.

Butthe cultural commimity is not without its own pow erful voices of reason. The voice appropriation issue received a brilliant rejoinder from the pen of Alberto Manguel, 1992 winner of the Canadian Authors'Association Award for his

novel News From A Foreign Country.

"Cutting out one person's tongue would not give an other a voice, but turns the silencer into a dictator," he wrote

in a Globe & Mail column prior to his award. He wrote that priests in ancient Egypt once held prerogatives on certain 16

that Chinese emperors had exclusive use of some colours, and that in Nazi Germany, Jews were forbidden to write about'German' subjects.

This moved me to ponder a possible ban on Charles Darwin-after all he was not a monkey,even though he based his Origin ofSpecies on the simians. Then my thoughts, too, began to evolve. I wondered about the staging of Hamlet, Shakespeare not being Danish; then we might stop reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,the author be ing English not Italian.

George Bernard Shaw, whose body of work included Saint Joan,for which he received the 1925 Nobel Prize in lit

erature, was a multiple voice appropriation offender, being neither female nor French. Worse still, he was actually an

Irishman with a superb command of English. He used his genius in Pygmalion when he created the cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle-a clear cut case of voice appropriation. Then, as if to rub it in to the cultural commissars, Pygmalion was

reincarnated in the Broadway and cinematic hit.My Fair Lady, giving Shaw several cultural canon law citations.

With his great love of phonetics and unmatched insights into language and dialects,Shaw was literally one of the great voice appropriators of all time. And he used his great liter ary gifts to campaign against war, poverty, social injustice and pomposity.

But has anyone ever commented on the voice appro priation of environmental engineers and chemists? For over two decades we have been subjected to a deluge of drivel about environmental matters. The spectre of polychlorinated

biphenyls(PCBs)has been repeatedly invoked to terrify so ciety about risks that usually bear little relevance to either epidemiology or toxicology.

In one case, media hype by British tabloids resulted in

a shipment of Canadian PCB wastes being rejected in Lon don. Like some voyage of the damned,the unfortunate ship 17

returned across the Atlantic to sail up the St. Lawrence. But violence erupted at Baie Comeau,as protesters tried to block

the PCBs from being returned to Canadian soil. Ironically, the PCBs probably posed a lesser threat to humans than the jostling crowds waving picket signs.

Protesters always seem blissfully unaware that the cars they drive contain chemical compounds which are far more toxic than PCBs. Benzene, for example, a known carcino gen, is but one of several toxic compounds found in gaso line. It is far more lethal than PCBs. When activists once

enquired which company had developed this deadly chemi cal, I had to tell them that actually God put it there. They were clearly aghast that no corporate villains were involved and probably more than a little disappointed in God. Benzene has also been found in drinking water in minute quantities. Indeed it is only through the skill of the analytical chemist that we can detect benzene at all in such

trace levels. It is possible, likely even, to ingest a thousand times more benzene in a single day from breathing down town urban air, than from drinking municipal water sup plies during the same period of time. Yet I have never heard any journalist put these health risks in perspective.

In spite of viewing countless hours of environmental TV coverage, I have seldom seen an engineer - other than a token academic - among the legions of talking heads com menting on ecological issues. And despite the millions of words written about dangerous chemicals,I have never heard a single analytical chemist quoted,or interviewed,in news paper articles or on TV. What we have seen on TV,ad museum,

are the viewpoints of certain media environmentalists, many of whom would be forbidden by law to operate, let alone design, pollution abatement facilities.

Environmental professionals have rightly concluded that their technical knowledge is best leavened by exposure to other,less focussed views. They have acknowledged that

their critics, including the arts fraternity, might well endow their scientific training with a broader, more ecosystemic vision. In short they feel they can learn from other 'voices'

and viewpoints. This willingness to hear other voices shows a wisdom and generosity of spirit that our cultural and me dia mandarins might well emulate.

Could anti-logging spiking be considered arboreal acupuncture?

Is it ethical for vegetarians to eat carnivorous plants? en quired a reader of The Guardian, a paper with a wickedly witty blend of writers and readers. This is a fascinating ques tion to those who feel Brits have always been more concerned with table manners than what's actually on the table,or even how well food is cooked. Some UK readers joined in the debate on botanical ethics with some sensitive advice. After

all, this is a nation where its explorers used to dress for din ner in the jungle; where Batman is an officer's personal serv ant, not a cartoon character.

Now that vegetarianism has gone from being a fad to a force there is increasing focus on the environmental impact of beef and mutton production. With their unerring pro pensity for the truly irrelevant, British writers leapt into the void with some witty advice on vegan dining room etiquette.

The first respondent advised that carnivorous plants might be eaten - but only in self defence. Another coun selled that eating plants, such as Dionaea muscipula, the Ve nus Fly Trap, might be construed as meat-eating by proxy.

"Vegetarians should seek to peacefully persuade these plants to give up their carnivorous habits." It was also suggested that Linda McCartney, wife of former Beatle Paul and now vegetarian entrepreneur, might be persuaded to endorse a range of nutritious 'bite-sized' veggie snacks, which vegans could drop into their fly traps, perhaps to wean them from eating live Beatles.

Prince Charles, too, was considered. He is not only re nowned as an eloquent environmentalist, but is reported to have actually talked to plants. While he would certainly add a regal presence to the cause,the Prince is more likely to be persuaded by a species named Camilia than a carnivo20

rous genus called Dionaea.

Feeling overwhelmed by now,I consulted an academic specializing in Rhetorical Bioethics. This is a brand new disci pline, which evolved from environmental protesters whose media manipulation influences Canadian political reaction far more effectively than scientific facts. The academic's face brightened when she heard that ethical concerns could emerge if people ate carnivorous plants. There might be a thesis or two in this; perhaps it's even frivolous enough to qualify for federal Green Plan funding,she thought.

After contemplating various aspects of eco-ethics, she invoked some cerebral Socratic postulations before posing her answers in a series of remorseless questions. If eating such plants is meat eating by proxy,surely eating meatfrom herbivores,such as cows and sheep,could be vicarious veg etarianism? Then what about the ethics of meat eating in sects, such as black flies or mosquitoes, who feed so vora ciously on us? What about the grass that sheep and cows consume, often causing serious soil erosion? In Australia, she stressed, fields have been damaged so much by sheep that the sheep have been called cloven footed locusts.

Vainly seeking to inject some reality into her arguments, I enquired about the ethics of activists who drive spikes in trees to stop logging? "After all, spiking can kill or maim loggers or sawmill operators," I said,confident that this was a real ethical issue, not an academic debating point.

Her reply was Swiftian in its response:"Spikes in trees could be construed as merely arboreal acupuncture," she said,neatly skewering my argument while reducing human suffering to a semantic abstraction. This sort of rhetorical obfuscation was clearly meat and drink to her. I now under stood why Socrates had been given the hemlock for his teach ing - only to realize that hemlock too,is classed as vegetable matter. Man felled by tree, so to speak.

More dialectics on bioethics ensued. She emoted a pro21

fusion offood-related metaphors,which she deftly entwined like DNA spirals around all links in the food chain. "Not

only our bodies,but our thoughts and even our national iden tity, all are shaped by the food chain," she intoned.

Her thesis was later linked to some prejorative

scribblings of a British reporter, Simon Mills of the London Sunday Times Magazine. Mills contemptuously dismissed Canadians as'cold soup.' "On a world menu,Canada would be \^chyssoise. It's cold,half-French and difficult to stir," he emoted haughtily. He probably thought the main Canadian contributions to his newspaper were the trees used in news print. But Canadian bark is better than his bite. 'Vichyssoise' Canadians, ranging from the Lords Beaverbrook and Thompson to Conrad Black,stirred themselves long enough to dominate many UK newspapers.

Delve anywhere into the carnivorous plant issue and it becomes apparent that the distinction between predator, in termediary, and quarry ultimately blends into singularities we call ecosystems. Now I am beginning to sound like a rhetorical bioethicist. Perhaps it's contagious.

The Globe & Mail also linked the UK reporter's insults

to food and national pride. The Globe urged its readers to be "tolerant and understanding of the inane spite that some times infects journalism in Britain - where what passes for cooking must sour even the sweetest temper."

Personally I don't think it's British cooking, but the

leaded gasoline that provoked his journalistic pique. The automotive soup that urban Britons breathe is not a meta

phorical \^chyssoise,but an actual toxic brew,which can have serious neurological effects on people. Perhaps this affected the reporter's temper more than British cooking. When I visited Britain recently, both unleaded gas and catalytic con verters were rarities, yet both environmental measures had been taken years ago by 'Vichyssoise' Canadians.

This brings the focus on carnivorous plant ethics full '>2

circle. It could be said we are also 'consuming' vegetable matter when we breathe the life-giving oxygen from trees.

The same trees later consume the carbon dioxide we exhale

which trees recycle into oxygen. Literally the cycle of life.

Some say that certain activists may soon refuse their welfare cheques because they were printed on paper made from sacred British Columbia trees. If this practice spreads to Ontario, we may yet have a budget surplus, and Premier Bob Rae's Social Contract may not be worth the paper it's written on.

Was it worth cutting down trees for these headlines?

A Globe & Mail reader Peter Coy wittily criticized a Globe headline on an article on child support tax (March 7). He suggested the headline writer might have written "Seafloor crushed" when the Titanic sank. This reminded me of a dis

cussion on how today's headline writers would react if the Titanic were to sink today which run: "Luggage feared lost as liner sinks" Globe & Mail

"Crew demand sex before passengers board life boats" Toronto Sun

"Star reporter saves kitten as huge liner sinks" Toronto Star

But none of this wonderfully speculative humor matched the reality of the Globe's March 5,1996 headline: "Sex education leaves teens groping in the dark" This brilliant headline on teenage sex might similarly endure over the centuries in locker rooms the world over.

23

Rent-A-Mob - Canada's free trade edge

While many feared that Canadian companies would be swamped with the size and expertise of US firms when the

NAFTA became a reality, Canadian supremacy is clearly emerging in one sector - the protest group business.

The first Rent-A-Mob franchise sprung up in Califor nia and,in true Canadian tradition,branch-plant operations quickly followed here. It is already clear that the Canadian genre is superior to parent operations in the United States.

There's even a downscale market option called Rent-a-Slob for really dirty protest situations.

Canadian Rent-A-Mob franchises now offer a full range of scientifically mixed groups, which can be blended to suit particular protest situations. Contentious environmental is sues in particular have become a lucrative source of busi

ness. Fully computerized protest operations now also offer precision-blended demographic options guaranteed to arouse media interest while applying maximum pressure on politicians. Placards, and other graphic aids used in pro tests, are available at reasonable rates.

'Extras' with largely non-speaking parts, who merely wave banners while grunting slogans(up to five monosyl labic words in length), are available at discount rates. For nuclear protests,'extras' are available wearing T-shirts bear ing such slogans as "2 - 4 - 6 - 5, we don't want to radiate!"

Clients are warned it could be unwise to ask these protest ers to actually count up to eight during TV interviews with out careful coaching.

Besides a wide range of provocative placards and ban

ners, other protest aids are available, including bottles of genuine Acid Rain. These are ideal for sprinkling on the steps of legislative buildings or multi-national headquarters.

24

So far they have proven irresistible to gullible TV camera men who shoot footage of these unholy baptisms with the mistaken idea that they are reporting hard news.

Some firms offer clean-cut, articulate, universityeducated protesters with larynxes skilled in the enunciation of scientific terms. Protesters who actually understand what they are saying are available for a small additional fee.

There's also a range of pious hypocrites who can positively drip with sincerity on any issue.

Other options may include an array of professorial dil ettantes with a capability of addressing complicated issues with an irritating manner-while speaking from a lofty moral plane. They usually come in a modishly dressed, meticu lously arranged,casual look of sandals, medallions and ex pensive woollens. Other options include tweed-clad gen teel types, mostly with affected English accents, which are guaranteed to put proletarian teeth on edge.

At the other end of the protest spectrum,a special breed of blue-collar rednecks has been recruited from louts in

volved in spectator fights at Toronto Argonaut football games. Their brief attention spans can result in a 'continu ous interruption mode' which quickly saps the intellectual energy of those trying to debate a reasonably balanced case to the public.

There is also a special breed of impassioned protester specially selected and trained in Quebec - who can add a most effective and convincing dimension to any protest situ ation. By combining the inherent Gallic verbal flair with the emotional Latin temperament, these groups can transform simple landfill hearings into events that resemble the storm ing of the Bastille. Canadian firms believe that this emo tional bonus gives them a definite edge over their counter parts in the United States.

Another Canadian plus can be found in British Colum bia where the protesters have especially muscular forearms, 25

capable of carrying heavy banners and placards for hours, without sign of fatigue. This capability evolved over gen erations of labour unrest and countless picket-line confron tations-a bonus feature offered withoutcharge to West Coast clients.

In the Prairies,special groups are trained at Winnipeg's Portage and Main area, giving them a winter endurance ca pability unmatched in North America. Designated as the Prairie survival mode, it gives an important psychological advantage in many campaigns. Research has shown that viewers often develop empathy with outdoor protests when watched on TV in the comfort of warm living rooms.

In the Maritimes, special options such as gnarled, weather-beaten fishermen are available. When posed against a picturesque backdrop such as Peggy's Cove, their softlyspoken statements, simply oozing with sincerity, make ex cellent protest material for projects involving big oil compa nies.

But Ontario is unrivalled in its range of petulant pro testers. Many have spent most of their lives in a university environment and are bonafide fiscal virgins; economic real ity has never ever penetrated them. Some of these are pro fessional students who have been on the public teat for so long their mouths have become 'O' shaped and are totally unsullied by the real world. The sheer abundance and depth of talent available in Ontario allows organizers to assemble large,impressive gatherings, which have had a high success rate in political intimidation.

These academic protesters can also be mixed with a

blend of malcontents, which may include specially selected hockey mothers, a deadly species of female found only in Canada. Some of these are leather-limged ladies with tung sten-tipped tonsils,capable of shrieks which can break wine glasses. This unique and powerful species,Hockus maternus,

evolved over generations of pre-dawn Pee Wee hockey 26

games. One man,after such a shrieking encounter,said that given a choice, he would rather be lacerated with barbed wire.

When precision timing is combined with a scientifically balanced, demographic mix of available protesters, the re sults inevitably attract news media more interested in col ourful presentations than intellectual substance.

In the majority of instances, such protests achieve a public awareness that is completely disproportionate to the merits of the issues. The ultimate irony is that all too often, noisy,single-issue, pressure-groups can impose their will on a quiet, complacent majority - all in the name of democracy.

WHEEL

"Where death is no longer natural and someone must be blamed"

- Margaret in Disneyland As a young journalist I was fortunate to meet Malcolm Muggeridge, then undeniably one of the most stylish writ ers in the English language. He was also one of Britain's best known debaters on television where his wit and elo

quence made him a formidable opponent.

With his scholarly style and incisive humour,the Cam bridge educated Muggeridge was a natural choice in the post war years to become editor of Punch,then world-renowned for its sophisticated humour. Yet in spite of being one of the best satirists in the English language, he had a surprisingly short tenure at Punch.

I asked him why he had quit this coveted post; after all, for a satirist to edit a satirical magazine was analagous to a glutton being assigned a restaurant column. He replied: "I resigned when I found that even the most humorous fan tasy I could devise would frequently be topped by some imbecilic event in real life."

His words came back to haunt me. Fed up with the antics of some extreme environmentalists, I had created a

totally fictitious Rhetorical Bioethicist, investing her with an extensive vocabulary of sanctimonious cliches commonly heard at environmental hearings.

Synchronicity struck when my son Steve phoned from Anaheim, California, where he was covering a Water Envi ronment Federation conference. To my amazement,he told me the keynote speaker was a real bioethicist, Dr. Margaret Maxey of The University of Texas. But unlike my fictitious character, who emoted cerebral nonsense like a Toronto art

critic. Dr. Maxey,a Professor of Biomedical Engineering,gave a powerful address loaded with incisive observations and 28

common sense.

She focused on "the apparent consumer move toward controlling less and less pollution, at greater and greater ex pense, until we are spending everything for nothing." The 1993 budget for(US)Federal environmental regulations,she went on, was some $562 billion, which was double the US

defence budget of 1992.

She attacked the hysteria which has plagued environ mental decision makers. "A common belief is that there is

no safe dose of any carcinogenic material; therefore there must be zero pollution. I ask you to consider this: death is no longer natural; death must have a cause; there must be someone to blame. This is the mentality that has caused a plethora of environmental laws," she said.

"Part of the cause is also the tyranny of safety. Is safety now our secular form of salvation? The ethical question is not how safe is safe enough, but how fair is safe enough?

The health of nations is directly linked to the wealth of nations," she said.

Sadly, the economic realities in Dr. Maxey's address seem to have been largely ignored. The US press is always complaining - justly in my view - about their bloated de fence budgets,the military paying hundreds of dollars apiece for aircraft toilet seats and claw hammers,for example. But how can the US media ignore billion-dollar projections for environmental regulations that are double that of military spending a year earlier? The story saw little ink or air time the week our staff was in California.

The final irony was the venue of Dr. Maxey's presenta

tion. She spoke atAnaheim,home to Disneyland,the world's first capital of fantasy. But can Washington and Ottawa be far behind Anaheim in the fantasy business? Malcolm Muggeridge was right. How can any satirist compete against the comedic realities inherent in the real life situations at

both nations' capitals? WEF delegates heard Margaret in 29

Disneyland giving sound fiscal advice. In both Washington and Ottawa we have fiscal policies more redolent of Alice in Wonderland.

I was only kidding In addition to my fictitious Rhetorical Bioethicist, I had men tioned that the British officers had personal servants whom they called batmen, a term unknown to young Canadians, except as the famous cartoon character.

Once again truth is stranger than fiction. The London Times recently recorded the demise of Colonel John Clarke, a much decorated British Army officer who parachuted be hind enemy lines intoYugoslavia during World War II. Boat ing down behind him, his faithful batman carried his mas ter's kit. This was the first jump Colonel Clarke had ever made,having evaded mandatory training by having his bat man take his place.

Landing in Yugoslavia,he served with Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean, Winston Churchill's son Randolph, and novelist Evelyn Waugh, all of whom became famous authors.

Much later, Randolph Churchill had a biopsy for a growth, which later proved non-malignant. Eveljm Waugh said how strange it was that medical science was able to find the only non-malignant part of Randolph -and then remove it! The quip amused Randolph who cabled Evelyn,a staunch Catholic, with an Easter message that read:"Have a happy resurrection."

Colonel Clarke was decorated by Tito for his services.

His maternal grandfather was Robert Whitehead, inventor of the Whitehead torpedo. In an unlikely environmental fi nale,the Colonel later became an expert on forestry and fish eries, serving for years as a fisheries advisor for the South ern Water Authority in England.

30

Have you heard these dirty stories about water?

Malcolm Muggeridge's observation that satirists cannotcom pete with government follies came to mind when I read of proposals to fund an environmental theme centre at the old Expo '67 site in Montreal. No comedic writer can compete with the imaginative plots of Ottawa's skilled wastrels. I suspect that deep in the labyrinths of Parliament Hill, there is surely a colony of bureaucrats who gnaw away like ter mites at all proposals containing even traces of fiscal respon sibility.

It was all the dead wood in the Senate that first brought termites to mind; but, as the senators had voted themselves

an additional $150 per day,simply for bringing their barely lukewarm bodies into the upper chamber,perhaps parasites is the more appropriate word. Regardless,it is clear that we can expect no sober second thoughts from the Senate on this latest federal lunacy.

Simply stated,the federal governmentfunded over $40 million on the former Expo '67 site islands. Amenities in cluded bicycle paths, parks and restaurants on Ste-Helene and Notre-Dame islands in the highly polluted St. Lawrence River.

But the centrepiece was scheduled to be a $17.5 million Water Interpretation Centre destined to become a permanent educational exhibition about water. Reports indicate funds for this centre may come from Ottawa's $3 billion environ mental Green Plan funds.

The NDP Environment Critic,James Fulton,said using Green Plan money this way would confirm his worst suspi cions: that the proposals are simply a way to spend money for partisan politics while raw sewage is still being dumped into the St. Lawrence. "Let's spend these millions cleaning 31

up the waters of the St. Lawrence, rather than cleaning up the image of the Tories," he said.

In addition to Environment Canada's $17.5 million,the

federal Industry department threw in $22.5 million while the City of Montreal forked out $17.4 million. This comes

on top of the $5 million contribution that former Industry Minister Benoit Bouchard donated earlier for the 'Just for

Laughs' Comedy Centre and Museum of Humour in Mon treal.

Increasingly, theatre is becoming an integral part of government. A year earlier it was the Museum of Comedy; this year the Water Interpretation Centre. I now suggest a sequel for next year: a musical comedy called The Federal Follies. What script-writers call a treatment, or production outline, is as follows:

In the Follies, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in his husky baritone - will do a Jay Leno take off before singing "Why Irish Eyes Aren't Smiling." Prime Minister Jean Chretien follows with repeated flip-flops without a trampoline, while Newfoundland's John Crosbie recites his entire French vocabulary - in microseconds. Then,in a re markable solo performance,Jacques Parizeau plays singles tennis, switching to both sides of the court with some nifty self-serving serves. Play is stopped repeatedly as he com plains the ball keeps landing on his territory.

Next in a parody of Gulf Military Strategy (CMS),exfinance minister Michael Wilson will show how his GST

'smart budget bombshells'can reduce a vibrant economy to rubble with economic implosions - without using a single bomb. Then our one-time Ambassador to France, Benoit

Bouchard, who bears more than a passing resemblance to the Flintstone's Barney Rubble, will demonstrate that the

federal government is clearly no skinflint with public money.

In the interval,former NOP leader Audrey McLaughlin will model some fashionable party lines, smartly cut from 32

discarded socialistic dogmas of the '50s.

In a rousing finale, the senators will march into the upper house in step to Verdi's Aida as they prepare for their daily battle with economic realities. Eloquent lyrics will pro claim a senatorial war on poverty as they pocket their per diems. Properly handled,the finale could combine spectacu lar theatre with a deeply religious experience, especially if the per diems are recited in the newly popular Gregorian Chant like some Latin rite. The public,if it cannot see its tax dollars at work, will at least be able to see them at play.

Meanwhile,the magnificent St. Lawrence River remains deeply polluted while millions are spent on theatricals in stead of remediation projects. Quebec needs the talents of AQTE - not Actor's Equity.

I often wondered why Canada never developed hu mour magazines likePunch,or satirical publications likePnvate Eye. Now it is crystal clear. Nothing, absolutely noth ing,could possibly be more hilarious than the verbatim tran scripts in Hansard. Malcolm Muggeridge, once again you are so right.

33

The courage, wit and elegance of Malcolm Muggeridge - writer par excellence I have always felt privileged to have met Malcolm Muggeridge when he was at the peak of his writing career.

His courage matched his wit and eloquence. Repeatedly his razor sharp critiques provoked national outrage as he wrote about the Queen, Winston Churchill, an assortment of pub lishers, politicians, prelates, and prattling academics.

His writing had been creating turbulence for decades in England. In the early '30s he and his wife Kitty - both enthusiastic socialists - had gone to live in Moscow. What he found appalled him. He smuggled out three series of articles in the UK diplomatic bag,outlining the widespread brutality and starvation he had witnessed. The articles were published in The Guardian on March 25,27, and 28,1933.

Decades later, Ian Hunter, the Canadian author of

Malcolm Muggeridge,A L^,wrote: For telling the truth about what he had seen,Muggeridge was villified, slandered,and abused in the pages of the Guardian and elsewhere... Sir John and Lady Maynard refuted his reports from their own per sonal observations saying:"It is exceptional to see the urban worker and his dependants looking otherwise than well fed and well clothed."

George Bernard Shaw, then as now an icon in English literature, and Sydney and Beatrice Webb, founders of the London School of Economics,were also united in their praise of the Soviet regime. Shaw said that Stalin "was subject to dismissal in ten minutes notice if he does not give satisfac tion." The Very Reverend Hewlett Johnson,Dean of Canter bury, praised Stalin's "steady purpose and kindly generos ity," while Harold Laski, a writer and political figure, com mented on "the scrupulous fairness of the political trials."

This elite trio of literature, religion,and politics was describ34

ing one of the greatest monsters in recorded history.

"Muggeridge was almost alone among correspondents who dared to tell the truth about what was happening in the Soviet Union. This was held against him in the years to come/' wrote Ian Hunter.

Sic Gloria Transit Mundi

Malcolm Muggeridge's humour was always mixed with scholarship and insight. Although the following Gloria Swanson headline, while not attributable to him,is the sort

of erudite humour he so often expressed.

When Gloria Swanson took sick in Rome and decided

to fly back to New York. A Rome correspondent is said to have cabled Sic Gloria Transit Mundi to his New York paper.

The real quote Sic Transit Gloria Mundi is boldly displayed in many Catholic Cathedrals and translates as"So does all Glory of the world pass away". It was written by Thomas a Kempis, a German monk,who was bom in 1380,20 years before the birth of Johann Guttenberg, the man who made both print ing and newspapers possible.

35

A great writer was felled by an early Punch

In 1849 a writer submitted an article to Punch magazine on the scandalous state of London's water supply. Titled Dread ful Hardships, the article, written by a young Charles Dick ens, was rejected. Punch,then a new publication, went on to garner world renown as a humorous magazine and cel ebrated its 150th year of continuous operation before expir ing during its sesquicentennial year.

Punch not only became noted for the quality of its arti cles but also for the writing skills of its editors. They in cluded Tom Taylor, author of Our American Cousin, the play Abraham Lincoln was watching when assassinated; A.A. Milne,author of Winnie the Pooh; and Malcolm Muggeridge, a celebrated spy, journalist, television celebrity, and one of the most elegant writers in the English language.

In spite of its illustrious editorial leadership. Punch failed to note the talents of the writer of Dreadful Hardships, Charles Dickens, who later became one of the luminaries of

English literature. His penetrating focus on social injustices, industrial working conditions and poverty, still have a pro found effect on the world. Interest in his work shows no

signs of slackening.

Punch lasted one-and-a-half centuries - a remarkable

achievement in the cut-and-thrust world of publishing where mortality rates for young publications are high. Punch's cir culation declined from a peak of 150,000 to around 30,000 before it finally expired. But the impact of Charles Dickens continues to grow, his reputation enhanced by movie and TV productions.

Films and TV plays of his great works show no sign of declining. After two masterly adaptations in film of his Tale ofTwo Cities, the story went on to enjoy great success in a TV 36

mini-series. And every year, hundreds of millions of people watch that perennial favorite, A Christmas Carol.

Ironically, Dickens' rejected piece. Dreadful Hardships, might have become one of his greatest works. The squalor and misery resulting from the water-borne diseases that rav

aged poor families in those days cried out for the masterly touch of Dickens. Thousands,especially babies, were slaugh tered by deadly but little known pathogenic organisms, the germs,parasites,and viruses which flourish in impoverished conditions.

Not only could Dickens have made great literature from these horrors,he might have invested it with a didactic qual ity, which would have alerted and educated people to the dangers of water-related sicknesses.

Regrettably, while the rejection slip survived,this work is probably lost forever. Had Punch not rejected his piece on London's water supply, the environment movement might have had one of the greatest pens in the world focusing on ecological issues- nearly one and a half centuries before the present media concern.

Was there, for example, a Mr. Bumble of the London

Water Works, denying a request for hypochlorite to disin fect the water to stay the march of typhoid and cholera? Or perhaps some smug character saying the city could not af ford piped water and sanitation to poor districts.

You think this is far-fetched fiction? Look at the facts in

Canada. In the late 1880s, the incidence of typhoid fever and other water-borne diseases was high in both Ottawa and Toronto. Well into this century, deaths from water-borne diseases were described as "astronomical" by the City of Toronto's Public Health Department. Indeed, even within

living memory,Toronto's death rateis have been higher than those of many major European cities.

Typhoid ran rampant in Ottawa also, but as the disease was usually confined to the lower class districts, civic offi37

cials showed little concern until epidemics swept across the capital in 1911 and again in 1912. Almost 2,000 people con tacted typhoid,with at least91 recorded fatalities in the capi tal.

The Chief Medical Officer of Ontario, Dr. J.W.

McCullough, investigated the first typhoid outbreak and blamed civic authorities for negligence in failing to provide a safe water supply for the capital.

A second enquiry concurred that the authorities had been negligent. A report submitted by Dr. Charles A. Hodgetts, a medical advisor to the Commission of Conser vation,said the 1911 Ottawa typhoid epidemic "could have been obviated had the hypochlorite (disinfection) treatment

been installed forthwith" as recommended by an engineer ing consultant, Allan Hazen.

Dr. Albert Edward Berry, a renowned Canadian water treatment scientist and engineer,was only a youngster when these epidemics were sweeping many parts of Canada. They made an indelible impression on him for he was to dedicate his life to the eradication of water-borne diseases.

When he died in 1984 in London,Ontario,at the age of 90, he was probably the most honoured environmental pro fessional in the world. Even in retirement,the World Health Organization had asked him to visit the Third World as a

water and public health consultant. His many honours in clude the Order of Canada, an honorary degree from the University of Toronto,and countless awards from the Ameri can scientific fraternity.

He fought tenaciously for safe drinking water and sani tation facilities when he was appointed director of Sanitary Engineering for the Ontario Department of Health. I spent a day at his home in St. Marys,Ontario, when he recounted his investigations of regular epidemics of TB, typhoid and other lethal diseases. Cholera, too, was common.

When his recommendations for safe water processes 38

were ignored by municipalities. Dr. Berry issued mandatory orders for water supplies to be disinfected. Even then, many politicians baulked at the costs. He recounted one instance where an entire council resigned,rather than obey the order to disinfect the town water. Many times Dr. Berry forced councils to clean up drinking water supplies several dec ades before the modern environmental movement began.

As in Ottawa,the diseases were often in working class districts and many civic leaders had little concern for their plight, a familiar scenario in Dickens' novels.

Undoubtedly there were even more horror stories of death and disease in the squalor of London when Charles Dickens submitted his article to Punch in 1849. His penchant for lurid details of squalid conditions, combined with his masterly characterization of pompous officials, would have surely made his rejected article on London's water supply fascinating reading.

Coincidentally, the year that Punch rejected Dickens'

article, a remarkable discovery occurred in Broad Street in London where people were dying of cholera. Not even the science of the day linked drinking water with cholera, and lethal epidemics were common in those times.

But Dr. John Snow deduced that some 90 deaths could

be traced to a contaminated well serving the area. He boldly broke the pump handle, preventing people from using the well for drinking water. The epidemic stopped.

Dr. Snow's decisive act is a benchmark in the science of

epidemiology. While he did not discover the true cause of cholera, he proved beyond question that this lethal disease could be transmitted through drinking water. His simple experiment was part of a train of events which in the end controlled the epidemics of cholera, dysentry, and typhoid, the great killers of the day in Europe and North America.

Regrettably these diseases still slaughter thousands in the Third World.

39

Many manuscripts have been rejected by thoughtless editors and publishers. Orwell's Animal Farm,for example, was repeatedly rejected before it was accepted. It then gave Orwell enough financial support to embark on his epic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Something went awry in publishing when Dreadful Hardships was submitted; it could hardly have been lack of writing talent,for the rejected author became a giant of Eng lish literature. Had the writing skills of Dickens been com bined with the scientific prescience of people like Dr. John Snow,the environmental movement might have started over a century earlier.

NB. Punch folded in 1993 after 150 years of operation.Ironi cally, the magazine had rejected several other editorial sub missions from Charles Dickens. Punch also published the now famous Remembrance Day poem. In Flanders Fields, written by Major John McCrae, a doctor and soldier with the Canadian Field Artillery. The poem, which became in ternationally renowned,had a typically Canadian omission - it carried no by-line.

As this book was going to press, plans to revive Punch in 1996 were announced in London,England.

40

Was Greenpeace a 'David'armed with a media AK-47?

Was Greenpeace an environmental David fighting a corpo rate Goliath when it fought Shell's decision to dump its Brent Spar oil storage rig in the Atlantic in 1995, or did it pack an AK-47 instead of a slingshot?

One thing emerged with startling clarity - Greenpeace manipulated some of the best minds in British journalism during the Brent Spar furore. When 14 Greenpeace protest ers were expelled from the oil storage rig,nine reporters were ejected with them,an astonishing ratio as well as revealing an unprecedented collusion of activists and journalists. The resulting TV footage was more redolent of a James Bond

movie than coverage of an environmental issue worthy of serious scientific debate.

Some of Britain's top TV executives now think they were 'had' by Greenpeace and they blame themselves, not the activists. Executives at the 1995 National Television Festival

in Edinburgh said that broadcasters were'bounced'into giv ing Greenpeace favourable coverage in its successful cam paign to prevent the Brent Spar being dumped in the ocean.

Greenpeace's media offensive-including the provision

of dramatic film footage of its invasion and occupation of the Brent Spar - resulted in one-dimensional coverage by BBC TV and its commercial counterparts,delegates were told.

Richard Sambrook,the editor of BBC newsgathering,said "I think in some sense over Brent Spar we were 'had' we need to wake up. There was never enough distance between

ourselves and the participants. Greenpeace had spent ap proximately ÂŁ350,000($700,000 CON)on TV equipment and feeds,far more than the BBC could have afforded."

Greenpeace runs a 24-hour news operation equipped with its own film crews, editing suites and satellite technol41

ogy, the festival was told. David Lloyd, Channel 4's senior commissioning editor of news and current affairs,said:"On Brent Spar we were 'bounced'. News organizations took great pains to present Shell's side of the argument, but by the time the broadcasters tried to intervene with scientific

analyses,the story had,by then,been spun,far,far into Green peace's direction."

He related how the pictures provided by Greenpeace showed plucky activists in helicopters flying into a fusillade of water cannons and noted the difficulties of "writing ana lytical science" into such a scenario.

The Edinburgh meeting took place as a Greenpeace flo tilla was en route to the Mururoa atoll in a bid to stop nu clear weapons testing in the Pacific. But the French navy, unlike Shell, were oblivious to the media coverage. Activ ists were arrested, vessels seized and the nuclear weapons tests continued.

While Greenpeace lost the initial bout with the French Navy, the international furore almost certainly made it the ultimate winner in public opinion polls. Some confronta tions with armed sailors were reported live by BBC TV jour nalists aboard Greenpeace vessels. They drew world-wide sympathy for the protesters along with intense hostility to French President Jacques Chirac.

But the sober second thoughts and self doubts expressed

by British television experts over the Brent Spar incident are long overdue. Their concern may herald new media trends where scientific veracity takes precedence over colourful stunts and eye catching demonstrations. Many staged events contribute little to public understanding of complex issues yet are irresistible to the media.

Yet would any doctor diagnose the state of a patient's health because of a perceived ability to rappel down high buildings? The very question is absurd yet many political decisions have been based on such idiotic reasoning. It is no 42

exaggeration to say that hundreds of millions have been wasted in the fruitless pursuit of ideological solutions to eco logical problems. Just two examples can show how millions were squandered.

For example,the Ontario Waste Management Corpora tion cost $140 million in 14 years without treating a cupful of liquid wastes. OWMC survived conservative, liberal and NDP governments before it was chopped by the Mike Harris government. But the conservatives,in effect, merely carried out a death sentence pronounced earlier by the NDP cabinet

when it rejected OV^C's incineration proposals early in 1995.

Then there was the Interim Waste Authority,created by the NDP to seek garbage disposal sites. IWA cost taxpayers some $80 million without a single bag of garbage being in

terred. It too was promptly disposed of by the conserva tives.

While environmental assessments should consider all

possibilities,incineration was not an option during the NDP's environment ministry. Rigid anti-incineration mindsets by activists have contributed to many expensive fiascos.

Our environment is too important, our economy too

fragile, for complex environmental issues to be decided on antics better suited to the circus than the political arena. It is

one thing to be entertained by the frolics of circus clowns; it is altogether another thing to take their advice seriously.

43

McMillan replays Macbeth. There's no biz like ecological show biz OTTAWA-The federal government is planning to spend $1 million in a week-long promotional blitz "to make peo ple aware of the environment." Federal Environment Minister Tom McMillan interrupted talks in Washington to take a government jet to Quebec where a $200,000 song commemorating the event was being recorded. Hot air balloons will be launched from Parliament Hill in cel ebration.

-News item.

News of such lavish funding stimulated my creative juices.

I immediately flew to Disneyworld on the Rideau and out lined my plans for an environmental extravaganza to a highranking civil service mandarin. A centimetre-long finger nail, denoting her rank, was being carefully tended by a bi lingual male manicurist while she read a pension booklet.

As I presented my proposal,she was so overcome,she mo mentarily stopped gloating over her indexed pension plans and listened attentively.

My scenario opens in total darkness at Niagara Falls.

Suddenly the blackness is broken by a giant image of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, flashed onto the Horseshoe Falls like some

immense aquatic drive-in screen. He shrugs nonchalantly, then, in both official languages, murmurs: "Apres-moi le deluge"- after me the deluge. His image then dissolves into the falls.

Suddenly a searchlight cuts a swath in the darkness across the river to the Love Canal chemical dump. A coven of witches can be seen stirring at a hideous pool of slime oozing from this toxic site. Hundreds of tonnes of toxins have leached into the Niagara River system from at least 28 US dumpsites. The leachate contains arsenic, cyanide, 44

dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls, and benzene.

The situation cries out for advanced toxicology engi neering, and the application of hydrogeological sciences to curb the ecological menace. But this is show business, fed eral style,so engineers are discarded in favor of actors - and

scientific formulae abandoned in favor of slogans. The witches cackle and chant as if in some macabre Macbeth scene:

"Bubble bubble, Bradley's in trouble."

The lights then play on a craggy cliff overlooking the gorge. Swords flash and athletic figures leap with balletic grace as federal environment minister Tom McMillan duels with Jim Bradley, his provincial counterpart. In the dark ness, the searchlight adds drama to the sword play over that most terrible of political feuds, a jurisdictional dispute.

Bradley appears to be definitely getting the upper hand then the crowd screams as he slips on a perchloroethylene blob and plunges into the gorge. The subliminal message is clear: in McMillan's Macbeth,slogans aided by powerful fed eral grants will always triumph.

The crowd stays hushed in the darkness. Then the lights gradually come on, focusing on a long line of emaciated young people shuffling dispiritedly along the cliff top be hind a band playing Chopin's Funeral March. They repre sent the army of graduate students being denied funding for studies in meaningful environmental rehabilitation. One million dollars could fund scores of Master's and Ph.D the

ses which would benefit our fight against ecological con tamination. The tragic trek along the gorge represents the fiscal futility of the Environment Week.

Following them would be a parade, not unlike the an nual May Day event once held in Moscow's Red Square. But

these floats contain an array of electron microscopes, gas chromatographs, flowmeters and other environmental re search and treatment hardware, instead of military equip ment. Any single piece of equipment displayed could liter45

ally be had for a song,at least at Environment Canada rates.

By this time the Ottawa mandarin was ecstatic. "I've never seen such a creative waste of public money, even by our standards. Frankly I thought such days were over when Mr. Trudeau left office. But this...this gives us hope." She was clearly overcome,but recovered to ask about my finale.

Encouraged,I warmed to my final outline.

With the parade gone, I continued, the entire Niagara Gorge will then be lit up with powerful arc lights. Scores of young people from Energy Probe, Greenpeace, and Pollu tion Probe will parachute down to earth from the colourful array of hot-air balloons. Apparently some of them have never experienced a true down-to-earth feeling before.

Meanwhile the Environment Week song rises to its expen sive crescendo. To add excitement and drama as the para chutists leap from balloons,it will be announced that all the 'chutes were packed by eager volunteers from Ontario Hy dro and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

Then, with the crowd at fever pitch, the lights will dim and the majestic head and shoulders of Brian Mulroney is projected on the Niagara Falls, for what is now the world's biggest aquatic movie screen. His husky baritone voice drips with sincerity as he delivers this final message to the crowd, his image being projected on the magnificent vista of the highly polluted falls: Plus que ga change, plus que c'est la meme chose.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

46

Are environmentalists green or pink? The inside story In British Columbia, environmentalists are often compared to watermelons - green on the outside, pink on the inside.

Not so in Ontario. Lacking EC's benign climate, a curious political mutation seems to have occurred. Ontario cabinet ministers reversed the order, being pink on the outside and very, very green on the inside.

The mutant species seems to have occurred after a po litical genus, known as the Big Blues, were dominant for 40 years. They were affectionately known by geneticists as the Big Blue genes. This was an ironic label as they were more like stuffed shirts. Then, without warning,the Big Blue PCs were overcome by a species known as Peterson Reds, nick named after the Liberals' election colours and ex Premier Peterson's necktie.

Peterson Reds, politically comatose for years, except for some fake indignation during question periods, exploded into political life, when elected, like bacteria in a cholera outbreak. With their natural enemies laid low and the politi cal balance of nature disturbed,Peterson Reds thrived might ily for seven years. Big Blues became an endangered species.

David Suzuki was alerted immediately and Spain and Por tugal were ordered to stop catching 'Blues' until stocks re covered. Some geneticists, with a touch of gallows humour, were unable to resist the sartorial link, renaming the genus the Faded Blue Genes.

When entrenched in office, the Peterson Reds had lived

up to their name by flooding Ontario with red ink through profligate spending. Had they been using water on the same scale, environmental assessments would have been needed.

But they were following the well established deficit tradi tions of the federal Liberals whose leader, Pierre Elliott 47

Trudeau, could paralyze fiscal critics with a simple shrug.

He tried to bind the nation together by issuing government bonds. Now we are held in bondage to foreign banks.

The Peterson Reds, following the federal Liberal tradi tion, continued to bribe the electorate with its own money.

They then consulted the pollsters and called an early elec tion. A bad move. They would have done better to have consulted the entrails of a chicken, much as Roman politi cians did two millenia earlier. The term 'gut feeling' is be lieved to have emanated from this practice. Not for the first

time, the pollsters turned out to be false prophets. The Peterson Reds were eviscerated, following the Big Blues into political oblivion when Bob Rae's NDP Pinks swept in with a massive majority.

It was the start of the Brave New World that Aldous

Huxley had predicted. The NDP's first Environment Minis ter, Ruth Grier, proudly proclaimed that every Ontario cabi net minister would also be a minister of the environment in

a new and glorious green government. With the NDP we could have bread and circuses, be politically correct, pure of heart, rescue decaying industries with cash infusions, win money in government casinos and watch the economy grow.

After his surprising win in 1990, Bob Rae required po litical plastic surgery which would transform him from an acerbic critic to provincial statesman. As premier. Bob Rae promised with great fanfare to enforce strict standards of conduct for his cabinet "which would herald a new era of

political integrity." There were to be no commercial consid erations to taint socialist idealism in this brave new cabinet.

The premier's clarion call became increasingly off-key in the wake of various scandals and cabinet resignations, as excabinet ministers began to total a sizeable alumni.

48

Honestly, I'm lying - my political career depends on it I was vividly reminded of Premier Rae's proclamation of cabinet integrity when Ontario Northern Affairs minister, Shelley Martel, proclaimed that she really had told the truth when she said she had lied. She later 'proved'she had lied through polygraph tests. Most politicians reluctantly admit it when their deceptions are revealed. Ms. Martel used high technology to proclaim her lack of veracity, perhaps starting a new fashion in machine enhanced distortions.

The furor began after Ms. Martel claimed she had seen the file of Sudbury dermatologist Dr. Jean-Pierre Donahue, who, she said, was to face charges over his OHIP billings under the Ontario government health plan. The NDP has great difficulties differentiating between MD's billings and actual salaries, probably because they have undiagnosed collective innumeracy. Perhaps they should see a doctor about it. Later the minister apologized to Dr. Donahue,claim ing she had fabricated the story of seeing his file.

This is the most unlikely political farce since John Profumo, when British minister of defence, shared the fa

vours of Christine Keeler with a Russian spy. But unlike Ms. Martel, who clung tenaciously to her office, British cabinet ministers (in the mother of all parliaments) promptly resign when even minor breaches of ministerial integrity, or im proprieties are revealed. Another character in the Profumo scandal. Dr. Stephen Ward, committed suicide during later court proceedings.

Working in London, I was able to be in court during parts of the trial at the Old Bailey. The trial was much like the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995.1 still can vividly recall seeing Keeler's friend, Mandy Rice Davies, who was involved in the case, being interviewed by BBC TV on the courthouse 49

steps. Scandal, a film depicting Christine Keeler's life, was released on video recently. Christine Keeler has ended up quite poor in middle age,living in a council housing project while her friend Mandy ended up quite well off. Late 1994, it was confirmed that Ms.Keeler's Russian lover had indeed

been a spy, proving that political farces are virtually nonbiodegradable.

The British public might have tolerated their defence minister having an adulterous liaison; they might have shrugged off the unlikely fact that their defence minister was unknowingly sharing his mistress with a Russian spy; but the fact he had lied in the House of Commons about the

affair was more unforgivable than his sexual antics. So he did the honourable thing and left British politics for good.

His wife, film actress Valerie Hobson,steadfastly stayed by her husband, so the event ruined a theatrical as well as a

political career. But Profumo did the adult thing about his adultery by his resignation. Far from emulating Profumo's tragic but politically correct break with politics, Ms. Martel clung to her cabinet post with the tenacity of a zebra mussel.

The fact that she, a minister of the crown, resorted to a lie

detector test to actually prove she lied will surely enter the Guiness Book of Records one day.

It is interesting that she managed to stay in Cabinet for some three years in two Cabinet folios, while John Kormos, whose indiscretions included posing (fully clothed) for the Toronto Sun as a 'Sunshine boy,' was booted out of the cabi net by Premier Rae. While naive and politically incorrect perhaps, Kormos's action was at most a minor pimple on the body politic compared to the Martel affair, which badly

tainted Premier Rae's NOP government. Shelley Martel's lie -flaunted as a defence to save her career as Minister for North

ern Development - gives Canadians clear superiority in chutzpah record books. Could Punch,Private Eye,or evenMfld magazine have dreamed up a farce like this? It's doubtful.

50

While reason sleeps, monster landfill sites are breeding The garbage 'crisis' makes for perfect television. Screeching seagulls wheel amid the bulldozer blades moving endless mountains of garbage.

Cut to the reporters solemnly intoning their banal com mentaries like extras in a tragic farce. "Canada," they repeat ad museum,"is rapidly running out of landfill space."

Wrong. Dreadfully wrong. Insanely wrong. Canada is

running out of agricultural land,not landfill space. The avail ability of landfill space is more a matter of politics than geol ogy, says the renowned British magazine The Economist. It quotes the startling calculations of Clark Wiseman of Gonzaga University in Washington state, who estimates that if the United States produces municipal solid waste at present rates for the next 1,000 years, the whole lot will still be con tainable in a space 100 yards deep and 30 miles square. While clearly the US cannot use a single landfill, the 48 contiguous states have three million square miles between them, which hardly suggests America will face a landfill crisis.

These numbers should at least put the 'garbage crises'

in perspective. If nothing else, they should divert the media feeding frenzy to some other area where they could do less damage. Public misinformation on garbage is costing mil lions.

Canada,needless to say, has far more land than the US, with only 10 percent of its population. But even Canada has no arable land to waste on needless landfills. Dr. Ed Man

ning wrote in 1984, when head of Environment Canada's Land Analysis Division, that 37 percent of Canada's Class One agricultural land and 15 percent of Class Two land might be seen on a clear day from a vantage point the height of the CN Tower. These astonishing-figures did not include land 51

which was already urbanized, prior to 1967, which would revise the percentages sharply downwards.

Dr. Manning also quoted a 1971 study showing that 43 percent of the value of agricultural production in Canada came from within 80 kilometres of the centres of 22 major metropolitan areas. He noted that while Canada occupies the second largest area of any nation on earth,the amount of our Class One agricultural land is smaller than the province of New Brunswick.

The myth of a huge fertile landmass was confirmed by former Liberal Environment Minister John Roberts in 1981.

He told the American Association for the Advancement of

Science that a mere six percent of our land mass is arable.

As massive urbanization projects have taken place since then, the available arable land figures must surely be revised downwards. It might take 10,000 years to make a few inches of fertile soil and ten seconds for a bulldozer to destroy it for millenia.

By the end of 1994, the Ontario Interim Waste Authority (IWA) had spent some $80 million to locate new landfills at three sites in some of the best agricultural areas in Canada - one, incidently, sited over a large aquifer. An other $15 million was budgeted to defend the IWA choices at hearings for the three proposed sites at Pickering, Vaughan and Caledon.

By climate and location,these areas are ideally situated to feed Canada's largest urban commimity with stock and crops. Yes I know that many fertile farms currently lie fal low because land around Metro Toronto is worth more as

building lots than cropland; but the population is growing and farmland in good climates is shrinking rapidly.

There is already a valuable resource that can accommo date the garbage - a barren worked-out mine at Kirkland Lake,Ontario. Preliminary hydrogeological studies indicate this mine is ideal for accepting garbage. Prudently, Metro 52

Toronto put an option on the mine site as a garbage disposal possibility and renewed the option early in 1995.

There is a similar situation on North Vancouver Island,

where a worked out mine is being proposed as a landfill site that could handle Vancouver-area garbage for approximately 150 years. Imagine, no landfill space to worry about until about 2144? Moreover,the BC site will be engineered to gen erate recoverable quantities of methane, which would pro vide clean power for industries, yielding both energy and economic benefits.

All organic municipal garbage generates methane, which becomes a 'greenhouse gas' promoting global warm ing. The BC site, like one working currently in Pickering, just east of Toronto, will be especially designed to recover the gas in a reuseable form, providing clean energy for in dustries.

But the Ontario Ministry of Environment and Energy resolutely sticks by the NOP edict that communities must

deal with their own garbage. The dogma was pronounced

by Ruth Grier,the first NOP environment minister. And even

after she was recycled into the health folio, her policy was maintained by her successor Bud Wildman.

This absurd premise ignores the fact that all three of the proposed new dumps are actually well outside the Metro Toronto boundaries and the IWA proposals will constitute a

defacto export of garbage. They get over this by saying the three dumps will be in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), an area which in fact does not exist politically. There is no GTA mayor,councillors or other representatives to be voted in or out. One might argue:"No garbage without representation."

As health minister, Ruth Grier does not insist that only Metro Toronto residents may use Metro's hospitals. There are, thankfully, no medical ghettos to parallel her environ mental ones. Seriously ill people are not stopped at Metro's boundary and told to get treatment where their sickness be53

gan. Metro's factories, shops and restaurants continue to get their raw materials, agricultural produce and finished goods from all over the world.

Why should garbage not enjoy the same freedom of movement as these 'imported' goods - after all doesn't gar

bage contain the basic constituents with the molecules rear ranged? Why shouldn't the residuals of these world-wide imports be directed on the logical basis of economic, agri cultural and environmental benefits- not on baseless politi

cal doctrines that are unsupported by scientific reality?

The NDP is always promoting the idea of rail as being more environmentally benign than vehicular traffic - but only for people it seems. Yet if the IWA succeeds, the con

cept of a 600 kilometre rail trip to Kirkland Lake will be aban doned. As well as the megadumps, many scenic rural com munities will be further blemished by hundreds of diesel trucks,their exhausts belching as they daily criss-cross some

of the most picturesque parts of Canada.

Europeans scoff at our so-called garbage crises. Caesar Augustus said he found Rome a city of bricks but left it a city of marble. Italians now fill their empty quarries with rubbish. Augustus also said "that which was well done is quickly done." Something to think about as the hearings and court challenges drag on.

Britain, with more than double our population living

on a fraction of our land mass, has long used abandoned mines to dispose of its rubbish. Clay pits, for example, can

make ideal, impermeable garbage dumps. Quite often gar bage is disposed of in the very pits which provided the clay, to make the bricks, which built the towns, which generate

the garbage - a perfect recycling option spanning several generations.

The estimated $80 million dollar venture by Ontario's

Interim Waste Authority to put dumps in Caledon,Vaughan, and Pickering is only a down payment on this economically 54

and environmentally disasterous exercise. Opponents seem willing to put up substantial financial resources to fight the Interim Waste Authority. York Region alone has budgeted a reported $800,000 for the hearings and another $500,000 to mount simultaneous court challenges. No doubt the other

affected jurisdictions will also be forced to invest heavily in this fiasco.

It was heart-rending to see Health Minister Grier slash

hospital services while millions are needlessly frittered away on the environmentally illiterate legacies from her term as environment minister. Her obduracy, and that of her suc cessor,is proving costly for a province drowning in red ink.

Ironically, the millions being wasted on megadump propos als could have maintained many of the medical services she shut down because of lack of funds.

The Regions involved hope to delay action on the dumpsites until the next provincial election. Their strategems may well work. Both Liberal opposition leader Lyn McLeod and Tory leader Mike Harris have promised to dump the entire IWA selection process if elected.

As the Spanish painter Goya noted: "The sleep of rea son breeds monsters." These days reason seems comatose in Queen's Park as three monster landfill sites are planned while an obvious solution remains barren and empty.

Mike Harris' Conservative government scrapped the IWA shortly after sweeping Bob Rae's NOP government out ofpower June 8,1995.

55

Solace in Blunderland as Red Queen gets Health folio

I was delighted to leam that Ruth Grier was recycled from environment to health minister in Premier Rae's first major

Ontario cabinet shuffle. She had repeatedly rejected pro

posals to dispose of Metro Toronto's garbage in a disused open mine at Kirkland Lake,where some 170jobs might have been created in an area of high unemployment.

"Municipalities mustlook after their own garbage,"she said, while insisting that Regional mimicipalities, adjacent to Metro Toronto but politically autonomous, must accept Toronto's garbage.

The proposed new landfill sites comprise some of the best,and incidently some of the most beautiful farmlands in Canada. By contrast, the Kirkland Lake site is a barren, worked-out mine. Preliminary hydro-geological studies in dicated the mine was ideal for accepting rail-transported

garbage from Metro Toronto, which had spent $5.6 million looking for a new dump and putting an option on the mine site.

Ironically, within months Mrs. Crier's policies resulted in Metro Toronto losing some $225 million in tipping fees, because she refused to stop private firms shipping garbage

to cheaper dumps in the US. While the exports went on,she was adamant that the adjacent Regions become repositories for Metro's rubbish as "municipalities most look after their

own garbage." As Alice once said, it gets "curiouser and curiouser."

This is the same NDP government that opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement in its mission to pro

tect Canadian jobs. So far the Province has spent tens of millions searching for new dump sites in Regions that vehe mently resist them. Simultaneously, Grier denied the real 56

job creation benefits the Kirkland Lake site would bring to an area that badly needs them.

When Ruth Grier became Ontario health minister, I

wondered if she would insist that Toronto's hospitals accept only those patients who became sick within Metro's borders?

In his classic Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll created

the Red Queen, now cited the world over as the epitome of convoluted reasoning. While now out of the environmental

folio, Ruth Grier still holds a cabinet position that must give her some solace in the NDP's blunderland.

Horror stories of past obscured by images of rustic living Science, chemistry, and engineering were the cutting edges of the Industrial Revolution which was undeniably brutal.

Child labour, worker exploitation, dangerous working con ditions, all were part of this revolution which reshaped our world forever.

Charles Dickens brilliantly captured the urban squalor in his fiction 150 years ago. More recently, social scientist Peter F. Drucker,in his 1994 essay,"The Age of Social Trans formation," wrote that while industrial workers were indeed

paid poorly at first, they were still paid better than farm or household workers. Moreover factory workers worked

specified hours, unlike servants and farmers who were of ten kept working at the whim of employers. Drucker notes that infant mortality rates dropped immediately when farm ers and domestic servants moved into factory work.

It should be added that technology led directly to the

emancipation of women as knowledge and intellectual skills increasingly displaced brute muscle power in the industrial marketplace. Ultimately,the development of a skilled work ing class, along with the wealth generated by mass produc tion, freed a long-abused rural class from centuries of mis ery and deprivation. The development of canals, roads, ships, railways, and planes increasingly slashed the costs of food, goods, and services in economies previously serviced by pack horses and camels.

To the economies of scale were added the economies of

scope, as advances in transportion technology rivalled that of manufacturing. A pack horse carrying cotton goods to Liverpool could only haul about 60 kilograms as it wound along Lancashire's hilly terrain. The same horse pulling a canal barge could move several tonnes directly into the great 58

port. Indeed, it was a canal that converted Manchester, an

inland city, into a port with a global reach. The barges later brought back foods from around the world to feed the factory workers,completing a cycle in the revolution that was to en circle the world. Fifty percent of Britain's economic growth since the Industrial Revolution was due to better nutrition,

according to economist and Nobel laureate Robert Fogel.

But nutrition alone does not always lead to better health.

Increasingly, the crowded slums around the factories led to

lethal outbreaks of disease until the development of sani tary engineering drastically improved public health. Those diseases, which tragically are still endemic in the Third World, are now found only in the history books of modern societies, a direct benefit of the Industrial Revolution.

But perhaps the biggest benefit is the one most over

looked: that democracy usually displaces despotism when citizen empowerment replaces feudal systems. The dynamic that gave the workers manufacturing skills, also gave them political power. Drucker notes pointedly that the three great destroyers of our age. Hitler, Stalin and Mao, produced ab solutely nothing in their lifetimes, except wreckage.

Ironically, technology is often contemptuously abused by ill-informed critics who seem totally unaware of their his torical debt to science and technology. To these people, the works of the remarkable Frenchman, Fernand Braudel,

should be required reading. Conventional history tells us much about pharoahs, caesars, kings, and queens but sur prisingly little about the lives of average people. In 1589, George Puttenham, a major figure in Elizabethan English literature, wrote:"The good and the bad of princes is more exemplary and thereby of greater moment than private per sons." And so it was that most histories were focused, work

ing people being virtually ignored. But in his books such as Structures of Everyday Life, the French historian rectified this

historical vacuum by showing how ordinary people lived 59

and worked over the ages.

Braudel weaves an intricate tapestry from historical facts,

which dispels many ofthe romantic illusions thatsome youth ful environmentalists have of pre-industrial society. He ig nores the more regal focus of his historical contemporaries and deals with such fundamentals as births, marriages, and

life expectancies of earlier societies. Also examined are en ergy sources and uses, economics, social change, and urban ization-all areas commonly neglected by orthodox historians.

Many ecologists emotionally link acid rain with Blake's Satanic Mills and now regard all industry and technology with deep suspicion. Braudel's findings would undoubt edly shock some of our environmental zealots with their sus

picions of, and deep seated resistance to, science and tech nology. In pre-industrial societies, millions laboured in ap palling conditions so that a few might live in luxury. Even at the turn of the century it was said that Britain was heaven for 30,000 people while being a hell for 30 million.

Braudel's research, however, reveals that even the rich

lived in conditions that would disgust modern Canadians.

Conventional French historians tell us of the wonders of the

great chateaux, the glory of Versailles, its splendid architec ture, glistening mirrors, and elegant interiors. But when I visited Versailles not long ago,I learned that food was often served cold because the kitchens were located far away from

the main palace. In fact the original marble floors, which kept the palace so cold that wine was known to freeze in winter, were torn up to be replaced with wood.

If the stench of the nobility's houses centuries ago would nauseate us today, the hovels of the poor, by far the over whelming majority, must have been unbearable. As Braudel so eloquently puts it, the world, prior to industrial develop ment, was a brutal, disease-ridden and hungry place for its inhabitants, most of whom had very short life expectancies.

The most comfortable inhabitants of those times were the 60

fleas, lice, rats and other vermin which infested the houses

of rich and poor alike.

Braudel stresses that every human being born before this century was actually lucky to have lived. Most babies

simply did not survive and those hardy ones who did, for the most part, had short lives punctuated by crippling dis eases. Without contemporary science, there were no drugs to ease the pain,or machines to diagnose many medical con ditions that can easily be treated today. Ironically, the 16th century Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel painted wonderful land scapes filled with bucolic peasants frolicking happily in their rustic environments. While Bruegel's name is similar to the historian's, his paintings seem like artistic satires, at odds with the misery revealed by Braudel's historical findings.

It is somewhat ironic that the applied sciences, which enable us to live free from the crushing burdens of hunger, are often spumed by today's youth. Most of our history was burdened by regular famine. Now we have lucrative fatfarms, health clubs and companies such as Weightwatchers, whose clients pay money to work out and eat less.

Actually paying money to diet and toil in gyms,rather than the fields, is a situation unprecedented in human history.

But our militant activists seem unaware that many less fortunate countries,lacking our technology,relentlessly con tinue a protracted and unequal battle with nature. Even more tragic is the fact that most poverty stricken people are politi cally powerless,unable to protest their miserable conditions.

The works of Braudel and Drucker should be required reading for today's professional malcontents, perhaps even becoming mandatory issue when the protest placards are being handed out. If activists knew a little more history,some

might become grateful for - instead of hostile to - the ben efits of technology, which have enriched and extended our lives, while creating a climate of political freedom in which to complain about it all.

61

Art,language and the environmental sciences — need they be in conflict?

The past few years have seen an astonishing reversal in the image projected by certain words. Lately, the thought-po lice on the politically-correct language beat have decreed the following: Do not strike or hit the keyboard, but tap or press

the keys; resist,instead offight against; numerical goals, rather than the more adjectivally-accurate quotas. Even the phrase, affirmative action,so recently a battle cry,(sorry,rallying noise) of the left, is already obsolescent, with the stem recommen dation that we now must use employment equity.

These are only a few of the perversely-creative, non

violent,gender-neutral banalities that threaten to reduce the power,glory,and magnificent range of the English language to the etymological equivalent of calorie-reduced jelly.

In the past, there were attempts to save us all from the incomparable words of William Shakespeare;these even flare up sporadically today. But it was Thomas Bowdler who gave name to the verb to bowdlerize after he expurgated the sexy

bits from the Bard's plays; this must have provided some puzzling gaps for later readers.

But the urge to restrict, confine and control language usage never ceases. It was Jean Jacques Rousseau who said: "Man was born free but is everywhere in chains." This great French writer profoundly influenced such English writers as Shelley, Byron, and Wordsworth; yet ironically it is the French who have always endeavoured to keep their language

pure by banning anglicisms which creep across the English Channel. They should have read what their greatest war

rior, Napoleon,said of war:"The general who will not leave his fvrtfications is already defeated."

The Academie Frangaise, created by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635, is limited to 40 men - almost never women - who 62

wear military style uniforms and wear swords to defend the purity of French. Wearing swords! Haven't they read that the pen is mightier than the sword? The French govern ment recently banned its civil servants from using such terms as le sandwich, and le cheeseburger. When I was in Paris, not too long ago, I saw Parisians cheerfully enjoying both at a MacDonalds in the fabled Champs-Elysees. While the last defeat on English soil came at the hands of the Normans, this did not stop the British purloining words from all Francophone sources. Bulletin,coupon,entrepreneur,fuselage, debris,chic, cliche, cul-de-sac, chauffeur, rendezvous,and restau rant are among the countless words we have 'stolen' from France.

One Frenchman slyly observed that Brits might have done better to borrow more than the word restaurant from

French culinary traditions. He roguishly suggested that English cooking was probably the main reason Brits so will ingly died in pursuit of an empire. And while on its empirebuilding spree,the British cheerfully borrowed ketchup,kow tow and tea from the Chinese, as well as bungalow,shampoo, bangle, cushy and chit from India. Gymnasium, stadium and marathon are but three of the many words we borrowed from the Greeks. Even the word beserk is a legacy from a particu larly vicious tribe of Vikings who plundered England and raped the women. Some of their genes probably survive in English soccer fans,who regularly go beserk at soccer matches.

Sometimes the crossover has its humorous sides. An

attempt to advertise 'body by Fisher' was once translated

by Belgian copywriters into 'Fisher's Corpse'; and Japanese sweat shirts have often carried such hilarious malapropisms as 'vigorous throw ups.' But even such mangled English has an international cachet. It is this versatility in being able to devour, digest, and adapt from the reservoir (another French word)of global linguistics that has made English the most widespread language on earth.

63

English is not very old as languages go. It began hum bly enough as a West German dialect which was, according to author and phoneticist Anthony Burgess, "unknown to the Roman historian Tacitus." During the reign of Elizabeth

I, only six million people spoke English in what is now the British Isles. Now more than one billion people speak it, half of them as a second tongue. Indeed,long after the Brit

ish Empire dissolved politically, this language relentlessly kept on crossing frontiers.

"Indians are drunk with the wine of English," wrote an

exasperated Gandhi after the British left India. Indeed,riots later erupted in Southern India and East Pakistan following attempts to install Hindi and Urdu as official languages.

More recently, in 1993, Sengalese students went on strike following demands that English be a part of their science curriculum.

While there may be more Chinese dialects spoken in the world,no other language even remotely matches English in international usage. Russian goods,for example, will be routinely traded to Dutch merchants, or Asian goods to multilingual Europe, with English often the only linguistic currency used by all parties. English has evolved into what Esperanto was designed to be,a linguistic Rosetta Stone ena bling different nations to communicate in a universal sec ond language.

With unconscious irony, a 1995 BBC publication de scribed English as the international lingua franca. I think Rosetta Stone is a better linguistic fit than linguafranca. The stone,written in Egyptian hieroglyphics,demotic,and Greek characters around 2,000 BC,was discovered by a Frenchman;

deciphering was begun by Thomas Young of England, and completed by Jean Francois Champollion of France. Their work enabled historians to understand previously incom

prehensible ancient languages. English as a second language likewise permits communication between nations whose 64

languages are otherwise mutually incomprehensible.

While change is vital to a vigorous language,some once respected words have been virtually transformed into prejoratives. Growth, development, even motherhood, are

all now under the critical scrutiny of our new, and rapidly changing, politically correct values. Environmental profes sionals are somewhat bewildered by this. As their profes sional skills were used to research, design, and build the drinking water and sewage treatment systems that dramati cally improved public health,they could rightly be regarded as the first environmentalists.

With astonishing rapidity, new social values reversed all this. Somewhat to their chagrin, engineers have found themselves cast as participants in gang rape rather than as praetorian cohorts of progress. In fact,so many groups have jumped on the environmental bandwagon,there is little room left for environmental professionals.

I recall one Globe & Mail reporter telling a group of en gineers that he had never met an engineer he would con sider an environmentalist. Engineers not environmentalists?

The reporter was speaking to a group that had actually de signed and built the systems during Ontario's multi-billion dollar water and wastewater treatment facilities program, which began in the late '50s. The Ontario scheme,begun by the Ontario Water Resources Commission (OWRC) under

the legendary engineer and scientist Dr. A. E. Berry, had no equal in its day in size, scope, and time frame. It was an outstanding symbiosis of a regulatory agency working with consultants and contractors from the private sector.

Before it was absorbed into the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, the OWRC (not to be confused with the On

tario Waste Management Corporation)had 95 percent of the urban population serviced by sewage treatment plants, and 98 percent served by water treatment. Quebec at that time treated a mere five percent of its wastewater. The dramatic 65

change in environmental attitudes in Quebec was due more to the Association quebecoise des techniques de I'eau - a militant group of engineers - than placard-carrying demonstrators, who wouldn't imderstand what BOD meant,even if it were

presented in a kid's crayoning book.

It is perhaps of interest to note that many liberal arts

graduates have traditionally had a rather superior attitude towards the engineering and science faculties. There are some historical reasons for this. Romantic fiction and news

media alike are full of stories where struggling artists are in

conflict with greedy,insensitive businessmen who are all too often portrayed as lacking human and aesthetic values.

I must stress my own conviction that the arts are every bit as important to humanity as science and technology. The contributions of Milton, Voltaire, Mozart and Michelangelo

match those of Newton, Faraday, Watt, and Brunei. Many,

of course,effortlessly crossed what C.R Snow called the Twin Solitudes. Borodin, for example, held a Doctorate in chemis

try and was noted for his aldehydes research as well as his classical music. Leonardo da Vinci repeatedly demonstrated

engineering genius along with his prodigious artistic talents.

Sir Humphry Davy,inventor of both cathodic corrosion protection and the renowned miner's safety lamp, was a friend ofsuch poets as Wordsworth and Coleridge,and noted for his own flair with the language. While Britain and France were in a state of war. Sir Humphry travelled to France to

accept an award for his scientific work. His miner's safety lamp saved thousands of lives from methane explosions, yet he rejected any idea that he might profit from his invention.

Thomas Jefferson,author of the Declaration of Indepen

dence, combined legislative genius with matchless English

prose while learning Gaelic, Latin, Greek and French. He also mastered architecture, built clocks, invented machines,

and revered science. Over two centuries ago he and his son-

in-law were among the first to practise contour plowing 66

across slopes to prevent soil erosion,so adding environmentalism to his diverse talents.

Yet there is no doubt that the applied sciences are looked

down upon by many of the so-called arts fraternity. While 1 have a deep reverence for all the arts, I despise some of the literary whiners I know whose composing skills are more accurately reflected in their grants applications than their artistic creativity. All too often, artistic snobbery is the result of intellectual incest and isolation from the real world. The

snobbery of many pseudo-artistic types clouds them to the realization that engineering and chemistry are dynamic,crea tive arts, as well as exacting sciences.

The final conclusion is doubly ironic. So often the criti cisms of technology are from the idle minds of a leisured class who were freed from relentless toil only by the dynamic development of technology - a development that increased production and wealth while decreasing work hours and effort!

Meanwhile, the very word environment has been el evated to a status bordering on the divine, while environ mental scientists are treated with suspicion, even contempt.

Increasingly,governments are giving credence to a new breed of eco-mystics who lack any knowledge of the value of sci entific methodology in resolving complex environmental problems.

67

Why are hot dog vendors and hairdressers licenced while chemists aren't?

While you need a licence to run a hot dog stand in Toronto, no licence is required for the analytical chemists who safe guard our drinking water, food, or medicine. The Ontario government has repeatedly rejected requests for licencing from the Association of the Chemical Profession of

Ontario. Being a learned profession, the chemists wished to be licenced like architects, lawyers, or doctors. Not for the first time the chemists were turned down.

Now imagine this scenario. Your worst fears have been realized and doctors have recommended surgery. Once se

dated, your fears have given way to more reassuring thoughts as you are wheeled to the operating theatre. As the anaesthetic is administered, you are surrounded by

highly trained surgeons, all licenced, qualified, and dedi cated to restoring you to health. Collectively they represent decades of intensive research and training. As the anaes

thetic takes over, your mind replays this combination of high tech health expertise as a final reassurance. But suddenly a startling thought occurs: what if the chemists at the testing laboratories, whose findings led to this operation, were un qualified?

It is astounding that chemistry - a learned profession

requiring years of study and training - is practised without licencing in every province, except Quebec. Yet hairdress ers, truck drivers, and garage mechanics, who require no

university education, are required by law to be licenced.

Few are aware that Canadians have a tradition of ex

cellence in Chemistry. A recent Nobel Laureate, Professor John Polanyi of the University of Toronto, is one of many Canadian chemists with international reputations. In 1902,

George G. Nasmith began serving as chemist and bacteri68

ologist to the Ontario Board of Health. His qualifications were remarkable. He held an M.A.,Ph.D., D.P.H. and D.Sc.,

all from the University of Toronto. In the early 1900s, Ot tawa, Toronto, and other Ontario cities were regularly rav aged by typhoid and other lethal water-borne diseases.

Nasmith's work helped bring down the death rate dramati cally.

Later,serving in World War I, Dr. Nasmith rose to Lieu

tenant Colonel and devised field methods of purifying drink ing water for both the Canadian and British Armies. His contribution was vital. Pure water on the battlefield can be

more important than firepower. In the late 1700s John Adams,

the second US president, wrote:"Disease has destroyed ten of us where the sword of the enemy has killed but one."

Scientists have estimated that water-borne diseases have

killed more people than all the recorded wars of history.

Chemistry has seen quantum leaps in its ability to de tect toxins in trace amounts. What other scientific profes sion could match this progress? A mere three decades ago, chemists could only detect contaminants at one part in one thousand. In those days many of the toxins we now rou tinely detect in drinking water, foods, or soils would have gone undetected. Water, food or air samples would have been checked out as 'safe' simply because the chemists of the day were unable to detect contaminants at low levels.

These days chemists routinely detect toxins in the parts per trillion range, which is comparable to a single second in 320 centuries. Impressive as this is, some labs can find con taminants at parts per quadrillion range, which is like find

ing a single second in a 32-million-year time period. This awesome progress is analagous to locating and analyzing a single brick in a huge metropolis such as Mexico City, New York, or London. Relative to this time frame, Cro-Magnon man is separated from an astronaut by a split second.

History has shown many times that laboratory findings 69

can be misread. The famous Birmingham Six in Britain were only recently acquitted after it was proved the prosecution's forensic data were poorly interpreted. Chemicals in playing cards had been identified wrongly as being from explosives.

The six men had been convicted following an IRA bombing incident. After serving long prison terms,they were acquit ted after lengthy appeals. Now we have DNA evidence which acquitted Guy Paul Morin in 1995 after he had been unjustly tried twice for murder over a ten year period, evi dence again of the importance of our analytical laboratories.

Analytical chemistry is increasingly at the forefront of environmental regulations. In rejecting the chemists' de mands for licencing, the public's position is now clear. The government indicates it is more concerned about protecting us from poor haircuts or bad hot dogs than from unqualified chemists.

Tina's terrible trauma, as rare element discovered in Ontario lab

It was just before Christmas and the analytical laboratory was in darkness, save for a lone work station at the far end

of the room. Despite the long recession, the glass skyscrap ers still gleamed brilliantly on the Toronto skyline,colourful icons falsely proclaiming a long departed prosperity.

In the laboratory, the murmur of high-tech machinery occasionally broke the silence as a small slim woman intently scanned the peaks of a print-out. A graduate chemist, she was affectionally called Tina' by some colleagues, not be cause of her stature, but for her enthusiasm in seeking infinitesimally small particles in samples. To her, analytical chemistry was an art,as well as a science and she often stayed late in the lab,seeking what she termed,the tiny perfect par ticle. Some lab technicians fondly called her the femtogram fatale, a femtogram being the proper noun for the smallest particle the lab could detect.

Now Una shook her head as she concentrated on the

reams of data. Then she spoke softly into an inter-office phone. Moments later the lab's two principals strode in.

Tina handed over the print-outs along with her notes.

"I've never seen anything like this," she said. "What I have

discovered is so small it's in the parts per quadrillion range.

This is like finding one second in 32 million years- virtually at the outer fringes of detection - but there is something there."

Marley broke the the silence, having scanned the print out. "In all my years with the government I never saw any thing even remotely like this. Perhaps it's a deviant carbon," he suggested, puzzled. "Whatever it is, there hasn't been a

trace of dark matter like this since the NDP came to power."

Now it was Dr. Ebenezer's turn to draw on his three 71

decades of medical science as he interpreted the complex data. "No it's not carbon, Marley," he said sharply, "but you're right; Tina's far too young to have ever been exposed to this element before...." His voice trailed off as his eyes misted over. The others waited respectfully, waiting for the revelation, as the crochety elder scientist paused for effect.

His voice rose as he began to explain. "With Marley's previous background in government I'm not surprised he couldn't recognize it - how could any former civil servant?

"But now it is here, however, and our laboratory will never be the same. No matter how we quarantine the area it will inevitably escape and run amok,thriving and multiply ing until our lab will be awash in the stuff. What Una has discovered is

Black Ink!"

The others shrank back at the intensity of his tone as he went on:"As for you Marley,1 warned you what could hap pen if you hired a sales force and began advertising - but you went ahead anyway. This company is barely two years old and we are already in the black. It's unthinkable, posi tively un-Canadian. Now 1 shan't ever make the NOP Hon ours List," he concluded petulantly.

Marley appeared stunned. After more than two decades as a government scientist, he had only vaguely been aware of the possibility that the dreaded black ink even existed; now he was confronted with its terrifying reality.

Only Una remained calm. A warm feeling came over her. She had discovered black ink at this lab. In the 1990s

this was unlikely to be emulated by any other analytical lab in Ontario in the near future. Whatever the consequences of Dr Ebenezer's wrath,she was aware that she was now des

tined for posterity in scientific journals. What a Christmas gift for a young scientist!

72

When the PCB circus went international

Notsince the witchcraft trials of the middle ages has so much hysteria been generated by ignorance and superstition. The most recent furore began in England when a protest group in a rubber boat affixed a skull and crossbones sign on the hull of a ship in London. The issue quickly erupted into an international incident and two ships carrying Canadian PCB wastes were rejected.

Soon vessels carrying PCBs were shuttling across the Atlantic to the breathless beat of shrill news media reports.

A Soviet Captain was charged in Canada and human chains formed to prevent PCBs being landed at Prime Minister Mulroney's home town in Quebec.

Grave ministerial pronouncements were made like some prelude to World War II. I wondered if we might even end up with an Ambassador for PCBs, waving a piece of paper like some ghostly flashbacks of Neville Chamberlain, exclaiming No PCBs in our time.

It was just like wartime, the PCB fiasco being fought out on land,sea and in the air. No one pointed out the envi ronmental danger of having ships recrossing the stormy Atlantic, instead of having the PCBs incinerated safely un der controlled conditions. One columnist wrote dramati

cally, movingly and quite inaccurately about the cancer ships which passed in the nightand a Vancouver radio station phoned me to ask what made PCBs so terribly toxic?

Media hype had now irrevocably linked PCBs to can cer in the public's mind. The reports suggested that the PCBs were contagious chemicals, poised to escape from confine ment in steel drums,to run amok among a helpless popula tion. It was almost like science fiction -except it was fiction without science. Ironically, the fuel in the ships was prob73

ably just as toxic as the wastes they carried.

Then the farce shifted from ships to aircraft. Not long ago, some politicians erupted into hysterics when they learned that a plane was actually shipping some barrels of PCB contaminated wastes from Canada to Wales.

The then federal Minister of the Environment went on

national television to express his grave concern. No one pointed out that that same plane had many tonnes of fuel in its tanks which were probably more toxic and certainly more flammable than PCBs.

Much earlier, protesters had successfully stopped the destruction of PCBs and other waste chlorinated hydrocar bons in cement kilns. Almost none of the media mentioned

that Canada had developed a viable cement kiln technology which could treat the wastes safely, while using the thermal properties in the waste chlorinated hydrocarbons to make a useful product- cement.

There is no parallel to the way environmental profes sionals are ignored. The Minister of Health does not go to some Medical Probe to ask how vasectomies should be done,

thank God for that; the minister goes to doctors who are edu cated and trained to rigorous standards. And when there are questions about metal fatigue in aircraft, aviation authori ties involved go to Boeing and DeHavilland - not to some Transportation Probe.

The training of environmental engineers is no less rig orous than doctors or aeronautical technicians. Chemistry, civil engineering, hydraulics, biology and bacteriology are but a few of the disciplines that engineers must work with and they have to be licenced before they can practise. Yet repeatedly, environmental decisions are based on the say ings - soothsayings might be a more appropriate word - of people with little formal training on the subjects.

There is nothing more pathetic than to see a trained en vironmental scientist or engineer, trying to explain a com74

plex treatment project to an arrogant audience of protesters - who wouldn't know an Imhoff Tank from a hot tub.

It is interesting to note that this latest eruption of hyste ria began when protesters stigmatized a ship with a primi tive symbol - a skull and crossed bones. That such a crude drawing could be more effective than all the learned litera

ture and studies on the subject, speak volumes about scien tific illiteracy. But then, signs and macabre drawings were always superior to learning when the witchcraft jurists ter rorized medieval Europe and North America.

75

Saliva without nourishment - a legacy from the media's conditioned reflexes

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov trained his dog to salivate at the sound of a bell,even when no food was in evidence. He went on to

develop concepts of conditioned reflexes, winning the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1904. Nine decades later, the valid ity of his work is constantly demonstrated when TV camera crews react, with conditioned reflexes, to colourful stunts

and staged protests. Too often the result is junk food for the mind from generous servings of media coverage that con tains neither news nor food for thought.

A prime example occurred when a youthful group was seated in the public gallery in the Ontario legislature. Dur ing one question period, the group rose in unison, their tee shirts each bearing a single letter that spelled out the mes sage:Zero Pollution Emissions. The spelling was correct,lead ing me to suspect they had either completed remedial read ing at university, or perhaps their mothers had dressed them prior to the line up.

The stunt trivialized serious science, yet both print and TV media - with truly Pavlovian reflexes - invested this youthful prank with generous media coverage without con sideration of the scientific realities involved.

The goal of zero is not new. I first heard the term in 1972 while a panelist at a University of New Brunswick con ference. Zero was so appealing at first glance that I con sulted with various engineers and scientists to see if the magic zero was feasible. I found,ironically, that it was more achievable decades ago than now. Why? Over 30 years ago, our chemists could not even detect most of the toxins that

are routinely detected today. The few they could find were often at the one part per thousand detection limit. Then ca pabilities went up to a breakthrough detection level of one 76

part per ten thousand.

Today,many labs can routinely detect matter to one part per trillion, akin to locating one second in 320 centuries,with some labs detecting at the quadrillion level - equal to one second in 32 million years. TTiis astonishing progress is truly space age technology, which has changed all previous con cepts of zero pollution goals.

But, if we can detect toxins at these incredibly small numbers, why don't we go further with the noble idea of removing them? Well, the costs of a true zero pollution even if achievable - are staggering, while the actual envi ronmental benefits could hardly be found with a mass spectrometer.

Let's say it would cost $1 million to remove 90 per cent of the PCBs in a given volume of wastewater. To remove the next nine per cent would cost another $1 million, a fact that always surprises the public. Now what about the last one per cent? Since we've already spent $2 million to achieve a

99 percent pollution reduction,surely it would be insignifi cant to take out that tiny fraction? Incredibly,to remove that last one percent would probably be exponentially more than the $2 million already invested - that's if it could be done.

These are approximate figures as waste volumes,types, complexities, and strengths vary enormously, but I believe my hypotheses are closer to reality than those of many of the proponents of true zero pollution emissions.

Now zero is in the news again - this time the target is the Ontario forest industry. Under new regulations,Ontario mills have had to meet limits of 2.5 kg of Adsorbable Or ganic Halide(AOX)per tonne of pulp within 90 days,1.5 kg

by December 31, 1995, and 0.8 kg by December 31, 1999.

Companies will be required to file progress reports, outlin ing factors involved in reaching the government's goal of zero AOX. Members of the Ontario Forest Industries Association 77

(OFIA)say they are willing and able to support many of the limits in the final Municipal and Industrial Strategy for Abatement(MISA) regulation for pulp and paper effluent.

But OFIA has expressed concern that, while zero AOX is not a regulated limit, it remains a goal of the province, despite the fact it is based on neither soimd science nor environ mental needs.

Ontario Premier Bob Rae recently proclaimed his belief that regulations must be based on science. He should stick to this belief. His government already has quite enough ze ros in its provincial deficit without needlessly ravaging one of the largest economic sectors in the coimtry -in pursuit of yet another zero.

a

78

Where's the X in adsorbable organic halide?

While editing an article recently,I came across AOX,which I knew to be the chemical acroynm for Adsorbable Organic Halide. Now most chemical acronyms, such as PCBs, for polychlorinated biphenyls,for example, are obviously logi cal; but AOX puzzled me. "Where was the missing XI" I asked.

A most learned chemist,James B,came to my aid with

a complex but undeniably eloquent explanation. He said the X was the symbol for halide, but that it was sometimes confused with halogen, based on occult information from Torr the Chaldean. While the X is not scientifically correct nomenclature, he said that it did add a note of mystery to the otherwise humdrum life of chemists.

He went on to speculate that AOX probably originated with some engineers who confused halides with halogens, not knowing that halogens are not just headlights, but also include bromine, iodine, chlorine, fluorine as well as the

mysterious astatine.

"Astatine,of course,is the unstable element whose dis

covery was pivotal in proving Mendeleyev's Periodic Law. Astatine replaced the hypothetical element alabamine,whose atomic weight was also 85, justifying Mendeleyev's previ ously unproven law," he concluded with a flourish.

Shaken by this polysyllabic barrage, I stammered my thanks and made for home. When confused, Davey's Peri odic Law states that, when hopelessly out of one's depth,an immediate retreat to the shores is advisable.

79

Journalists flock to greenhouse conference

Environment Canada's strategy to focus attention on the glo bal implications of the greenhouse effect was undeniably a huge success. Shortly after a G-7 economic conference was held in Toronto, the international news media once again flocked to the downtown core like homing pigeons on a sec ond lap.

Reporters had responded with Pavlovian reflexes to the siren lure of the government's public relations machine.

News media ID badges - like pendulums around so many necks-swung gently like battle honours for a major PR coup.

Serious German science writers mixed with languid English journalists and trendy television types from California merged with the legions of Canadian journalists in the splen didly appointed media room. And minutes after presenta tions, copies in both official languages were made available in the newsroom.

Madam Brundtland, Norwegian Prime Minister, who had headed the UN study into economics and the environ ment, played a prominent role, while Prime Minister Brian Mulroney with Tom McMillan, his Environment Minister, invested the gathering with the full dignity of a national event. Federally at least, the environmental folio was no longer the Cabinet Cinderella.

The conference also attracted some of the best scientific

minds researching global warming. Indeed,some feared that scientific delegates might actually outnumber the news me dia. Luckily, good sense and quick wits prevailed. A few strategic phone calls quickly alerted a reserve contingent at the CBC, who promptly dispatched a cavalcade of camera men,flanked by infantry from Radio Canada, so restoring the imbalance. But it was a close call.

80

The organizers began the scientific presentations with a superb paper by Dr. Kenneth Hare,who was once my boss at the U of T. Internationally renowned in his field. Ken is also a brilliant scientist who can wander effortlessly through the intricacies of several disciplines. Here, before many world leaders,he distilled the complexities of the greenliouse threat with wit, humour, and scientific insights.

After outlining the various gases,and their sources,that were accumulating to create the greenhouse effect, he noted that the warming trend was still not scientifically proven.

But, he noted, while threats of serious environmental dam

age were not conclusive, he felt that the serious warnings were at least as valid as any predictions made by economists.

The sophisticated audience loved that thrust at the dismal science ofeconomics.

One fact emerged with undeniable clarity. Environmen tal matters clearly enjoy top priority with both provincial and federal governments. In more than two decades of re porting,I had never before seen any Canadian Prime Minis ter give such high profile attention to an ecological confer ence. It seems the environment has finally moved to the front ranks of governmental priorities.

Over two centuries ago,fhe Industrial Revolution trans formed manufacturing methods,perhaps beginning the glo bal warming trend. English factory owners ignored the rav ages they caused, saying "where there's muck there's money." Huge fortunes were made by mortgaging environ mental burdens on the backs of future generations. Now, Canadian politicians clearly understand that there are also jobs and elections to be lost if the deadly effects of our prodi gious industrial machines are not tamed by environmental technologies.

81

No free lunches in NDP's free fridges

An NDP study called for Ontario Hydro to give away free energy-efficient refrigerators and other appliances to the pub lic to avoid building a new nuclear power station. This was imbecilic drivel masquerading as environmental statesman ship.

Before he became premier,Ontario NDP leader Bob Rae endorsed the proposal,following an NDP-sponsored study which said Ontario Hydro discriminated against energyefficiency measures.

"We should be paying people and we should be paying the system to save energy just as we now are paying Hydro to produce it," Mr. Rae said. Months later, his altruistic vi sion collided with economic realities when he became pre mier.

Stupidity must be contagious at Queen's Park. Perhaps it gets into the air conditioning ducts and is spread during question period,much like Legionnaire's Disease. Bob Wong, then Liberal Energy Minister, responded to the NDP's eco logical illiteracy saying that'perhaps it was not such a bad idea.' As Mr. Wong had seemed a perfectly rational indi vidual when we met him earlier, it would be wise to have

those ducts checked out- quickly!

When scientists isolate the bacterium that produces such idiocies, they'll probably name it Imbecilus bacillus. And if common sense proves to be the only antidote,it could spread like the plague, especially with certain news media playing the role of Typhoid Mary.

To prematurely dump perfectly good appliances would be an appalling environmental and economic catastrophe.

Economically, it would waste hundreds of millions of dol lars, which might be better spent on hospitals,education and, 82

perish the thought, even pollution abatement equipment.

Both ecologically and economically,the free fridge plan would have proved catastrophic. While there is now tech nology available to fully capture and recycle the CFCs from scrapped fridges, it was not commercially available at the time the appliance giveaways were first proposed. Vast amoimts of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) have been released

as fridges are scrapped,with equal amounts of CFCs required to recharge the new appliances. When the free fridges plan was proposed,there were an estimated 20,000 tonnes of CFCs in use in Canada, with about 43 percent being used in vari ous types of refrigerants.

When one CFC molecule enters the stratosphere it may

destroy as many as 100,000 ozone molecules in the fragile ozone layer. How fragile? Well if the ozone layer were brought down to groimd level atmospheric pressure,it would only be about three millimetres thick. Not only are CFCs major culprits in ozone layer depletion,they are also power ful'greenhouse' gases - so the problem is one of global pro portions.

No one will argue there is a vital need for energy-effi cient devices; but they are being built and are gradually re placing older models. In nature it's called evolution. For example, the furnace in my home uses a fraction of the en ergy used by the furnace in our former house, which had 50 percentless floor space. All our appliances are rated for their energy efficiency. We are one of the few families in our area to use that great energy-saving device, a solar, wind-pow ered rotary clothes dryer, a device often frowned upon in some neighbourhoods.

Scrapping perfectly good appliances would also require huge amounts of energy manufacturing the thousands of tonnes of steel needed for the new ones. This in turn would

require millions of tonnes of coal,compounding the already serious acid rain problem.

83

Then there's the millions of litres of paints, and toxic

solvents, plus vast amounts of plastics, cyanides and other toxic chemicals used in the chromium plating of shelving

and other parts - all required to make ihe free fridges and stoves.

And what about the human element in the selection of

the new appliances? What about colour coordination,sizes, options and even quality? People are extraordinarily fussy about colours and styles that match their homes -for Cana dians are individuals,not easily regimented morons,march ing in lock-step to the seductive tune of an NDP Pied Piper of freebies.

It may seem like nit-picking, but who is going to coor dinate this grand plan, which could make D-Day look like a garage sale? An NDP government? Surely you jest? And before we can get these bright,shiny energy-efficient objects to the grateful population, there's another slight environ mental drawback - transportation. Shipping the new appli ances in, and taking the old ones out, would require mas sive consumption of transportation fuels,inevitably leading to increased highway congestion (Fridgelock?) and serious air pollution.

People would imquestionably breathe more benzene, toluene,volatile organic hydrocarbons and dioxins,to name a few of the particulates created by this increased traffic. And

finally there's the landfill. Certainly many abandoned ap pliances could be recycled, but certain of their entrails will undoubtedly end up in landfill sites - exacerbating what is already an expensive problem.

Someone should tell the NDP about the Second Law of

Thermodynamics which - loosely translated - means there can be no free lunches in the proposed free fridges.

NB. Not long after this was published in ES&E, the NDP

gained a surprise majority in ^e Ontario Parliament. Tech84

nology also emerged that can effectively remove CFCs from old fridges and commercial refrigeration equipment. While the appliance give-away was never implemented, the NDP rose to the occasion with some equally imbecilic and costly programs such as the Interim Waste Authority, while excel lent regulatory programs,like MISA and CAP - both scien tifically and economically practical - seemed to languish.

On Jime 8,1995,Mike Harris' Conservatives swept the NDP into third place in the province.

fTD^ Fridge proposals

85

Will the real environmentalists please stand up?

Some protesters remind me of certain television evangelists.

Both species warn of impending catastrophes - then solicit donations to continue the good work. Some so-called envi ronmentalists are really closet Luddites with a deep-seated distrust of all technology. Many however, have developed impressive expertise which could be valuable when projects are being developed. But all too frequently, their dire warn ings are combined with an air of moral superiority that would nauseate a pathologist at a leper colony.

If the groups did not exist, however,it would be neces sary to invent them. We need checks and balances in our democratic systems. Only recently has peristroika revealed hideous ecological horrors in the former Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations.Environmental activism can,and

should be, vital in a modem democratic society - but not as a substitute for environmental engineering. But now, the word 'environmentalist'is used by the news media as a syno-

nym for expert; all too often it is a pseudonym for expertise, not a synonym.

The word 'environmentalist' crept into the media lexi

con barely two decades ago; now,reporters eagerly seek out the self-designated 'authoritative'sources,regardless ofcom petence or relevance. It is a perfect match - a press with insatiable appetites for sensationalism mating with an elo quent protest movement brimming with moral indignation.

Many wamings are justifiable, and engineering profession als around the world know we are facing enormously com plex problems. What seldom filters through to the public is the fact that tangible progress is being made.

Many of the apocalyptic wamings on drinking water are based on anecdotal evidence rather than the scientific 86

methodology accepted throughout the world. Professional advice - based on long training, education, and experience in engineering and science - was and is being largely ig nored in favour of those groups who orchestrate politicians and the media with great dexterity.

Some politicians compound the problem. Too often they respond to complex environmental situations with simplis tic responses. Their statements owe more to electoral op portunism than to honest attempts to solve problems. In variably,they find willing allies in the news media to prom ulgate their views, regardless of scientific relevance.

"A nation behaves well if the natural resources which one

generation turns over to the next are increased and not im paired in value."

Teddy Roosevelt

87

For whom the polls tell - when news gatherers become news makers Britain and the United States are famous for their media bar

ons. But with their usual penchant for modesty, Canadians are imaware that their country has produced some of the most colourful and powerful media personalities in the world. Canada produced Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Thomp son,and Conrad Black who trounced the British in their own

back yard - London's famous Fleet Street, an area made fa mous by Dr. Johnson. In one of the most ferociously com petitive businesses in the world - newspapers - it was, untypically, Canadians who dominated.

On the academic side,Marshall McLuhan produced the

first cerebral analyses of the new television phenomenon when he coined such phrases as: "The medium is the mes sage" and "the Global Village." Canadians also dominated U.S. television news far in excess of their numbers. Robert

MacNeil of the MacNeil Lehrer Report, Peter Jennings,

Morley Safer, Lome Greene and many others have ranked with the best United States' TV broadcasters and anchors.

During the Gulf War, the frank, open coverage of Peter Jennings on American TV, made him a favourite with both Canadian and American viewers. By comparison, viewing

Dan Rather's eyes as he reads the teleprompter makes me feel like a tennis umpire.

But much of the news coverage of environmental is

sues has been dangerously incompetent. A classic case of the news media creating news,rather than reporting it came about when a shipload of Canadian PCBs arrived in Lon don for incineration at a treatment facility in Wales. PCBs had not been an issue in Britain at that time and the ship had arrived from Canada and docked without incident.

Then a Canadian journalist casually mentioned to two 88

Fleet Street reporters in a pub one evening that PCBs were a highly controversial issue in Canada. With that the grunge media,the UK tabloids,stopped feeding off the Royal Fam ily momentarily to erupt with banner headlines warning of the "Cancer Ship" now docked in the Thames. Protesters affixed a skull and crossbones flag to the ship's hull, attract ing even more media coverage.

While epidemiology has yet to reveal a single cancer death from PCBs,the skull and crossbones icon worked mag nificently. British dock workers, their finely honed reflex actions for spontaneous industrial actions already in place, refused to unload the vessel. So instead of disposing of the PCB wastes in a facility especially designed for the purpose, the ship was forced to return across the stormy Atlantic like a vessel carrying the plague. British workers then lost both the jobs and economic benefits of the project - in a country with three million unemployed.

Like some voyage of the damned,where no port would accept the cargo, the vessel was forced to return home. It logged some 20,000 km on a return trip, which certainly combusted tonnes of fuel that would negatively impact on the environment. Canadian demonstrators became violent

when the vessel attempted to dock at Bale Comeau, Brian Mulroney's riding, perhaps invoking divine retribution for earlier prime ministerial patronage when Mulroney's gov ernment had the port facilities upgraded. And some people still doubt there is a God.

From an epidemiological point of view, few chemicals have been monitored as well as PCBs. We have records on

factory workers who had immersion contact with PCBs for decades, which give reliable exposure data on humans.

While there have been some chloracne cases reported from PCB exposure, not one death has been directly attributed to this chemical. Ironically, there have been thousands of lives saved because of the long-lived fire retardant properties of 89

PCBs used in transformers and other electrical equipment

which require stable, non-flammable coolants.

Indeed there is a growing tendency by the news media to create and stage news events, rather than report them.

One recent case involved contrived pickup truck fires on the NBC Network when toy rocket engines were remotely ig nited to dramatize gas tank fires in truck collision tests.

Viewers were left with the impression that they were wit nessing fires which occurred during actual collision tests rather than contrived conflagrations staged for TV 'news'.

During the Oscar awards ceremony which followed, Billy Crystal got a big laugh when he suggested that NBC News

might have been an Oscar contender for its special effects.

Then there was the Hill and Knowlton affair. This huge

PR firm was a key player in the story where Saddam Hussein's troops were reported to have brutally taken sick babies out of incubators that had been shipped to Iraq. Only after the war was over did the story emerge that the tearful

testimony of the eye witness testifying in Washington was actually a contrived affair. The 'witness' testifying before a congressional committee was later discovered to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States.

Virtually all the US media unquestioningly bought her tear ful fiction, which was replayed many times world-wide as an example of Saddam's brutal treatment of Kuwaitis. Polls later reflected widespread support for US military interven tion.

An even more contrived farce came later when the last

of the 640 oil well fires was extinguished in Kuwait. This time there was no doubt it was the retreating Iraqi troops

who had set the wells ablaze, causing an eco-catastrophe of global proportions. Billowing smoke, lurid flames, heroic fire fighters, and pathetic birds struggling in oil slicks, all combined to make dramatic television. But TV's voracious

appetite for spectacle required additional chronological cos90 .

metics. Unfortunately for the media,the last desert fire had been extinguished earlier than predicted, catching the me dia off guard. No problem. After the site had been cleaned up the fire was actually relighted so 'the last' fire could be extinguished, on camera,for posterity.

As for the oil-covered cormorants pitifully struggling in the slick? Yes there were serious wildlife casualties, but at

least one avian species shown on TV was not native to the Middle East. One scientist who visited Kuwait after the war

told me he suspected that the dying bird scene was prob ably culled from stock footage from a tanker spill on another continent.

Inaccurate media coverage has often been expensive for Canadians. All too often it has produced unwarranted fears following news reports driven by entertainment values, rather than ecological significance. In some cases, govern ment reaction to polls, following distorted reporting, has resulted in actions that have proven costly both to the envi ronment and Canadian taxpayers.

Nature's Capitalists Is capitalism biological in origin? Consider the words of Jonathan Swift, the satirist whom all others are measured

by: So naturalists observe, a flea

hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em.

And so proceed ad infinitum.

91

Sure your mother loves you, but check it out anyway

Just as truth is said to be the first casualty of war,accuracy is also a frequent victim in the news media battle for readers' attention. At the time of writing, there were 110 daily news papers in Canada,660 radio stations and 121 television sta tions - not counting the innumerable American radio and TV stations which spill over our borders. We now have also the possibility of hundreds of channels via cable or the new satellite technology. Additionally, there are thousands of

weekly papers,at least 350 in Ontario alone, plus thousands of specialized magazines. These news media often have a voracious appetite for apocalyptic stories dealing with envi ronmental issues.

Traditionally, all the media used what Rudyard Kipling called his "honest serving men: who,why, where, what and when." Indeed, the excellent CTV program, Eric Mailing's W-5, is probably based on those five Ws. Purists will know that Kipling's poem talked of a sixth serving man - how but,as this ruined the alliteration,it seems to have atrophied over the years.

Eons ago, when I was a young journalist, if any one of the Ws was missing from a report, it was deemed sloppy journalism. Only on rare and special occasions were unattributed quotes permitted.

Lately, one of the most important Ws has been missing - the Who. What has been substituted is another important

W: the Weasel words and phrases, which use quotes from anonymous sources, all too often at the expense of veracity.

In the 1980s the trend to anonymous quotes grew rap idly. High officials and concerned citizens, along with a few self-anointed environmentalists, began to warn us about a lot ofimportant matters. Although the concerns they voiced 92

were often solemn, and sometimes apocalyptic in their pre dictions, these sources still felt compelled to withhold the legitimacy of their offices, or the validity of their qualifica tions from us. Undoubtedly it was only sheer modesty that prevented the disclosure of some impressive credentials.

Today, many major environmental reports contain

quotes from anonymous sources commenting on the stories.

Some five years ago,following federal spending cuts, a sci entific document purporting to show new toxic problems in Lake Ontario was, with unconscious irony, 'leaked' to the press. The report claimed to be scientific, but no scientists were actually quoted; still, the issue claimed banner head lines. Yet the very basis of scientific methodology is to en sure accuracy by subjecting research findings to peer review and scrutiny - under strictly controlled conditions.

To my mind, this particular 'leak' was suspect; it came from civil servants with a strong motivation to generate pub lic alarm as a form of job security. They found a willing ally in the news media which - leaving no metaphor unmixed splashed the leaked data about with wild abandon. An un substantiated rumour was treated like the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Now we regularly have news items on various propos als to which reporters inject a touch of Weasel phraseology such as:"But environmentalists warn that there could be side

effects to the new project", or:"A new landfill site has been selected - but many citizens fear there could be a long term side effect..." and so on.

Such leaks are a boon to some bureaucrats and, ironi

cally, are a serious danger to the media themselves, accord ing to veteran journalist Richard Mowrer. He wrote how some US newspapers,even one which was renowned for its integrity, had handled one front page story. The article indi cated that the United States and Libya were again on a colli sion course and that another bombing of Libya was in the 93

offing. Sources for this information were quoted on 30 occa sions. In spite of the dangerous political potential,none were identified. Unhappily for the media,the reports turned out to be false,leading to charges- perhaps from other unnamed sources - that the story had been planted as part of a disinformation operation. Mr. Mowrer then quoted a jour nalism professor who responded to the sad story with this advice: "Suspect everything. If your mother tells you she loves you,check it out."

Sometimes new heights of absurdity are reached as unidentified spokespersons battle for our hearts and minds.

When unnamed White House officials said that Greece was

lax on fighting terrorism, a Greek official, who asked not to be identified, denied the assertions. The story, incidently, carried no by-line.

More recently,the world was told that President Clinton tied up air traffic for two hours while he had his hair cut on Air Force One. Reporters gleefully reported that commer

cial passengers were made to circle overhead,while the presi dential locks were being trimmed,sending the media into a feeding frenzy. Yet the Federal Aviation Authority logs obtained under the Freedom of Information Act - later

showed no delays of regularly scheduled passenger aircraft.

One unscheduled air taxi was delayed by two minutes.

The Oklahoma City bombing was the most recent ex ample of media irresponsibility. Without a smidgen of evi dence, headlines and TV news linked men ofMiddle East de scent as suspects for this terrible tragedy. Not only was this a palpably false accusation, there was curiously a macabre twist to the falsehood when suspects were identified - not from the Middle East but from the Mid West. Ah, the US media; may the farce be with them.

94

A Hamlet without the Prince - or an

omelette without eggheads?

Our local baker used to bake real bread, not the counterfeit

mush that imitates the staff-of-life while tasting like damp cotton wool. His whole wheat loaves were a feast to the

eyes,the olfactory senses and the palate. Best of all you could savour them without sin, for his bread was good for you.

One day I noticed the loaves were coming out of the ovens much darker than normal. They still looked delicious, but I asked the baker if he had changed his ingredients. He an swered that the bread was unchanged, except that he now added a little caramel dye. Why? "To make the loaves look more natural," he exclaimed!

I realized then that we had gone from the Age ofAquarius to the Age of the Vicarious. Culinary cosmetics were being used to fake what already looked, smelled, tasted and, in fact, was nutritious. Literally and metaphorically this was a delicious irony; the intrinsic was being abandoned in favour of the imitation. There are many other examples. A war correspondent in Bosnia, decribing an artillery bombard ment,breathlessly reported that shells had exploded around him, "just like a movie." Some journalism teacher should tell him that, actually, it was just like a real war in fact.

The stampede to embrace all things Green has further blurred the distinction between perception and reality. In environmental situations, public understanding is frequently distorted by certain media reports and newscasts written by scientific illiterates. This growing tendency to ignore scien tific realities was highlighted in the press release announc ing Ontario's Environmental Bill of Rights. It listed 25 groups as invited participants in the Advisory Committee for the Bill. Lawyers predominated, with four groups advising the Committee;in fact legal representation comprised an aston95

ishing 16 percent of the Advisory Committee. With such generous input from this learned profession, this Bill threat ened to emerge as The Lawyers' Welfare Act. Other groups included Greenpeace,Friends of the Earth, Pollution Probe, and all the usual suspects. All were con cerned activists to be sure, but disparate in their aims and objectives. Some combined impressive scientific expertise with genuine altruism;a few were Luddites hiding their deep suspicion of technology with green make-up.

Missing in action, believed ignored, were the Water EnvironmentAssociation of Ontario,an affiliate of the world renowned Water Environment Federation,the Air and Waste

Management Association, and the Ontario Section, Ontario Water Works Association, a Section of the 116-year-old AWWA. With a combined history totalling well over two centuries, these groups comprise some of the most learned environmental talent in the country, yet they were conspicu ous by their absence on the Advisory Committee. If this was not exactly a Hamlet without a Prince, then surely it was an omelette without eggheads.

Canadian engineers and scientists began their involve ment in environmental science and engineering at least 125 years ago, at a time when typhoid and other lethal waterborne diseases ravaged populations across Canada. Such sicknesses are now rare events on this continent, a fact due

more to the water treatment professionals who removed the sources of the diseases than the medical professionals who treated the symptoms.

The ministry should now seek the advice of the true ecologists,the environmental scientists and engineers. Wlule

they seldom take to the streets, they are quite easy to locate.

They are the only people who are licensed and permitted under Ontario law to design and operate environmental treatment facilities. Lawyers on the MOEE'sAdvisory Board will confirm this - for their usual stipend, of course.

96

Why I am buying the Ontario Waste Management Corporation Talk of privatization is dominating the environmental indus try,so I have decided to buy the Ontario Waste Management Corporation. In doing so I will solve serious economic prob lems for the Ontario government, assist industry, confound the investment community, and protect the environment.

Yes,I know there are sceptics out there. How can I, an igno rant scribbler, low in both standing and IQ, possibly dream up this scheme?

It was,like so many portentous events, a revelation. It struck me while walking in a forest located on the 45th par allel which is precisely halfway between the Equator and the North Pole,an indication that cosmic forces were at work.

As St. Paul was struck on the way to Damascus, as Archimedes was smitten in his bath, I was so smote on my way to swim in a provincial park lake.

Like many profound ideas,the answer is simple. I shall offer to take the OWMC's fiscal problems off the government's back and,as the Ontario governmentis drown ing in red ink,I expect cabinet approval will be swift. There will be some token protests in the form of private member's

bills,of course,but ^ey will evaporate overnight. Bob White will say it wouldn't have happened but for NAFTA, while Greenpeacers will rappel down the CN Tower,their stream ers protesting the take-over. All such actions will be regarded as affirmations of my common sense. Then I shall unleash market forces in the valuation prior to my take-over.

In 14 years, the OWMC spent $140 million without ac tually treating any toxic wastes. While they have sponsored industrial recyling projects, completed some commendable education schemes,and gone through an exhaustive site se lection process, this crown corporation has failed to build its 97

incineration facility to dispose of toxic wastes. So I shall insist on the usual comniercial valuation. This should be

like buying General Motors stock had they not built cars for over a decade.

There are other aspects to my proposal. It has been pre dicted that scores of lawyers might jump from high build ings when my take over is completed, but even this human tragedy will not soften my resolve.

As the labyrinthian environmental assessment (EA) process was the culprit for these delays, not the actual OWMC staff, I shall be generous. To pay for severance and other liabilities,I shall issue bonds. These must not be called

either garbage or junk bonds. I have already consulted Michael Milken since his release from Club Fed and,on his

advice, my issue will be named Greenie Bonds. They will be green in colour and printed using vegetable inks, which will fade totally in six months. My slogan will be:"Environmen tally friendly and value degradable." As economic realities are never factored into environmentalists' demands, I pre dict that activists will be big buyers of Greenie Bonds. As many of their activities have led to some monumentally ex pensive remediation project delays, their purchases might also bring forth a measure of justice. Sales should be strong enough to pay generous severance to the beleaguered OWMC staff.

"But what about the industrial wastes; how shall we

deal with them?" you ask. Well, having talked with various major industries,I found their technical staff to be devilishly clever, sometimes ingenious. The people who make petro leum products have a profound knowledge and understand ing of the molecular structures of the chemicals that go into their products. Technical staff in the forest industries also know their products inside out; so do the makers of pies, paper,paint,and potato chips. Most of them employ chem ists,engineers,or technologists who use R&D to continually 98

improve their diverse products.

It stands to reason that, with such great understanding of the raw materials from which they make their wares, it should be relatively easy for industrial staff to treat most of their effluents by reversing the processes, so to speak. Spe cialist consulting advice could be brought in where knowl edge gaps occur, and indeed, there are private sector firms with excellent disposal facilities who could take full respon sibility for any residual matter.

Industries rarely focus on the ecosystemic life-cycle costs of their effluents, with many ignoring an earlier plea from the environment ministry for voluntary compliance. Can you imagine voluntary income tax? Using full-cycle costing would see many so-called profits subtracted from the bal ance sheet if the restoration costs for a damaged environ ment were factored into the production figures.

It makes no sense to generate a million bucks' profit making hubcaps if, in doing so, you contaminate an aquifer for a thousand years, especially as it is likely to contain re newable quantities of pure drinking water worth far more than the hubcaps. And that is not even calculating the aes thetic or public health depreciation. Ugh, I'm beginning to sound like an economist. But we must never forget that many so-called 'profits' would not be so designated had the re storative environmental costs been factored into life-cycle costs.

But when industries and researchers put their minds to effluent treatment, instead of just the production of raw materials, the results can be awesome. For example, ferric chloride, or iron salt, is undeniably present in liquid indus trial waste from steelmaking. Industrial garbage right? Well yes, but iron salts are also perfect for removing phospho rous from treated sewage going into the Great Lakes and other waterways. Nutrients, such as phosphorous, rapidly accelerate the growth of algae and weeds, choking water99

ways,in a process known as eutrophication.

The use of iron salts is an example of true recycling by

chemical engineers who transformed a serious waste prob lem into an ecological asset,thus saving large sums of money and preserving Great Lakes water quality.

But what about the wastes like the dreaded PCBs? This

would appear to be an insurmountable problem, com

pounded by the fact that it seems mandatory for journalists to insert"cancer-causing"immediately before the acronynm

for polychlorinated biphenyls. As PCBs were designed as fire retardants,they are not highly combustible in themselves, but PCB wastes are usually loaded with high quality vola tile compounds which may make them an excellent low-cost, perhaps even no-cost, energy resource.

Now if these wastes are burned in open fires,such as in the St. Basile-le-Grand disaster in Quebec, partially

combusted PCBs can form particulate matter in the form of dibenzofurans and dioxins, which are highly toxic and car

cinogenic. Moreover they can easily penetrate our bodies through breathing. Such particulates have the ability to en ter deep into the lungs of active people, which makes them even more dangerous for joggers and others who exercise vigorously when particulates are present.

But none of these threats is present if we burn these wastes in closed rotary kilns while making cement. Such

kilns, incidently, are similar in shape and operation to the advanced rotary incinerator the OMWC plans to construct.

Another plus-cement-making requires a temperature twice that needed for complete combustion of PCB wastes.

Moreover, cement kilns have a voracious appetite for other wastes,such as old tires, each of which may have ther

mal properties equivalent to ten litres or more of fuel oil.

Finally, the limestone acts as a scrubber, giving additional environmental benefits as it absorbs any low molecular

weight residuals from the waste. Almost perfect, right?

100

Currently we are paying tens of millions to clean up sites where the thermal properties in the PCBs are simply wasted while the cement industry is spending millions each year to bum coal, mainly from the United States. Coal is a very dirty fuel, producing toxic emissions as well as acid vain. Cement kilns could burn up the PCB wastes and other w'aste hydrocarbons while saving millions compared to the portable PCB disposal systems, which currently burn the PCBs without making any useful products.

These are but two examples of how my new privatized corporation will save money for taxpayers while actually treating industrial wastes. One serious disposal problem remains. What shall I do with the mountains of written re

ports and environmental studies that were generated by and for the OWMC during the last 13 years? Properly mined they could reveal a mother lode of data for future genera tions of lawyers,environmental engineers, and political sci entists. Alas,even such a scholarly'mining'proposal would result in activists' cries for a full environmental assessment.

Given that the reports are full of four letter acronyms such as VOCs,PAHs and, worst of all the dreaded PCBs,chances of a quick EA approval are slim.

Mission Improbable - three film suggestions for Hollywood North A graduate student won a $36,000 grantfrom Ottawa's Green Plan Eco-Research Project to study A Bioregionalist Approach to the Settlement Story in Prairie Fiction. While there were 30 other grants in a $1.3 million funding program of doctoral fellowships, this one stood out because of its focus on bioregional fiction.

Now,in the interests of political regionalism, perhaps other researchers might transfer their focus from the prai ries to Prince Edward Island for the next literary incursion into environmental funding.

As a tribute to former Environment Minister Jean

Charest,I suggest a play be funded,dramatising Green Plan spending, and titled Jean of Green Fables. The plot, loosely based on the play Waitingfor Godot, focuses on a consulting engineer pursuing a fantastic dream - that one day Green Plan Money might actually be spent on pollution abatement.

Some publishers have already dismissed this story outline as wildly improbable.

Another creative possibility is the story of the Ontario Waste Management Corporation (OWMC) with a variation on the theme From Here To Eternity. This will be based on the true story of a renowned scientist. Dr. Donald Chant, the father of Pollution Probe and the foremost critic

of government environment policies in his day.

In the late '60s, his scientific credentials,eloquence,and telegenic sincerity were perfect for a media seeking an envi ronmental patriarch to lead us out of the environmental wil derness.

But capitalism often absorbs critics into its infrastruc ture. In a brilliant political move. Conservative premier Bill Davis, persuaded Dr. Chant to help create, and then head 102

up the crown corporation as president in 1981. But after try ing for more than 14 years. Dr. Chant found that criticizing the Augean Stables of industry was much easier than cleans ing them.

Worse still. Dr. Chant,the former Prince of Protest, and

father of Pollution Probe,became serially savaged by his own intellectual progeny when protesters turned on him during site selection meetings. On the credit side,OWMC has kept legions of lawyers off the streets.

Several years ago, after an exhaustive evaluation pro cess, OWMC opted to destroy toxic industrial wastes in an advanced rotary kiln incinerator. But construction had been delayed for years because of complex environmental assess ments and other legal processes,few of which were OWMC's fault.

In Greek mythology, Hercules cleansed the Stables of Augeas during his 12 Labours by diverting the river Alpheus to flow through them. OWMC failed to emulate the Her culean feat even after rivers of red ink were diverted into

waste management problems. After spending some $140 million in 14 years, OWMC still had not treated any wastes by the beginning of 1995- when the Ontario Cabinet rejected OWMC's incineration project after an appeal to overturn an environmental assessment board decision.

Moses kept his people in the wilderness for 40 years before they could enter the promised land. At one time the people were saved by manna raining down from heaven.

OWMC pursued its dream in the limbo of uncertainty for 14 years while money, not manna, rained down from Queen's

Park. Despite Dr. Chant's commitment and integrity, in a quest that spanned Conservative, Liberal and NDP govern ments, the OWMC incineration facility was fated never to enter the promised land of EA approvals and construction.

First the NDP Cabinet rejected OWMC's EA appeal early in 1995;a few months later, Mike Harris'conservatives scrapped 103

the OWMC completely.

The NDP Cabinet decision was unsurprising as the par

ty's dogmatists loathe incineration with the same passion they normally reserve for commercial success. Moreover, primitive peoples have always been afraid of fire: remem ber the film The Quest for Fire? This film was based on a prehistoric tribe whose standard of living and comfort dra matically declined when they lost the use of fire. Cold,hun gry,and frightened,a small group wandered across the bleak landscape seeking ways to capture or create flame.

A suggested sequel might be called The Questfor Ire. It might portray former NDP Environment Minister, Ruth Crier, when she stalked across the province with the obdu racy of an ecological Margaret Thatcher, stamping out all

proposals for garbage incineration. It could conclude with a poignant scene as the camera scans an unbroken vista of empty factories with the minister atop the CN Tower, defi antly reciting a litany of 3 Rs like a mantra. Ironically, she herself was recycled from the Environment folio, to the Min istry of Health. Perhaps,like a Donna Quixote, she tilted at one incinerator too many.

The Federal $36,000 grant to study bioregionalism in Prairie fiction clearly reveals a profoundly creative talent for proposal writing; it also gives fiction an official status in Environment Canada's much vaunted Green Plan. With so

many absurdities in environmental politics, and policies, other doctoral candidates can now anticipate a new field, which is virtually recession proof.

104

For 30 grand we should be able to reincarnate Albert Einstein

When it comes to collecting revenues, governments strike swifter than speeding bullets. Politicians, of course, ooze compassion as they dispense their political largesse with our quite involuntary generosity Quite often, government ini tiatives are draped with a nauseating air of philanthropy like spices on poor meat- to mask the fact that some projects are actually electoral devices to maintain party momentum between elections. Bribery with the victims' own money.

While we desperately need environmental remediation equipment, the Federal Government has been known to spend a million dollars on show biz extravaganzas-includ ing musical compositions, concerts, and hot air balloons -

simply to make people'aware'of the environment. As opin ion polls repeatedly confirm that Canadians are already gravely concerned with environmental deterioration,a show biz approach would seem,to put it kindly, superfluous. We

need aeration devices to introduce oxygen in wastewaters and Environment Canada gives us hot air balloons.

Incidently, the fiscal madness stretches beyond the Fed

eral jurisdiction. The Ontario government once spent an astounding $30,000 in Toronto newspapers simply to adver tise for a $60,000 civil service position. For thirty grand they might have reincarnated Albert Einstein. Somewhere deep in the bowels of Queen's Park,there must be a training camp where swivel serpents refine their skills in the art of wasting public funds.

But while political compassion drips monotonously from parliamentary debates, government bagmen operate ruthlessly when they collect monies from us. To hapless businessmen, trying to beat deadlines, government inflex ibility must seem as inexorable as huge steel doors closing 105

on bank vaults. For not even the most ruthless capitalist enjoys a situation where the game is so blatantly rigged in favour of the House.

The problems are endemic at all levels of government.

While you can buy virtually anything by credit card, from symphony concerts to holidays in Spain, you need cash or a cheque up front to renew your driver's licence or auto li cence plate. With the same credit card, you can order the

most expensive meal, complete with wine, in a town you have never visited before from a maitre d' whose name you cannot pronounce. Credit cards enable you to buy Alka Selt zer in Alberta, quiche in Quebec,suits in Saskatchewan,and tires in Toronto - but you absolutely must pay cash to buy a ten dollar bottle of plonk at a liquor store three blocks from your home in any province in Canada.

In the publishing business, printers will often extend

30 days' credit after they have printed and delivered pub lished material costing tens of thousands of dollars. But Canada Post requires payment in full, by cash or certified cheque, before it will fill your postage machines to enable you to deliver the very material the printer has extended credit upon. All this in spite Canada Post's monopoly posi tion, which precludes mailing alternatives. The Yellow Pages are filled with printers - but there is only one agency per government service, so we cannot vote with our feet and shop elsewhere.

In the pursuit of tax revenues,governments swoop with the winged feet of Mercury- yet in the payment for the goods and services which various governments purchase, well that is quite another story. By some strange alchemy,when money is supposed to flow from the government.Mercury becomes leaden in its movement. Mercury, incidently, was the Ro man God of merchants and trading - a cruel irony in this case.

This is a story that lacks a happy ending for many equip106

ment manufacturers and suppliers. Repeatedly we hear of suppliers desperately seeking payment months after their equipment has been delivered and installed, or services ren dered. Payments trickle down to firms so slowly, they can sometimes only be measured by glacial chronology. Watch ing glaciers is a hobby for the very patient and bankers are seldom included in this demographic group.

If justice delayed is justice denied,then it is equally true to say that payment delayed is money devalued. Even multi nationals require credit to finance their operations,so small firms-the very backbone of the nation's economy-are much more vulnerable. It costs money to borrow money, so any unnecessary delays in payments are, in fact, a tremendous burden on the very people who are creating jobs, protecting the environment and generating economic growth -the very essence of the UN-sponsored Brundtland Report, which Canada embraced enthusiastically.

While borrowing money is expensive, it costs nothing at all to pay debts on goods and services as expeditiously as possible. Governments at all levels could further the pro tection of our environment by speeding up payment to sup pliers. The situation is critical. Some worthy environmental firms could be taken off the endangered species list simply by processing invoices more promptly. And after all, Cana dian politicians are world experts in debts.

Finally, a mea culpa. I know,better than most,that there are many dedicated environmental professionals in the civil service. For years we have watched them swim -like spawn ing salmon -against bureaucratic currents of ineptitude.Like Chaucer's Pardoner, I seek indulgences, not only for any present offences here, but also for those I intend to commit in the future.

NB. By mid 1995,Ontario consumers were permitted to buy liquor using credit cards.

107

Does fashion adversely affect the environment?

Massey College was the perfect venue for Canada's first Environmental Think Tank over 20 years ago. Spacious booklined rooms,an atrium garden and candle-lit dining,all com bined to evoke a feeling of reverence for scholarly thought and the creation of innovative policies. This modern archi tectural masterpiece at the University of Toronto somehow brings the scholastic tranquility of a medieval monastery to the very heart of the city.

Convened by the late Dr. Philip Jones, the gathering attracted some of the brightest names in the environmental fraternity* The scientific brain power in this assembly was awesome. Even my IQ rose a few points just by breathing deeply in the meeting. As my credentials seemed woefully inadequate amid such luminaries, I ruefully concluded that my invitation was an affirmative action gesture, perhaps on behalf of the cerebrally disadvantaged.

Discussions ranged from single or multi-disciplinary problems, to the very core of the environmental sciences including the effect of chlorofluorocarbons(CFCs)in the at mosphere from air conditioners and other sources. The aca demics did not exclude universities from their eloquent criti cism as they interwove philosopy with their deep-seated expertise in complex scientific problems.

It was during a lull in these intellectual barrages that I hesitantly ventured an opinion that fashion was a major fac tor in environmental deterioration. "Fashion!" exclaimed

the scientists. I felt like Oliver Twist, who on having asked for more, was confronted by Mr. Bumble the Beagle.

Hesitantly,I explained that vast amounts of energy were expended - along with accompanying CFC discharges, which affect the ozone layer -simply because clothing styles 108

developed in temperate climates were slavishly followed in hot countries. Even with temperatures in the 90s, North American businessmen still dress in three-piece suits, which demand increasing use of air-conditioning in homes,offices, and automobiles.

Indeed, people in so-called backward countries invari ably dress in apparel much more suited to their climates than western nations.

Ironically,as more women are taking their rightful place in the business world, many have abandoned their sensible and cool summer dresses in favour of business suits. Then

there's the cosmetics industry. Hair sprays and many cos metic chemicals place heavy burdens on the environment during manufacture,in use, and following disposal.

There are many other areas, besides clothing, where fashion adversely impacts on the environment. The lifestyles of some homeowners are especially wasteful. Even during protracted droughts, many water their lawns for lengthy periods, often illegally, because suburban fashion decrees perfectly green grass. Many also seem ignorant of the fact that in droughts, brown grass is dormant, not dead, until the rains return. They are often aided and abetted by fixedrate water policies, which ignore the self policing benefits of water metering.

Then,all too often,lavish applications of chemicals fol low to ensure that the green remains totally unblemished by dandelions and other botanical species. Finally, the raucous din of gas-powered edge trimmers, or the jet-like whine of leaf blowers,often add noise pollution to the list of environ mental outrages- all in the name of urban chic and fashion able living.

Fashion, in fact, has a major but largely unrecognized impact on our environment. A simple recognition of this fact could result in major energy savings and equal the ef fectiveness of major remediation projects. To my surprise, 109

the learned gathering agreed that not all environmental remediation need spring from sophisticated scientific re search. Sometimes,common sense will go a long way too.

*Attendees included: Dr. Ian MoTaggart-Cowan,then Chairman of the Canadian Environmental Advisory Council, and twin brother, Dr. Pat McTaggart-Cowan, a past Executive Director of the Sci ence Council of Canada: Dr. Donald Chant, Vice President and Provost of the U of T, later to become President of OWMC;and Dr. Kenneth Hare,then Director of the Institute for Environmental Stud

ies at the U of T and internationally renowned for his research in geography and climatology. Many other scientists, too numerous to mention here, participated. They included academics from the University of Waterloo and York and McMaster Universities, and

senior officials from the Provincial and Federal government. Dr. Philip Jones, my close personal friend and colleague for two dec ades, later became Founding Head of the new school of Environ mental Engineering, Griffith University, Queensland. He died in 1994, regrettably just before his first students there graduated.

10

Tories should have checked the records of

their Big Blue Machine Walking across the U of T Campus recently, I suddenly re called taking part in a panel discussion at an Ontario Con servative Policy Convention. I had been invited to a panel

debate dealing with environmental issues, shortly after the Tories suffered a stunning defeat at the hands of the Liber als. The meeting took place at University College, where I had once taken a course, and which subsequently became one of my favourite buildings.

Gathered within were some of Ontario's brightest To ries, still bewildered at being tumbled out of office after four unbroken decades of power. It was painful to watch afflu ent young Conservatives picking their way among the rub ble of their shattered party as they attempted to rebuild a lost power base. It was not so much a policy convention as a post mortem where the body wasn't quite dead. What had gone wrong they asked?

As environmental issues had played a key role in what was, from their point of view,"a disasterous" election, the debate naturally centred on the Conservative's environmen tal record. If hubris had indeed toppled the Tories, then the sheer ignorance about their historical achievements would keep them in opposition a long time.

In my address, I asked if any delegates had ever heard

of Dr. Albert Edward Berry? No one responded; not the au dience, or my co-panelists, or the ex-environment minister Susan Fish. In fairness, it must be noted that she held the

environment portfolio so briefly, it's rumoured the ministe rial chair was never actually warmed by her elegant poste rior. Fairness demands the observation that it was often

warmed far too long by some inelegant male posteriors. Yet Dr. Albert Edward Berry - under Tory rule, remember - was

the architect of the Ontario Water Resources Commission

before it was absorbed into the present Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Energy. Under his vigorous leader ship, Ontario spent billions on water and wastewater treat

ment plants and systems. The surge of environmental projects, constructed over the three decades following the birth of the OWRC*,are regarded as a prodigious achieve ment by scientists in other countries.

While the majority of these projects took place under

Tory rule and,indeed,were often generously funded by vari ous Conservative governments, none of the rejected and dejected conservatives seemed even vaguely aware of this.

One of the speakers drew attention to the high cancer rates in populations surrounding the Great Lakes, linking the disease to the lakes because they are a source of drinking water. I felt such a correlation was based on fallacious epidemiological reasoning.

The Great Lakes historically have attracted some of the heaviest smoke stack industries on both sides of the border.

This resulted in the development of sprawling urban com munities, which compounded the severe air pollution situa tions in the Great Lakes area. Cancers could result from

workers exposed to carcinogens in workplaces, as well as air pollution from many sources, including traffic conges tion. For example, people in this region may routinely in hale a thousand times more benzene, a known carcinogen,

from the air in a single day than from the water they drink in the same time period.

As the finest hospitals also are to be found in densely-

populated areas, I mentioned the possibility that these fa cilities also would attract seriously-ill cancer patients from communities far removed from the Great Lakes. Inevitably,

the resulting mortality tables would further distort the de mographic interpretation of health risks around the Lakes.

I voiced my concern also at the presence of large con112

centrations of toxins in landfills on the American side of the

Niagara River. 1 said both the Ontario and Federal govern ments should intervene more vigorously in US courts, per haps by funding some citizens' groups,to remove any crossborder menaces to both countries.

As the meeting wound to its conclusion, a delegate asked me for a recommendation. My answer: "Put more faith in the environment ministry's scientific and engineer ing staff." This seemed to surprise her.

I had to explain that praise for civil servants of any kind did not trip lightly from my tonsils. By nature I am predis posed to distrust the inhabitants of many government agen cies. But after years of meeting with the OWRC and, later,

environment ministry staff, 1 have developed a profound admiration for the high levels of competence, personal in tegrity, and yes, even the courage, frequently displayed by the senior staff. These qualities,incidently,can also be found in their federal counterparts as well as in some of our mu nicipalities and regions.

However, after the Liberals toppled the Tories, and es pecially after the NOP came to power,the engineering com ponent of the environment ministry has been diluted by advisors more noted for their ecological zealotry than in trinsic knowledge of the environmental sciences.

Had the Tory election strategists been aware of envi ronmental history, their Big Blue Machine might well have continued, without missing a beat, for yet another decade.

*Not to be confused with OWMC,the illfated Ontario Waste Manage ment Corporation which was terminated by the Mike Harris Conserva tive Government afew weeks after taking power June 8,1995.

13

Voice of Fire became a Quest for Ire when

pollution became an art form When our National Gallery purchased Barnett Newman's

painting Voice ofFire, a storm of protest erupted. Compris ing a mere three vertical coloured stripes, any artistic sub tlety by the American painter clearly eluded most people.

The $1.76 million price tag caused shock and outrage. Some critics said the painting looked as if it had been slapped on with a paint roller. This was typical Canadian self-abnega tion, as the paint roller is a bonafide Canadian invention.

But Voice ofFire is the epitome of conventional art com

pared to the Toronto art exhibit that several years ago dis played actual fecal matter in a jar as a statement against war.

(I am not making this up!)

This news that human excrement had been on display at a publicly funded art exhibition made me deeply conscious

of my inadequacies as a writer. For years I had reported on various environmental treatment processes. But this new emphasis on fecal matter as art nouveau made me painfully aware that my writing style had been frozen in a cultural vacuum, putting me outside the cultural elite. Then Pierre Trudeau gave his famous one finger benediction to his de tractors, perhaps implying,"Let them eatsludge cake." Cer tainly his gesture was interpreted by critics as subliminal support for the new fecal genre.

I felt a powerful desire to become an environmental art critic. To prepare myself,I became a voracious reader of the giants of criticism in the world of arts and letters. I immersed myself in the works of Ruskin,Benjamin,and Tynan - while also sampling the culinary critiques of the Globe & Mail's acerbic Joanne Kates. Gradually I developed an arrogant posture, a petulant sneer, and a penchant for polysyllabic prose.

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But what I lacked was the right medium for my debut as an art critic. My big chance came when an arts and sci ence magazine retained me to review sewage treatment pro cesses across Canada, enabling me to write this first article in the new critical mode. I wrote quickly for my new assign ment, happy at last that imaginative prose would outrank factual accuracy. I wrote: The strong WASP influence in Upper Canada ensured that waste treatment in Canada reached a high state of technical excellence.

The final effluents, though, are rather sterile, lacking the variety, colour, and exuberance of a truly great art form. The resulting sludges are somewhat bland and generally lacking in bouquet. Pathogens too would appear not to travel well in the receiving waters. In fact the situation might be compared to the Bolshoi Ballet, where perfection of technique has been achieved at the expense of artistic spontaneity!

Unprecedented hot, dry spells brought forth an explosive burst of high coliform counts, which closed off beaches and shattered the complacent attitudes of Ontario engineers. Ille gal connections to storm sewers were revealed as factors in

the situation, plus the contributions of dogs, cats and other urban animal populations; but the beach contamination was more the result of climatic aberration than a genuinely artistic pollution phenomenon. The hot weather brought forth also rapid algal growth, which disfigured the water bodies in a tan gled mass of aquatic botany-a picture worthy of the Abstract Expressionism of Jackson Pollock.

The vast spaces of the Canadian Prairies clearly influenced Western design engineers, who often opted for the spaceconsuming lagoon method of sewage treatment. Clearly,

Westerners missed a glorious artistic opportunity. They might have taken their cue from the geometric layout of the Prairie farms and created a new genre of rectangularism to rival the pioneering cubism of Braque and Picasso. Alas, utility over came art. The result Is an admittedly effective, but boring plebeian treatment system.

On the east coast of Atlantic Canada,some interesting ef fluents can be found for the afficionado. The city of Moncton, until recently, discharged raw sewage into the Peticodiac River.

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But thanks to the wide fluctuations of the Bay of Fundy estua-

rine tides, what the city cast into the river, it received back hours later, giving two bouquets for the price of one,as it were.

Moncton remedied the situation with a modern sewage treat

ment system, but millions of litres of untreated sewage are still discharged into Halifax Harbour. The discharges give an aquatic 'mobile' shading effect while adding a rich olfactory bouquet to the historic city which visitors find ... well, bracing.

Labour unrest in British Columbia gives a novel twist to artistic pollution. BO strikes are so long and so regular that the waterways have adapted to systematic recovery periods.

The result is what connoisseurs have described as "an impu dent little effluent." The art form is, in the best artistic tradi tion, also a strong social commentary.

Environmental neglect is widespread across Canada, but no one does it with the elan and panache of La Belle Prov

ince. Ignoring the constraints imposed by formal treatment processes,for years the Quebecois cleverly opted to harness the turbulence of the St. Lawrence River in a spontaneous,

free-form, high-volume, raw-sewage discharge mode. Inevi tably,some critics carp about ineffectual treatment: but all admit the Quebec effluent, like a good wine, retains its bouquet, that the effluent travels well, and that capital costs are negligi ble! The Quebec stretch of the St. Lawrence might be com

pared to the Louvre as an unmatched repository for its array of effluents and industrial trace elements.

The federal government's role must not be overlooked ei ther. By wiping out large sections of Canadian industry with inept budgets, several finance ministers did more to weaken industrial effluents in two years than Environment Canada had achieved in past decades.

Canada Post too gives new insights into waste treatment.

For instance, biodegradability, the very basis of pulp and pa

per pollution abatement,can now be studied under controlled conditions as our letters inch (or centimetre)their way through the system. In fact, as so many letters and parcels disappear without a trace, it could well be that the Post Office has al

ready achieved total biodegradability - a process that has long eluded environmental scientists.

Two additional art forms spring to mind when contemplat ing Post Office lethargy and ineptness. Theatrically, the Post 116

Office scene could be likened to Waiting for Godot, a play where the audience is continuously in suspense, yet nothing happens. Musically speaking, the frantic search for lost par cels and letters is reminiscent of the organist looking for his "Lost Chord."

Finally there are the magnificent oceanic canvases of the

Exxon Valdez school done in oils (spills that is), which give a myriad of swiftly changing rainbows, often highlighted by a macabre ballet of dying birds and other wildlife, vainly strug gling to escape their oily destiny. But the increasing regularity of these spills has reduced their worth as works of art. Moreo

ver, the critical reviews were universally bad. And as they inflict serious ecological and economic damage on the Planet,

the Valdez school will no longer be tolerated by the public.

Future creators of this art form -not their 'canvasses'- may hang in public.

After penning my first critique,I felt an egotistical surge of self-importance - that is until I read the late Brendan

Behan's rejoinder to drama critics. The Irish playwright said critics were like eunuchs in the harem;competent enough to observe and comment, but totally inept...!

VOICE H.V.V..>U

17

The incredible shrinking pie syndrome

Remember the federal government's ad campaign showing a gleaming Canadian loonie with a large pie shape chunk cut from it? While designed to illustrate the service charges of our huge debt burden, the mutilated coin was also an unwitting metaphor for a deep-seated sickness in Canadian politics - the shrinking pie syndrome. Twenty years ago, our diverse industrial base and quality of life were the envy of the world. Yet in a few short years, some rather shrill single-issue pressure groups have deflected us imswervingly towards the have-not nations.

What Canada needs are economic pie makers. What the country is developing into is a nation of pie slicers, a verita ble army of people who work unceasingly to carve their share out of a shrinking economy. The nation's energy and intel lectual resources are increasingly being diverted away from economically sound enterprises into the narrow cul-de-sacs of single issue group interests. Builders, business people, and environmental engineers are all victims of the malaise which subjugates their expertise to that of self-proclaimed experts and pressure groups.

Entrepreneurs, who risk capital,energy,and talent,and who compete in highly competitive fields,are only too aware of the shrinking pie syndrome. In a world where unem ployment is an increasing social evil, many jobs remain va cant while unemployment insurance claims rise.

Yet a writer recently demanded jobs for everyone as a social right. He did not detail any specifics in the ten column inches of drivel I read, but I yearned to ask him if he would like to have a vasectomy performed by someone with a right to the task, regardless of qualifications or ability? Or per haps he would like to fly in a plane that was built and crewed

by mechanics,attendants,and pilots who were there because of a right to the positions?

A shortage of apartments? Bring in rent controls which drive away the very people who build affordable housing.

Abandon the mason's trowel in favour of the lawyer's brief; then create a huge secondary industry of rent control bu reaucracies, replete with grants for tenants' groups.

This way enormous energies are directed, not towards increasing rental housing stock,but to ensuring that tenants' rights are protected. Looking after the less fortunate in soci ety is a noble ideal, but the largest beneficiaries of rent con trols are those who were tenants when controls were im

posed. Meanwhile the truly needy remain homeless while apartment building languishes.

In the environmental field, the same thrust is evident.

Engineers and scientists from both public and private sec tors are often brusquely dismissed as tools of the establish ment while the views of the vocal, but often unqualified, citizens' groups are eagerly picked up and amplified by the news media.

There are some dedicated engineers whose life's work has been devoted to environmental protection. I know sev eral senior engineers who fought for legislation and public

funding at a time when it was not fashionable to do so. They then directed their efforts to procuring the design and con struction of billion-dollar treatment schemes, which were state-of-the-art when constructed.

The world, alas, is still imperfect. As in every other industrialized country, serious toxic problems are literally surfacing in Canada, posing threats to the environment and our drinking water sources.

No stunts are required to dramatize today's environ mental problems. But the engineers and scientists who spe cialize in environmental engineering are not the voices

sought by contemporary society. Serious papers showing 119

progress in environmental remediation are often ignored by the media in favor of colorful gimmicks. Climb a smoke stack to protest acid rain, or demonstrate in some eye-catch ing costume,and your message is virtually certain to appear that same day on the nation's televisions.

Yet daring climbs and cute costumes treat not a cubic centimetre of acid rain, nor reduce the serious toxic prob lems we face. Indeed some protesters have actually caused promising rehabilitation projects to be abandoned, not be cause they were impractical, but because the demonstrators made the projects politically unacceptable.

In employment creation, entrepreneurs rate less than department bureaucrats. Under rent controls, builders be come inferior to rent review officers; and with environmen

tal matters, protesters rank higher than professional engi neers or chemists. In short the vicarious experts have as sumed dominance over the intrinsic ones. Professional ad

vice, based on training, education and experience in highly specialized fields, is i^ored in favor of those groups who can manipulate the political pressure points so that the pies are sliced their way. Economic viability, or even common sense,seldom plays a role in the pie-slicing syndrome.

But with ecological problems, we must ultimately rely on scientists and engineers who work with the proven meth odology of applied science which has served us so well in the past. There is positively no other way to stop further environmental deterioration. Regrettably, this fact of life seems lost on our politicians. Increasingly they govern us through opinion polls while reacting to protesters carrying placards as though they were armed revolutionaries.

Winston Churchill once noted: "In war, truth is so pre cious it must sometimes be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies." Outright lies are rare these days - it's the half-truths from the pie slicers that can be so very damaging.

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The environmental evangelists When we first moved to our country retreat, the community wasn't big enough to have a village idiot. Rapid urban de velopment has clearly rectified the omission. The hills are

alive with ecological zealots pontificating on drinking wa ter safety,highway proposals,PCBs,landfills and many other issues. While protesters are particularly active in our region, I have come across the breed on three continents.

Not since Johann Gutenberg invented movable type in 1450 has so much gibberish about environmental matters

been published by some protest groups. All too frequently, their dire warnings are combined with a nauseating air of moral superiority. Indeed, some activists are the environ

mental equivalents of certain television evangelists.

Politicians compound the problem. Too often they re spond to complex environmental situations with sensational

statements, which owe more to electoral opportunism than

to honest attempts to solve problems. Invariably,they find a willing ally in the news media.

A newspaper columnist epitomized the misconceptions that plague the professional environmental fraternity. He wrote: For many years, environmentalists have been sounding alarms about the gradual destruction ofthe environment but gov ernments refused to act,largely because voters were not sufficiently concerned.

Now people realize that no one can escape the harmful effects of industrial wastes and pollution. Toxic wastes are in the food chain and in our drinking water. It is a sad commentary on the state of the environment that in the country with the mostfresh water, the sale of bottled water is becoming a thriving industry.

In less than 90 words, this author manages to make major errors of fact,as well as misinterpretations, which can121

not be allowed to pass unchallenged. • Canada is not the country with the most fresh water; the former USSR and Brazil have flows that greatly exceed this country's estimated 100,000 cubic metres per second. As even the truncated Russia is still bigger than Canada, it is

likely that its water flows still exceed Canada's. What about the Great Lakes? Well Lake Baikal, the jewel of Siberia, for

example, is about 1.5 kilometres deep, much deeper than Lake Superior,and contains a volume of fresh water compa rable to all of the Great Lakes combined.

•The columnist employs a spurious Catch 22argument when he links the soaring sales of bottled water with the actual state of Canadian fresh water sources. Many people have been stampeded into buying bottled water because of inflammatory statements by single issue pressure groups not because of the condition of the waters. If a false fire

alarm sounds in a theatre, the rapid exodus is due to the alarmist; it is not a reflection on the performers. Chemists and engineers engaged in water treatment are only too well aware that our raw water sources contain a variety of toxins, and they are making substantial progress on a range of treat ment processes. But the people who seek refuge in bottled waters might be startled if they could read analytical data on the various brands. Arsenic,lead,copper,sulphates, and magnesium are only a few of the compounds that have been found in some bottled waters, sometimes at levels exceed

ing those of the untreated waters in Lake Ontario. But even here, trace substances in bottled waters are usually well be low the limits imposed in our drinking water standards. I for one enjoy many brands of bottled water, which I drink with confidence,especially when camping,or traveling out side Canada.

• The third misconception is the inference that is was the modem 'environmentalists' who first issued wamings to indifferent govemments who refused to act. The facts are 122

otherwise.

Internationally, Greenpeace began in BC in the late '70s when it courageously tried to stop French nuclear tests in the Pacific, and then whaling in Russian and other waters.

Greenpeace now embraces many other environmental issues,

often with spectacular stunts and expertise in media manipu lation. In Ontario, Pollution Probe emerged at the Univer sity of Toronto in 1969 and spawned dozens of like-minded groups across Canada. Unquestionably these groups focused attention on serious areas of environmental neglect, and of ten performed valuable public service. Greenpeace has done admirable work in many fields. To paraphrase Voltaire, if

such groups did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them.

The noun 'environmentalists'crept into the media lexi

con a little over two decades ago and reporters eagerly des ignated activists as'authoritative'sources,regardless ofcom petence or relevance. It was a perfect match - a press with an insatiable appetite for sensationalism mating with an elo quent protest movement brimming with moral indignation.

Many activists' warnings were justifiable, often being based on engineering and scientific studies from professionals in the health and engineering fields.

Butsome of the apocalyptic warnings- many on drink ing water - were based on anecdotal evidence rather than

the scientific methodology accepted throughout the world.

Professional advice - based on long training, education and experience in engineering and science- was largely ignored.

But even as the protest movements were taking their

first strident steps,the Ontario Government had long begun a construction surge of water and wastewater treatment

plants unparalleled anywhere in the world at that time. Bil

lions were spent on environmental projects in Ontario, and,

it is worth stressing, most of these projects were planned decades before the birth of the protest movement. The On123

tario Water Resources Commission, for example, commis sioned massive water and wastewater programs as soon as it was created in 1954.

Similar projects got underway in the West, thanks to some dedicated engineers who founded the Western Canada Water & Wastes Conference, well before the era of protest.

In Quebec,such engineers as Pat Bourgeois helped to found the I'Association quebecoise des techniques de I'eau(AQTE) more than 33 years ago- at a time when public and political interest in the ecology was scant. AQTE members, using their technical expertise like blunt instruments, waged war on government apathy. The current environmental construc tion activity in Quebec is rooted more in AQTE's tireless ef forts than the activist groups.

But major environmental activism from engineering professionals had begun several generations earlier, when deaths from typhoid,cholera,and other water-borne diseases were commonplace. As such afflictions were often confined to the poorer districts, authorities were sometimes callously indifferent to sanitary engineering proposals. Some Cana dian cities had the dubious distinction of having higher in fant mortality rates than major European cities.

Tangible remedial action came about only through the strenuous efforts of such engineers as Thomas and Samuel Keefer, Willis Chipman, Dr. Albert Edward Berry, and Win nipeg's Bill Hurst,often in opposition to the vested interests of the day.

Some of today's self-anointed environmentalists would do well to study this record. They might discover the eco logical wheel they think they invented was,in fact, gaining momentum around the turn of the century. It was a wheel built by engineers and scientists, not articulate but techni cally illiterate protesters.

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space age technologies at dirt cheap prices

Members of the public do not trust the quality of their drink ing water. Unscientific newsmedia coverage could be a fac tor. Media criticisms of water quality are usually based on anecdotal evidence rather than the scientific methods used

by scientists the world over. Anecdotal evidence is dramatic

- it is perfect for a 20 second television news clip in environ mental stories. A skillful close-up of an emotional mother claiming her child has suffered skin rashes since a new fac tory opened can have a powerful effect on a viewing audi ence.

The mother is clearly sincere,the rash genuine,the closeup of the infection sickening. But there may be no link what soever between the factory's activities and the child's skin rash. Children have had skin infections since the Cro-

Magnon Man. Factories - William Blake's "dark satanic mills" began a little over two centuries ago with the Indus trial Revolution.

Epidemiology - the study of the causes of diseases calls for a systematic review of many cases over time, not a single isolated incident. And while no scientist would use an isolated case as evidence,it is common for TV producers to use anecdotal interviews with enthusiasm. It is a clash

between a news medium, whose mission is to entertain as

well as inform - and the systematic methods of scientific research. The result? Many people simply do not trust the quality of their drinking water.

Drinking water professionals are caught in a double bind. While they are driven by a low price ethic - which continually stresses the importance of keeping costs and taxes down - society increasingly demands space age water qual ity standards. Quite literally, drinking water is dirt cheap; 125

in fact, dirt is far more expensive than potable water. Try buying topsoil, or even clean fill, for 50 cents a cubic metre

delivered to your driveway. In fact, try buying anything at 50 cents a cubic metre.

Then relate to paying 50 cents for a cubic metre of pota ble water which has been pumped from aquifers or lakes, purified, transported many miles, then delivered to virtu ally every floor of every home. The figure of50 cents a cubic metre came from Environment Canada and, of course, the

figure varies from area to area. Many countries pay four times what Canadians pay for their water. Australians pay up to $1.57, Germans $1.72, and the Japanese pay $5.50 per cubic metre.

Scotch whisky in Canada ranges from $20,000 to $26,000 a cubic metre. If that seems high, try switching to beer at $1,500 for the same volume. Teetotal? Well your cola costs some $850 per cubic metre,and milk a more expensive $985.

But depending on where you live in Canada,it usually costs less than two dollars for five tonnes of treated water - deliv

ered right inside the house via the water main. A cubic me tre contains 1,000 litres. Bottled waters frequently cost twice

this amount for a one litre bottle. Home delivery is not part of the service of the other more expensive liquids.

Yet we are discussing a water treatment industry that is now doing research, development, and pilot studies for the removal of toxins at parts per quadrillion. A part per quad rillion is comparable to one second in about 32 million years - an incredibly low figure. This sort of precision is more in keeping with the NASA space program than an industry that sells its products for less than 50 cents a cubic metre.

Certainly drinking water professionals face many seri ous problems, but research is always underway to improve treatment systems-and yes,technology has been developed to further improve water quality developments including reverse osmosis, which is used on naval vessels to produce 126

potable water at sea as well as to purify drinking water on land, granular activated carbon, ultra violet light, and ozonation. All are promising high-tech solutions to current and future problems. Regrettably the general public is una ware of the genuine progress that has been made in water treatment,especially in disease control. That these technolo gies are not widely employed reflects a lack of political will, not environmental science and engineering inadequacy.

Power without responsibility - a harlot's prerogative Decades ago, an article in Le Monde predicted that profes sional communicators would hold the same social rank that

ecclesiastics held in the Middle Ages. I thought this was absurd at the time, but events have proven the renowned French newspaper actually understated the case.

Environmentally,the engineering profession has served Canada better than its people know. Willis Chipman and Thomas Keefer were but two of the pioneering consulting engineers who were building water treatment facilities dec ades before the turn of the century and were several genera tions ahead of the Green Movement currently dominating our news media. Moreover their engineering legacy to pos terity was a tangible array of functional treatment facilities which saved millions of lives, not a plethora of abandoned placards and protest signs. Indeed, one of Keefer's steam driven water treatment pumps,built well over a century ago, is still in working condition near Hamilton, Ontario.

These and many other environmental professionals were the true ecological pioneers. Their efforts began dec ades before the ecology became inextricably linked with radi cal chic, or environmental awareness evolved into media fodder.

Engineering still remains The Invisible Profession - when it is not being ignored, it is often scorned. One ubiquitous critic, wearing his environmentalist's mantle like some holy shroud, garnered headlines when he accused environmen tal engineers of "being hung up on the Iron Ring mentality,

unwilling to try out new ideas." (Canadian engineers are allowed to wear an Iron Ring when, after rigorous training and study, they qualify as professional engineers and may put REng. after their names.)

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This condescending remark was directed at a profes sion that has done as much, if not more than, the medical profession to protect the public from lethal water-borne dis

eases, while delivering pure water with unfailing regularity.

Costs to consumers are in the order of two dollars for five tonnes - delivered inside the house.

The remark about the Iron Ring mentality was totally inappropriate; yet it garnered headlines in our national news paper, the Globe & Mail.

The very nature of engineering is the innovative adap tation of applied science and research. Yet no dynamic re buttals were launched from Canada's largest,and most pow erful, learned profession. Weeks later, a reply was tamely inserted into Dimensions, the Professional Engineers of On tario magazine. The situation called for more vigorous ac tion than flailing at ill informed critics with wet noodles.

An energetic counter attack was needed in the public arena, not an inward looking wail in the profession's own medium.

To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, the engineer's response went "not with a bang but with a whimper."

The Iron Ring slur was totally uncalled for. The On

tario Environment Ministry had not had an engineer at the top for over 20 years. In recent years. Queen's Park policy advisers have been people often more skilled in media rela

tions than environmental engineering, making the slur in accurate as well as unfair.

There are countless spokespersons from Greenpeace,

Friends of the Earth,Pollution Probe and many other groups that seem to multiply like amoeba in a pond on a hot day.

Collectively they produce more negatives than Eastman Kodak. I don't know why they call themselves 'friends' of

the earth - they behave more like lovers, passionately de voted,sincere in their love,and highly suspicious of anyone they think might violate their beloved. Without doubt,their integrity and good intent are beyond reproach. Indeed, an 129

astonishing number of engineers have expressed admiration for the way certain pressure groups have mastered complex ecological data, which have thrown new light on proposals.

A few protesters are simply modem day Luddites who won't be satisfied until Stelco and Dofasco are broken down

into a few blacksmith's shops. While it is vital that we have checks and balances in a democratic system,all too often the end result is akin to taking your in-laws(who also have the very best of intentions) along on your honeymoon.

It must be really heartwarming being an engineer -get ting blamed for environmental policies shaped by govern ment lawyers and radical activists, then taking the blame for ecological inertia. Engineers and chemists have saved millions of lives by virtually wiping out lethal water-bome diseases through their water treatment technology around the turn of the century. Ironically, the medical profession got the credit; yet when doctors close beaches for swimming, engineers get the blame.

Environmental professionals now have responsibility without power; by contrast, certain journalists and protest groups enjoy great power without responsibility. Such power, a 19th century English Lord once noted with mag nificent acerbity, "is the prerogative of the harlot."

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Some urban barbarians are also scientific illiterates

There are probably more lies told about art than adultery.

Art is too often an area where duplicity and hypocrisy pre vail over veracity. An abstract painting, done anonymously by a monkey in an experiment, once drew some apprecia tive comments from critics who murmured solemnly about "the artist's uninhibited brush work."

Musicians love the story of a hoax played on some pre tentious music critics who were treated to a recorded, avant

garde composition. In reality it was a well known classical piece recorded backwards.Only one critic confessed the work to be incomprehensible: the others waxed eloquently about the "tonal values" and "originality" of the"new"composer.

Indeed,no less a person than Rossini said that it would mat ter little if Wagner's Tannhauser were played backwards, showing that he could wield a baton for more than mere orchestral conducting.

But if knowlege of art is a social necessity, it appears that scientific illiteracy is a matter of pride with some peo ple. Decades ago, Arthur Koestler wrote in The Act of Crea tion that the average educated person was reluctant to ad mit that works of art were outside the scope of his compre hension; yet in the same breath,the same person would con fess pride in his ignorance of the scientific principles of as tronomy, radio, heredity, or even his own digestive tracts.

One of the consequences of this attitude,Koestler noted, is that man uses the products of science and technology in a purely possessive,exploitive manner. Modem man,Koestler stressed, lives isolated in his artificial environment. The

author pointed out that it is not central heating,or other tech nical or scientific developments, that make man's existence

unnatural; it's a refusal to take an interest in the principles 131

behind them.

"By being entirely dependent on science, but closing his mind to it, he leads the life of an urban barbarian,"

Koestler wrote in his book,three decades ago. Yet his obser vations are still remarkably apt for contemporary controver sies.

Another eminent man of letters, C.P. Snow, lamented

the dichotomy between the "twin cultures" of art and sci ence. In his Rede lecture of 1959, C.P. Snow said this polari zation is a sheer loss to us all. As a man who had achieved

distinction as both novelist and physicist, C.P. Snow is a brilliant example of how the gap between art and science can be spanned. In 1995, it is increasingly obvious that we can no longer afford to ignore his timeless message.

Never end a sentence with a proposition After Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold murdered 14 year old Bobby Franks for "an intellectual thrill" in 1924,they were sent to prison. In 1936 Loeb was stabbed to death after he made advances toward a fellow inmate in the shower. (A

Chicago reporter supposedly submitted this obituary to his editor: "Richard Loeb, the well-known student of English, yesterday ended a sentence with a proposition.")

Both Loeb and Leopold were regarded as geniuses.

Leopold's IQ being estimated at 208.

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Girdling the globe with garbage

As a young family, we sailed aboard an Italian liner from England to Australia, across the Mediterranean,through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the vast Indian Ocean, before

arriving in Melbourne. Later we sailed some 200 miles south to Tasmania where I worked for the Australian Broadcast

ing Corporation. After three happy years in Australia, we returned, again by liner, via New Zealand,Tahiti,Acapulco, then on through the Panama Canal. After a brief bunkering stop in the Dutch East Indies, we sailed across the Atlantic to England, completing a trip around the world by sea. As Boeing 747's have displaced ocean liners, this dream voyage is now only a footnote in our family history. Pity.

These passenger liners were like great floating cities, generating vast amounts of putrescibles, packaging, bottles and cans,exactly the same kind of trash that land-based com munities generate but without disposal facilities. Basking in the tropical sun, we would see crewmen heaving large containers of garbage over the stern, where it floated in the foaming wake of the ship's propellers before sinking beneath the waves.

As many ships follow the same trade routes,I idly pon dered if some future historian would one day trace 20th cen tury oceanic trade routes this way. For quite literally, our globe is girdled with garbage along these oceanic trading routes, and glass bottles and plastic containers could sur vive for millennia.

One rare benefit from ocean garbage surfaced when a woman fell overboard on a different voyage. She had floated out of sight before the captain could turn about. Simply by following the floating garbage trail his ship had laid down earlier, he was able to rescue her.

133

Another garbage 'bonus' came in Australia when we were driving along the Hume Highway from Melbourne to Sydney on a pitch black night. On one particular winding stretch of road,we became aware of a series of reflected lights

marking the edge of the highway At first, we thought they were some Down Under version of "cat's eyes," warning

motorists of the road's edge. These reflectors, however, which numbered in the thousands, were puzzling. While

they precisely followed the twisting contours of the road, their spacing was oddly irregular. Some were brighter than others.

Sunrise solved the mystery. The reflectors turned out to be discarded beer cans,a commodity seldom in short sup

ply Down Under. The cans had been thrown out of moving vehicles, landing in the shallow drainage ditches skirting the highway. As they rolled to the bottom, the cans auto matically presented the bright reflective bottoms to the ap proaching headlights. The more recent the disposal, the brighter the reflection. Mystery solved.

There is not a major city in the western world that is

not having serious problems with garbage disposal.

Peristroika has now revealed some hideous toxic situations,

previously withheld from the world, in the Warsaw Pact countries. In an increasing catalogue of waste disposal hor

rors, I managed to find only two beneficial results of trash disposal: the ocean rescue and the Aussie 'highway reflec tors.'

134

The Dead (beat) Poets Society

Pliny had a motto: Nulla dies sine linea - not a day without a line. Regrettably, some notably bad poets have taken the ancient Roman writer's advice literally Recently I noticed a message emblazoned on a tee shirt worn by a youth on a Lake Huron beach, which read:

Two-four-six-eight, We don't want to radiate.

Reading this inscription, then observing its bearer, I became unsure if he were proclaiming the sum total of his arithmetical knowledge,or merely displaying a penchant for bad poetry He seemed oblivious to the radiation he obtained from exposing his considerable epidermus to the biggest nuclear reactor of all - the sun.

Another piece of hyphenated poetry greeted us at an Environment Canada park, where members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada were picketing. One placard read: The only good Tory is a supp-os-i-tory.

While I too am seldom enraptured with federal Tory policies,especially their spending record which doubled our deficit while preaching fiscal responsibility, the sign moved me to reflect on these poets of protests. With an increasing emphasis on theatrical stunts, strike tactics have developed into a Theatre of the Absurd, with diverse actions designed mainly to capture media attention. As such, I thought the bearer of this placard was ideally cast in the role of a reposi tory for a suppository he denigrated.

When poetry does not quite rhyme,it is called assonance, a word that uncannily resembles the most frequently used prejorative in the English language. It is a word which also begins with the first letter of the alphabet and a word com monly seen on many placards. Pliny surely, would not have been amused.

135

o-O-o

We were likewise not amused when we attempted to exhibit at the Water Environment Federation Conference in

Toronto. A burly man barred passage to exhibitors attempt

ing to wheel displays into the industry building without union help. As ES&E's show special was our largest issue ever, the boxes were heavy Prudently we had brought a two wheeled dolly to move our magazines a mere 100 feet from our truck to the booth.

Grudgingly,the man allowed that while we could carry the magazines and booth sections in, we could not use any device with wheels to assist us. Our party cheerfully en

quired:"Where may we sign up for the union help?"

Incredibly, we learned we would have to drive several blocks to hire someone to carry our stuff a few yards. But even this avenue of escape was bricked up, when the man said the office had now closed for the day and we could come back tomorrow. This jgave us the option of a totally wasted

60 mile return trip in a loaded truck in heavy Saturday after noon traffic,or laboriously lugging heavy boxes around while our wheeled dolly lay idle.

We were not alone. Many exhibitors had driven miles in congested streets to get there; frustration levels were nm-

ning high. Some were being treated like interlopers,simply because they wished to carry their own property to the booth space they had rented,(for almost $1,000 a working day).

At these rates we could have rented the Bridal suite at I'hotel.

The scenario ofsedentary workers,lugging heavy,awk

wardly shaped boxes,was a sight to bring joy to chiropractors everywhere. Government calls for Canadians to become globally competitive had a bitter taste that day,especially to those small firms trying to compete in the international arena provided by the exposition.

My position on unions is clear. I have been proud to be 136

a member of both the British National Union of Journalists

and the Australian Journalists' Association. I agree with the statement of a member of the Trades Union Congress in Eng land:'In a free for all, perhaps the workers should be part of the all.' But a union that is unable to supply services, yet forbids owners to wheel their own goods in,suggests a Luddite mindset.

In the early days of the Industrial Revolution,advanced machinery was first introduced in Lancashire cotton mills.

It was erroneously presumed this would increase unemploy ment.

After all, Ned Ludd argued, a machine that could do the work of ten would put nine people out of work. In fact, the reverse happened. Lancashire became a world leader in both textile production and manufacturing machinery,caus ing a surge of job creation, especially among women. So important was cotton to the economy,that shortly after World War II, government slogans proclaimed that "Britain's bread hangs by Lancashire's thread."

Throughout the world,the wheel has become a univer sal metaphor for progress. But, by insisting that exhibitors forgo their wheels and carry their goods,the union was,ironi cally, rolling back the wheel of progress to establish its terri torial imperative.

Our picketing poets earlier had reminded me of the wisdom of Pliny; our subsequent experience at the Water Environment Conference was a farce worthy of Kafka, that masterly writer of nightmarish frustration and bureaucratic torment.

137

The utility of oblivion OTTAWA—An Ontario plan to prod municipalities into buy

ing buses from a heavily subsidized bus maker has enraged rival manufacturers and prompted charges that the province

is snubbing last year's much-hyped interprovincial free-trade deal.

(Globe & Mail May 3,1995.)

Biodegradability of organic matter is fimdamental to the cycle of life in our natural environment. Eight decades ago,Ardem, Lockett and Fowler harnessed this natural process when they built the world's first activated sludge facility which became a landmark in wastewater treatment technology. Now en

larged, the plant is still working, as passing motorists can observe, as they approach Manchester from an overhead motorway. Few realize they are viewing a working monu ment to environmental progress.

Biodegradibility has also a literary side. John Updike once wrote an elegant "Ode to Rot" in which he examined the value of decay with poetic wit and scientific insight. Jean Dubuffet, once said to be the most important French visual artist since World War II, affirmed his beliefs in his work The

Utility of Oblivion. Dubuffet himself passed into oblivion in 1985,but his statement,as well as his works of art, will prob

ably survive him. A complex man,he also wrote eloquently on the defence of illiteracy, an area where he would have much to defend these days; but that's another story.

Biodegradability applies also to businesses,which have natural life spans. Unless industries evolve in changing times, it is normal for them to wither and die as develop ments such as robotics, computers, fibre optics, and

biotechnology create new goods and services at ever-increas ing speed.

138

But out of the wreckage emerge new markets which displace older, usually dirtier, energy-intensive industries.

Wooden hulls and sail, for example, gave way to steel and steam, which later yielded to titanium and jet engines.

Joseph Schumpeter once described capitalism as: A dy namic process of wealth creation and change, driven by techno logical innovation. He argued this would cause a perennial gale of creative destruction, adding that the social justifica tion of capitalism would erode when intellectuals voiced hostility to cultural conditions in advanced capitalist socie ties. But Karl Marx said it would be economic forces that

would destroy capitalism's political and social superstruc ture.

Schumpeter was born in Vienna in 1893, the same year German-born Karl Marx died and was buried in London.

With the economic and environmental devastation of com

munism now tragically apparent, Schumpeter's prediction is clearly more accurate than Marx's. Moreover, many in our arts communities became hostile to capitalism, as Schumpeter predicted.

Schumpeter's theory of creative destruction cannot be denied. What was thought to be astounding conjecture a generation ago, is now commonplace to our children. And more than mere toys and luxuries are begat by this creative gale of destruction. Life expectancy,especially for children, rose dramatically with the development of technology. It has been estimated that in 1995,some 2.5 million fewer chil

dren will die from disease than perished in 1990.

But let's go back to 1665, when 6,000 people died every week during an outbreak of bubonic plague in the City of London. Millions more have died around the world from

cholera,typhus,tuberculosis and a myriad of other diseases.

While two world wars brought forth millions of casualties, few realize that 20 million people lost their lives in the 19181919 influenza epidemic alone. Tiny germs, viruses, and 139

parasites,nurtured by primitive sanitation and unsafe drink ing water, have proven far more lethal than the great en gines of war.

While there is much to be done, much has been

achieved. Polio has been curbed and smallpox eradicated, thanks to medical science and the work of the pioneer engi neers who designed improved drinking water and sanita tion facilities.

But technology and the goods and services it produces are also biodegradable. Even computers and software which aroused awe a mere decade ago are quickly overtaken by incredibly creative programs that are faster, better, more re liable, and usually cheaper.

Politicians,unfortunately,seem congenitally blind to the inevitability - even the desirability - of periodic industrial fluctuations which make obsolescent industries wither,while

encouraging vibrant new technologies to develop and pros per. In ecology it is called the balance of nature; in NDP politics, it is called corporate cruelty.

But subsidized industries could involve far more than

economic waste. Commenting on the bus company bail out, a senior Federal official told the Globe that if Ontario were

consistent with the spirit of the inter-provincial trade deal which Ontario spearheaded -Premier Rae would not be talk ing about giving subsidies to a dying industry. And indus trial leaders have repeatedly stressed that true job security lies in a willingness to let the obsolete die.

Such wise counsel is invariably unheeded. Political courage, so necessary to stop the artificial resuscitation of ailing industries, is a scarce commodity these days. Indus tries are propped up, sometimes at $200,000 per job, often merely providing temporary palliatives at the expense of future employment.

Such actions will probably give short-term security to

today's workers, while ensuring long-term unemployment 140

for their sons and daughters. The sad spectacle of 25,000 people camping overnight outside a GM plant in sub-zero temperatures in January 1995 - merely for a chance to fill out job applications - could be a grim precursor of future employment patterns.

Discovery,innovation, and change are the very essence of economic survival, as well as the best way of increasing productivity; yet governments in many countries, continue to pour money into industrial geriatrics. Government inter ventions in the job market are invariably disastrous. Heroic life-support measures are taken to prop up dying industries, while high-tech ventures, the key to our future, remain starved of funds or rendered anaemic by low-bid buying procedures, which focus on price while being blind to qual ity, reliability, or durability.

Unless we curb our mountainous debts and unwilling ness to confront economic and environmental realities, for

eign banks will shortly teach us the oblivion of our political independence. Canada then too, might also become biode gradable.

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141

The ten specifications

The tall Stranger walked north along Toronto's University Avenue, carrying a large staff. His flowing robes aroused little interest as he passed a group of students and faculty at the edge of the campus. Quaint dress was not unusual at the University of Toronto; in any event, the group was deep in discussion over the metaphysical aspects of the molecu lar structure of gnats'kneecaps. Such vital issues keep many students at this university until middle age.

The Stranger strode north until he came to a marble

palace rising in the sky, the home of Environment Ontario's Project Approvals section. As he entered, a knot of equip ment suppliers staggered out,obviously broken and crushed by forces beyond their control.

Grimly, the Stranger pressed on to the chamber where

Project Approvals audiences were held. A dignified usher, exuding self importance, beckoned him forward. "Which manufacturer do you represent?" he demanded imperiously.

But The Stranger was not to be intimidated.

"I have come on behalf of The Maker," he cried out. "He

has heard screams of anguish and torment from manufac turers and suppliers across the land. From their clubrooms in Ottawa, Toronto and, yea, even West Lotus Land, they have cried out,and their pleas have been heard. I now bring you The Ten Specifications."

With a dramatic flourish he cast down a stone print

out. The first specification read: Equipment shall be innova tive, based on sound engineering fundamentals. Other specifi cations went on in the same vein, all stressing ingenuity and

progress. The final commandment warned of the evils of selecting lowest bids over value and reputation, warning that such equipment is often visited by a divine plague of main142

tenance problems.

The atmosphere was electric. Some of the ministerial

scribes were so startled, they actually began scribing. Even those consulting engineers present lost their composure momentarily and fingered their gold medallions nervously.

Some recalled an ancient scribe(who still lives in a land called

Aurora),who had written of certain consultants who brought the low bid sickness to a tribe ofchemists who dwelt in lowly laboratories.

But during the confrontations with The Stranger, the Man from the Ministry proved formidable also. After all, he had been sheltered from economic reality for years. More over, he had worked for an NDP government for four years, and was familiar with 'holier than thou' attitudes. He fin

gered The Ten Specifications thoughtfully, then a look of tri umph flickered across his face.

"These specifications were made in the Middle East.

How do we know they will work in a cold climate? More over, we usually require at least 12 working examples in Ontario before we consider new technology. There are only ten here. Moreover, we often set the pace for the rest of the country. Many people criticize, but all say that our plants are reliable," he thundered.

"Maybe so," countered the Stranger,"but is not this re liability often achieved at the expense of innovation? De fensive engineering can maintain a proud tradition, but it will never permit the creation of new ones. It is true that your plants are reliable - but at what cost? Ardem,Lockett, and Fowler discovered Activated Sludge in England in the same time period as the Wright Brothers' exploits in North Carolina. Where are the environmental equivalents of the space age?" he demanded.

So went the classic confrontation - the irresistible force

against the immovable object.

Gradually,the Stranger could see that even divine rheto143

ric was useless against ministerial tenacity. So he left the building,parted the traffic on University Avenue with a wave of his staff, and walked on.

And throughout the Province, printouts miraculously appeared in red ink, as the true costs of obduracy began to be factored into the celestial spread sheets.

Apocryphal stories During the Gulf War troops used condoms to keep sand out of the barrels of their rifles. The idea was not new. They had been used in the desert almost five decades earlier when

British troops used condoms to protect their Bren Guns.

While the idea was good,the condoms were often too small to be fully effective for some weapons.

Military brass then quite sensibly decided to order ul tra large condoms better suited to protect their soldier's weap onry. The legend goes that Winston Churchill heard about the oversized condoms and was delighted and amused by the idea. However,he felt there could be a propaganda ad

vantage should the oversized condoms fall into enemy hands. The great man,it is said, insisted that the oversized condoms be stamped British Army Issue - Medium Size.

144

Why low bid systems are bad for Canada's environment

People know the price ofeverything, and the value ofnothing. — Oscar Wilde

The low bid system is rooted deeply in government buying practices. Any variance from the tendering system is viewed with great suspicion by the news media. Seldom is it seri ously considered that the value of certain goods and services simply cannot be determined by purchase price alone.

Yet the services of television commentators and edito

rial writers are obtained by the very opposite of the low bid system. Publishers, quite sensibly, pay what is necessary to get the best or most appropriate talent for their needs. In deed, it is commonplace for television networks to boast of spending astronomical sums of money for 'anchors,' some of who simply read, like acoustical marionettes, lines writ ten by other people.

I have yet to hear of any network putting out tenders for their talking heads, or of newspapers selecting their col umnists through a low bid selection process.

On reflection,though,many environmental articles and TV commentaries do look as if they were written by scribes hired under the low bidding system; but that is a subject for another discussion.

While news media salaries are based on talent, experi ence or'ratings,' many of these same commentators will hint darkly of ill-doing if any government agency buys its goods and services the same way the media moguls do - by seek ing out the best available product or talents for their various projects.

It's not just environmental spending that is involved.

Even advertising agencies are suspect if they are awarded 145

any contract not put out to tender; yet subjective factors like creativity, graphics, art direction, or any other diverse tal ents that are the very essence of the advertising world, defy computation by normal buying practices.

Likewise, many factors go into value engineering. In consulting engineering, for example, some firms, because

they have heavy investments in both R&D and staff upgrad ing, have developed great expertise in certain disciplines.

Indeed,because some foreign governments insist on the best available technology,Canadian engineers are frequently sent thousands of miles to remedy serious environmental prob lems.

Scientific and technological expertise cannot be mea sured with the same marketplace tools as those used for purchasing sand and gravel. Similarly, many government

buying practices actually stifle innovation for developing new,improved, or more durable treatment equipment and processes.

High-tech analytical laboratories are particularly vul nerable to any bidding process that values low prices over

quality data. Environmental treatment plants are often large and extremely complex operations. Year in, year out, these

plants have to work unceasingly, for decades. As public health is at stake,clearly after-sales service is a vital ingredi ent in treatment systems reliability. Yet equipment suppli ers and consultants are the very firms at a disadvantage when

price rather than value is the determining factor. And these are the firms that often provide exemplary service support seminars and conferences that do so much to advance the

state of the art, and carry out R&D to improve and upgrade their products.

Although private sector companies are very cost-con

scious, they know the real value of product reputation and service. While private firms exist in an extremely competi tive universe,many are quite willing to pay for quality, with146

out the need for wearisome layers of bureaucracy. The pri vate sector values product innovation, reliability, and serv ice, so the reputation of their suppliers is highly regarded.

They know only too well that the true value of reliability and service is not always reflected in the purchase price alone.

Sad to relate, but many fine equipment suppliers and analytical labs have closed shop, or reduced their involve ment in the municipal markets. Their withdrawal is a blow to both the Canadian environment and economy. Mediocre equipment and processes will exact their own price - both economic and environmental -in the not too distant future.

Property lost Something lost Honour lost

Much lost

Courage lost Everything lost Goethe

!47

Sewer'speed bumps'give severe headaches to taxpayers Oscar Wilde once described Niagara Falls as "the young

bride's second biggest disappointment." Few are aware this celebrated Irish writer and wit enjoyed a long stay in Canada where he lectured on aesthetics and craftsmanship.

With his unrivalled epigrammatical flair, Wilde also noted:"Nowadays,people know the price of everything and the value of nothing." This statement might profitably be carved in stone in every government and municipal office where environmental goods and services are specified. It is time that some buyers of environmental equipment,consult ing, and laboratory services understood the difference be tween price and value. Ironically, it is less of a problem in the private sector,even in these tough economic times. Plant managers well understand the real value of reputation, reli ability, and the true costs of lost production time.

My daily reminder of value engineering is not carved in stone, but in asphalt; for there is a short stretch of road nearby that gives me a tactile reminder of Wilde's witty in

sight every time I drive along it. The road bears the scars of regular repairs, and these scars cut across the pavement at

right angles to the traffic flow. So many sewers have failed and are still failing - along this stretch of road that some visitors have had the illusion they were driving over engi neered speed bumps.

The origins of the fiasco are interesting. Instead of con crete, iron, or plastic pipe, a rather cheap non-traditional product was specified. A workman restoring the latest sewer failure, showed me a brittle cardboard-like pipe that had

apparently been impregnated with a tar-like substance.

Now the actual savings in the original installation were

minor. One municipal engineer told me he was well aware 148

of this type of pipe,which his department had wisely avoided purchasing years ago. He estimated its purchase had saved trifling sums, perhaps $10 per household, when the subdi vision was constructed. He estimated the cost of repairing the failed pipe might be in the range of $2,500 per house.

Local work crews 1 spoke to arrived at the same esti mate as the engineer. While this was being written, three trucks, several men, and one backhoe were at the site, the

operator skillfully threading his backhoe between water,gas, and cable services. One false move and additional expenses could be incurred if these other services were damaged.

Motorists and other homeowners were also inconvenienced,

as traffic was diverted, adding further to the costs of this pipe failure.

Many times in this same area I have seen the flashing lights of the emergency crews working long into winter eve nings, trying to alleviate the misery of homeowners - some unable to use their washrooms, some with sewage in their basements. How do you put a price on exposure to disease, homeowners' loss of amenities, and the inconvenience to

neighbours and road users?

Properly constructed sewers and watermains, on the other hand, give decades of trouble free service. Indeed, when I went to Versailles three years ago,1 learned that King Louis XIV commissioned a cast iron water main to supply water to the Palace of Versailles,and it lasted 325 years! Some of the failing sewers under discussion had lasted less than three decades, not three centuries. But, let us not forget, someone saved the Town a few bucks years ago when they emphasized price over quality. Incidently, the galvanized culvert pipe at this location, which was probably installed at the same time as the cheap sewer pipe that had failed so miserably, seemed cs good as new when it was unearthed.

One worker who lived nearby said that on his street, only four houses had not experienced sewer failure. I saw 149

the crumbling sewer line replaced with PVC pipe, which I am confident will outlast the home it now serves.

But sewers are only one factor where the low-bid ethos fails to reflect quality and value for money Labs offering quality analytical services are often affected also. Indeed low bid selection penalizes the very labs that have the most sophisticated equipment and the highest calibre staff.

Ironically,lab work is usually only a minute fraction of the total cost of most environmental projects. Considering the enormous legal and economic consequences of poor lab data, it is incredible that price is ever a major factor when purchasing analytical services.

This point was brought home forcibly when my daugh ter bought an older home,which she has now renovated (re built would be a more appropriate word). Before renova tions began she wisely had some paint samples analyzed for lead. The lab's findings were reassuring. TTie analyses done by a highly reputable lab - cost about one tenth of one percent of the value of the property. But consider - even if the lab fees had been double, the costs would still be trifling compared to the value of the lab data, her peace of mind, and the safety of those working and living in the house.

"Know thyself," said the philosopher. "Know thy paint," says the modem toxicologist, lead emerging as a real threat these days.

Consulting engineers and equipment suppliers are also plagued with the low bid mentality, which hampers innova tion, discourages engineering quality, and equipment aftersales service - often while ignoring such vital factors as low maintenance costs or long service life. The actual engineer ing design work costs, even on large and complex projects, are often within one-and-a-half percent of the life cycle costs of the project. In short, good engineering pays for itself.

Many products come with an after-sales service that is beyond price. Some hydrant and coupling manufacturers, 150

for example,frequently respond to late weekend calls to keep services running. Fire protection of life and property obvi ously has a profound economic value; regrettably though,it is seldom reflected in the purchase price. When the low-bid ethos prevails, the buyers might unwittingly be getting poor value for those they serve.

Put simply, we need to seek value in equipment and services,not merely the lowest price. Loss of water and sew erage services can result from the low bid mentality. Sew age in taxpayers' basements is too often the outcome of bar gain basement shopping for the lowest price at the expense of quality.

I cannot praise afugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed,

that never sallies out and sees her adversary, Who ever knew truth put to the worse in afree and open encounter?

John Milton's Aeropagitica

151

Marxism - Groucho or Karl?

To move $100, or even $100 million, from one account to

another across the Atlantic today, takes a mere 24 seconds according to reports on the information highway. Indeed,a New York banker has already said that the speed and move ment of capital is decisively undermining the political au thority of national governments.

Fortified by such ringing statements, we went to a mod ern bank, impressively housed in its futuristic architecture in downtown Toronto. It was a far cry from the solid lime

stone pillars and pantheons of my youth,when banks wished to project an image of solidarity and safety. This bank looked like the kind of place that would have a hundred million bucks on the premises, along with the computerized ballis tics to shoot it to Europe in 24 seconds, or Australia in 60.

Alas,we were confronted with a curious scenario some

where between Stephen Leacock's comedic banking encoun ters and Franz Kafka's frustration with overwhelming au

thority in The Judgement.

What the bank's architecture promised, the staff failed

dismally to deliver. Our problems began when we wished to deposit $1,700 in cash from conference registration fees, later to be transferred a mere 25 miles north to our regular branch of the same bank.

To our amazement, the teller refused to accept the

money,being adamant that such transfers could not be done.

She advised us to hold on to the money until we returned to our country retreat, clearly an unsafe procedure.

Naturally, we appealed to a higher authority. Another lady duly swept in, propelled by some authoritative and si lent energy source whose formula was probably kept secret in the vault, like that for Coca Cola. She did not so much 152

discuss our problem as issue edicts to us. But she, too,con

firmed that this magnificent temple of mammon was not equipped to transmit our filthy lucre a mere 25 miles to an other of its branches.

We do not give up easily. As a counter measure (liter ally and metaphorically), I said we now wished to open a new account with the money, but this too was refused. We could not open an account just to deposit money then later withdraw it, she said. The situation was becoming a fiasco, the teller now predicting my future behavioural patterns, a calling well outside the normal banking services and cer tainly beyond her intellectual capacities.

By this time I was determined not to leave the bank without depositing the money, even if I had to staple it to her forehead. After much wrangling,furtive visits and whis pered consultations,she came back and said they would ac cept the money, but, she added triumphantly, that it would cost $3.50 to make the transaction.

During the lulls in the protracted combat, I thought wistfully about those wonderful bank commercials where smiling tellers, like fiscal Florence Nightingales, look after you, and your money, with warm smiles and tender loving care. But, like so much on TV,this too was pure fantasy.

Not long ago, our commercial account was moved, against our wishes,to a different branch. During this unau thorized move,a wrong account number was encoded. We ended up with a $50,000 overdraft for another company's payroll. Knowledge of this'overdraft'came in the form of a

reprimand for 'exceeding our limit.' It took three days of confusion before the incident was corrected and an apology received.

But while we have banks that did not want to accept money, we also have a post office that can be most reluctant to accept letters. Earlier, in preparation for the conference, when we had taken in our meter,to load it with almost $1,000 153

of prepaid postage, I was asked to come back when they were less busy! I tried, but failed, to imagine another busi ness deflecting a $1,000 order with such unconcern.

But more was to follow. Later, when we took some 2,000

letters to the same sub-post office, one of the employees (worker would be adjectivally incorrect) grumbled loudly about so much mail being brought in two hours before they closed, when there were only two of them on duty! By the way,this was metered mail so only preliminary sorting was

required - not exactly the labours of Hercules. A good sec retary could have typed 200 envelopes in that time; indeed, a good stone mason might have chiselled the address in marble with more speed and enthusiasm than our reluctant posties.

Although the post office regrettably has a monopoly, volume of mail does have an effect on staffing needs at vari ous branches. In our case we voted with our feet and began

mailing from another post office branch. Given the security of tenure currently prevailing at the post office, it is highly unlikely that any redundancies resulted from our withdrawal of services. Scraping the barnacles off hulls with bananas is easier than firing postal workers. But we might have scored some minor reductions in their overtime quotas,which gave me a minor source of satisfaction in the skirmish.

Had Karl Marx foreseen the arrogant sloth that seems

inherent in state-protected monopolies, he might well have burned his draft of Das Kapital, and the revolution that changed the world might never have taken place. But that is serious conjecture. The bank and post office fiascos re sembled the comic antics of Groucho Marx rather than the

economic realities envisioned by Karl.

154

Fantasyland on the Rideau

A Canadian teacher once screened slides of Ottawa to a class

of children during a cultural exchange visit to England. Hop ing the class might see some architectural similarities be tween our capital and the Mother of Parliaments, he asked the class:"Do these slides remind you of anything?"

"Disneyland," responded one precocious child. He was possibly fooled by the Chateau Laurier's turrets, or the im posing towers of Parliament Hill. Or was he displaying a shrewd,even subliminal, awareness of Canadian politics?

In 1965,our federal debt was around $17 billion or $860

per person. Only 30 years later, this debt was approaching $550 billion or $18,535 per person. Early in 1995, the federal government was reported to be spending $119 billion on pro grams and $44 billion in interest charges.

As our deficit grows like one of the macabre, bloated monsters in Disney's cartoons, many demonstrations of stu dents, civil servants, environmentalists, and poverty activ ists - marching along with their colourful signs, puppets, and effigies - all remind me of the out-of-this-world charac ters found in Disneyland Parades.

When the English lad identified Ottawa as'Disneyland', it was an uncanny example of transatlantic intuition. What else could you call an economic fantasy world;a place where the public gets taken for expensive trips while inmates get free rides - all amid a backdrop of marching bands, colour ful parades, towers and turrets - and all masking the eco nomic realities of real life?

155

America's tragic cycle - from the Lunar Rover to assembling Third World bikes Cape Canaveral is symbolic of the enormous technological capabilities of the United States. It was here that Ameri cans,with unprecedented energy and skill,accepted the chal lenges of the space age when the Soviet lead in the early'60s was daunting. While US rockets were still failing on launch pads, the satellite Sputnik was beeping its triumphant mes sage of Soviet supremacy around the globe. Sputnik was fol

lowed by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagaran, who returned safely to earth after orbiting the planet. Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev contemptuously described the first diminutive US satellites as mere "Florida grapefruits."

Blending advanced science with their usual entrepre

neurial energy, the Americans accepted the challenge while still lagging far behind in the space race. Combining engi^ neering, electronics, and chemistry, the US quickly devel oped better rockets and fuels to catch up and surpass the Soviet cosmonauts.

Soon NeilArmstrong landed on the moon and the Mari

ner space probe set out for Mars,the launching and naviga tion technology matched only by the outer space television

engineering that brought the epic space feats to the world.

But American TV network reporting did not match the mar

vels of outer space television engineering that had brought the space age to viewers with stunning clarity. The historic lunar landing called for a Churchillian eloquence worthy of the epic historic telecast. Television re-runs now reveal such reportorial banalities as: "Wow! Wasn't that something?" pronouncements more appropriate for dog food commer cials than one of the most stupendous feats of human his tory.

But that was 25 years ago. What about American tech156

nology today? Just after the North American Free Trade

Agreement was proclaimed in Canada, we entered a bicycle shop south of Cape Canaveral. The store owner showed us a range of reasonably priced bikes - all made in South America! Seeing my surprise he stressed that the bikes were assembled in the US.

Bicycle assembly! Have Americans fallen from both space and grace to assembling bikes made in the Third

World? This is the nation that so quickly rebounded from the devastation of Pearl Harbor to produce Liberator bomb ers every few minutes while complete destroyers sailed from

shipyards in weeks. This was also the country that put men on the moon and then designed a four-wheeled vehicle, the

Lunar Rover, for them to drive over the moonscape.

I was brought back to earth when the cycle store owner explained that it was notlow wages that had reduced Ameri cans to mere bike assemblers, but Occupational Health and

Safety and other bureaucracies that had made US workplaces uncompetitive. Coincidently, a Florida homebuilder wrote

a letter to a Treasure Coast newspaper complaining about the prohibitive costs of workers' compensation insurance.

According to his letter, an astonishing 48 percent of his la bour costs were charged out to workers' compensation.

Finding his statements hard to believe, I contacted a Florida construction trade association. I was told that, while workers' compensation assessments varied, the builder's

complaint did not seem unrealistic, roofer's premiums be ing particularly high, for example. The builder laid some

blame on lawyers and doctors who had made a specialty of workers' compensation cases.

Clearly the victim industry is a growth business in the United States. Dr. Margaret Maxey, a bioethicist at the Uni

versity of Texas,has spoken out against the tyranny ofsafety, noting that death is no longer regarded as natural. "There must always be a cause of death and someone to blame," 157

she told a Water Environment Federation(WEF)annual con ference, in California.

Not long after her address,federal legislation was pro

posed that would require buckets with four to six US gallon capacities to bear warning labels,after a congressman warned that children had drowned in such buckets. The labels were

to alert parents to the dangers of children drowning when receptacles containing even small amounts of liquid were left unattended. California already has such a requirement and New York is considering one. One US newspaper edi

torial sarcastically enquired if similar warnings should be prominently stamped on bathtubs.

Even more bizarre is the case of the road-side jogger

wearing a portable radio headset when struck by a hit and run pickup in Rorida. He was dragged about 400 feet and neither driver nor vehicle was ever found. The jogger's neck

was broken in two places. Both legs were so badly injured that doctors feared amputation, so they borrowed a tech

nique pioneered in the Soviet Union, using a series of rings and wires to fuse together a boneless gap in one leg. Medi cal care cost some $450,000- this for a patient with no medi

cal insurance. Today he walks with a limp and attends uni versity.

Some might think this so far is about a miracle of mod em medicine. But his lawyer sued the city, saying the road shoulder was too soft and the street wasn't lighted, making

it hard for the driver to see the jogger,and there was no yel low line. He also sued the orthopaedic surgeon for malprac tice and the Community Hospital for poor care. The lawyer also worked out a deal with anesthetists, ambulance com

panies, and hospitals for 37 unpaid medical bills, obtaining a significant reduction in fees.

But the day before a four-year deadline on lawsuits ex

pired, the lawyer made a giant leap forward for the victim industry; he sued both the makers of the headset and the 158

department store that sold it to his client.

The headset had come with a "road safety" warning, which mentioned that the headset should not be worn while

driving,cycling,or walking;it also warned owners that they should exercise extreme caution, or discontinue use, in po tentially hazardous situations. The lawyer said this warn ing was not enough:it did not mention jogging. "They should have put a warning for joggers,especially at night," he said, as he took a quantum leap in legalistic creativity.

While the tyranny of safety is driving North America unswervingly towards Third World living standards, there is a curious twist to the bicycle assembly story,for it was the Wright brothers who designed, built, and flew the first airplanes near Kittyhawk, North Carolina. Their feats gave

birth to a dominant American aerospace industry, which became the ultimate in high technology on earth and in outer space. Orville and Wilbur Wright,it should be remembered, began their brilliant aviation careers as bicycle mechanics,a cruel irony for Americans in the '90s.

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The write stuff

Lord Byron said that, when he died,the word Italy would be found inscribed upon his heart, while novelist Upton Sinclair said thatsocialjustice would be etched on his. When it comes to my turn to shuffle off this mortal coil, the words sympo sium proceedings will be etched on the wreckage of my car diovascular system. As I have willed my body to medical research, the message will probably emerge as some yoimg

student plies his scalpel on my cadaver; the writing, in my case, will be on the ventricular wall.

My anguish first began years ago when editing schol arly papers. I learned then that dealing with learned au thors can be a combination of watch-making and baby-sit

ting. I had seen better organized papers in day-care centres.

Some papers,ironically on precise and highly complex sub jects, were handled so carelessly as to border on semantic anarchy. It is a mystery to me how many academics - so clever and precise in math,physics,and chemistry-develop personality changes when writing for symposia.

The problem then was compounded by a world-wide academic tendency to cling tenaciously to a brand new indi viduality that ignores accepted editing procedures. Thus, instead of having one editorial style, say, for Abstracts, Pa pers,and References,several score evolved,all of which must be reconstituted laboriously into some semblance of consist ency.

The solution would involve neither sacrifice of intel

lectual virtuosity nor lack of academic individuality. Guide lines for most publishing ventures have enough latitude for self-expression to suit even the most active intellectual gym nast.

But papers are usually late or incomplete, and editors' 160

entreaties are frequently ignored. Which brings us up to promises - broken ones. Long after deadlines expire, it is not uncommon to find the promised papers still unwritten.

In many cases, even a nine months' time span fails to pro duce what abortionists call a viable fetus.

How is it that some hyperintelligent people, some of whom are acknowledged leaders in their profession and justly have earned international recognition by their profes sional skills,can turn in sloppy,incomplete papers that would invoke wrath in a high school teacher?

Brilliant minds, which effortlessly handle complex sci entific matters, so often flounder on office procedures that an unskilled receptionist would handle with ease.

Then there are the omissions. There are papers with out abstracts; there are abstracts without titles, and there are

even titles without papers. This is a new biological phe nomenon.

We have all heard of children without

fathers - now apparently we have fathers without children.

These titles float in academic limbo, waiting to encounter intellectual ova from which,after conception, will grow fully fledged papers after in vitro fertilization in the publishing house.

Sometimes the loss is exacerbated by the brilliance of the defaulting authors who,unpublished,become the mute, inglorious Miltons of applied science. Trees are martyred to make paper for editorial memoranda that try vainly to bring order to chaos.

Now we have diskettes arriving bearing no hint of the author's name, the title of the articles, or the name of the

software program. Editors may have many skills but clair voyance is not one of them.

The problem is not confined to any particular institu tion. Painful experience shov/s that the malady is endemic on a global basis. People from commercial firms, scientists

in academia, and especially officials in government agen161

cies, apparently took the virus with them along with their degrees.

If engineers and scientists really wish to promulgate the results of their research and experiences and thus accel erate the pace of civilization (for that is what scientific projects so often achieve),they could make a quantum leap by avert

ing their gaze from the stars to focus on the humdrum but vital common publishing procedures.

If they did this,environmental professionals might cope better with their many articulate but ill-informed critics, who have confused so many complex issues while effective re buttals languish in limbo because of literary ineptness.

Wise and witty words on low bidding from three artistic giants of the past It's unwise to pay too much, but it's unwise to pay too little too. When you pay too much,you lose a little money. that is all. When you pay too little, you.sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable ofdoing the thing it was bought to do. The Common Law ofbusiness balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot...it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something

for the ri.sk you run, and ifyou do that, you will have enough to payfor something better.

John Ruskin

John Ruskin was a legendary art critic, whose biting wit led to one of the mostfamous libel suits in British jurisprudence.

The suit was brought by the American painter,James McNeil Whistler following his unconventional portrayal of the River Thames during a fireworks display.

In a critique,Ruskin had written that Whistler had been

impudent to ask 1,000 guineas for 'flinging a pot ofpaint in the public'sface.' Whistler responded with a libel suit.

But during cross-examination. Whistler delivered an

ironic riposte to Ruskin's dictum on values. Asked by the defense how long he had taken to paint his'Nocturne in black

and gold: Thefalling rocket', Whistler replied that the painting had taken only a 'few hours.'

Seeking advantage, Ruskin's lawyer said; "You asked

1,000 guineasfor afew hours work?" Whistler:"No,Iasked itfor the knowledge ofa lifetime."

There is a supreme irony in this scenario. On the one

hand, Ruskin points out the difference between price and value. On the other hand. Whistler makes a most telling case against Ruskin's attack by pointing out the intrinsic value of talent and experience.

163

More fiscal ironies were to follow. Whistler won his

case but the jury contemptuously awarded him damages of one farthing, the lowest coin of the Realm,equal to one cent in our inflated currency. The case bankrupted Whistler who had to sell his house, while the independently wealthy Ruskin ultimately became a professor of art at Oxford.

But perhaps Whistler had the last laugh. Ruskin, in spite of wealth,and literary fame,based on a love of art and beauty, never consummated his marriage, later annulled.

Whistler,forced to sell his unique house in Chelsea, took off with a mistress to Venice where his work achieved wide

spread acclaim.(His father incidently was a civil engineer.)

But Ruskin's low bid warning remains as valid now as it was in the last century, while Whistler's reply on the value of experience is equally memorable. These lessons should be re-stated today for the low bid ethos has reached plague proportions in the municipal and government buying sec tors.

Ironically, the private sector, supposedly driven by the profit motive,is much more concerned with reliability, serv ice and value engineering than the public sector. A plant manager buying pumps or other process equipment,for ex ample, knows only too well that profits go down when the pumps do. Morever, private sector managers often place a real value on quality of service. They know that some firms will send repairmen out day or night, weekends or holidays; that some firms back up their equipment with a dedication seldom reflected in the purchase price.

One valve manufacturer lost a local bid by one half of

one percent to a foundry thousands of miles away. As valves usually last decades,amortising this picayune price percent age over the life of the valves would amount to pennies.

Morever,as valves play a role in fire fighting, protecting both life and property,equipment reliability and service are para mount. Any equipment malfunctioning could cost lives as 164

well as huge sums of money in fire losses.

When the need for service,spares or other maintenance requirements arises, what are the chances of getting service in two decades, or four decades for that matter? Did the

buyers even consider that the local foundry was pumping millions into that municipality in wages and taxes? Doubt ful. Quality not mere price, should be the determining fac tor.

The low bid mindset has developed into economic lu nacy, often blended with environmental chaos which is rav

aging many quality consulting firms and analytical laboratories. This mindset remains the biggest disincentive for firms to evolve with the technology and staff to match the new challenges. I've met with environmental engineers and chemists who are developing space age capabilities yet are reduced to flogging their professional services at chargeout rates more comparable to service station tariffs. This is

more than a disgraceful state of affairs, it is the prelude to the dismantling of a viable Canadian environmental export industry. Why should young men and women study the arduous engineering and chemistry courses - only to work in intellectual sweat shops?

Buyers selecting consulting or laboratory services quite often fail to realize the price differential of various suppliers - when amortized over the life of the project - is infinitesi mal. Even a design bill for a million dollars dissolves into

what is virtually petty cash as projects designed with qual ity engineering keep on serving our communities with economy and reliability for decades.

If nothing else the O.J. Simpson case has highlighted the value of quality data and the vital necessity of strict cus todial protocols. Laboratory and consulting professionals need increasingly high standards for these protocols from field sampling right to the laboratory bench. It's ironical that as our analytical laboratory equipment becomes more 165

sophisticated, the human element in interpreting the data becomes ever more important.

Considering the value of analytical data,often used for construction projects which will cost hundreds of millions, it is amazing that price.is so often the major criterion in se lecting laboratory services.

Like Whistler, some consultants and laboratories offer

the 'knowledge of a lifetime' with their services. And as his adversary Ruskin said:'When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable ofdo ing the thing it was bought to do.' Purchasing agents should note these wise words.

The final word should go to Oscar Wilde, a devotee of Ruskin's aesthetic theories who echoed Ruskin's warnings

on values. He said:"Nowadays,people know the price ofevery

thing and the value of nothing." Ironically, like Whistler, he was bankrupted by an unsuccessful libel suit.

Are we now going to intellectually bankrupt our high tech environmental industry with low bid mindsets that

dwell upon price to evaluate the value of complex systems?

Buyers should choose wisely. Well-designed equipment will continue to provide reliability and service, after the price and the buyer - are long forgotten.

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Big mother is not watching you

While Rolls Royce, Daimler Benz,Packard and Cadillac de

signed their cars as playthings for rich dilettantes, Henry Ford startled the world by producing a car which working families could afford.

Ford's tough, reliable Model T revolutionized the auto

industry and profoundly affected industry the world over.

By paying unskilled men the then unheard of figure of $5 per day, Henry's assembly line operations enabled working families to actually buy the cars they made. This galvanized the entire economy, resulting in global implications.

Farming communities in particular loved the Model T. Its reliability and low price freed farming families from dead ening isolation, enabling them to visit relatives or trade in the towns. In rural communities without radio, TV or even newspapers, the Model T had a profound social and eco nomic impact.

Sales of Fords skyrocketed as Henry persisted in his goal of producing well-engineered, reliable, low price cars.

But other car manufacturers were also thriving and Ford's share of the mass market began to erode. Henry, however,

refused to be distracted from his original plan of producing plain but rugged basic transportation, every car being painted black.

Chevrolet began offering more luxurious options, bet ter styling and a range of colours. Inevitably Chevys actu ally overtook Ford in sales. But Henry steadfastly refused to

believe his cars were being outsold until confronted by the cold reality of the sales figures.

Ford then reacted to market forces and began design ing and building cars which research had indicated the pub lic wanted. The Ford Motor Company revived to become an 167

international auto giant.

It is now time for the waterworks industry to respond to market forces and meet the public's demands and con

cerns for providing the best water possible. With today's technology, there is no excuse for taste and odour problems to persist.

But the industry doggedly clings to its low-price ethos and low-bid mindset, producing water as low as 70 cents a

cubic metre - literally cheaper than dirt, yet safe enough to wash open wounds in.

Ironically, water utilities get little thanks from the pub lic for their frugality. The public frequently demonstrates its distrust of municipal water supplies with its willingness to

go out and buy bottled water at $1 per litre, this in prefer ence to a tonne of safe, treated municipal water delivered inside the home for the same price.

Taste and odour are quite often cited for the soaring sales of bottled water. But, like Henry Ford, politicians are

ignoring the market pressures by focussing on keeping down the costs of producing and delivering water,rather than im proving the product.

This savings is illusory. Some water utilities are actu

ally costing their customers money. True, they are perhaps saving consumers a few dollars a year on water bills, yet the ultimate cost to those who buy bottled water for taste, will be infinitely higher. And sales of bottle water or home treat ment devices in Canada are estimated at $200 million annu

ally, and growing. So where are the savings? Imagine the infrastructure improvements environmental professionals could do with these millions?

Sometimes there's an appalling lack of knowledge by some suppliers of the quality of the water they supply. How many test the treated water as regularly as Metro Toronto does, and for as many parameters? I believe some water

utilities rely unthinkingly on monthly government checks.

168

In virtually all other industries, manufacturers are re sponsible for their own quality controls. Nowhere does any auto maker abdicate its responsibility for quality controls to governments. Yet some local politicians vaguely think its the responsibility of the provincial Ministries of the Envi ronment to ensure the water quality they are marketing is government approved.

Canada is served by some excellent laboratories and the costs of regular (and independent) testing programs are infinitesimal compared to the rest of mimicipal treatment operations.

Suppliers of water have nothing to lose but their cus tomers' contempt. They have kept Canadian water costs among the lowest in the world, while producing a product which compares favourably with bottled water in safety,and often in taste. But distrust and indifference, not gratitude, was the result of this effort. Increasingly, consumers have voted with their pocketbooks by purchasing bottled waters.

Diverse public opinion polls have repeatedly demon strated the public willingness to pay for better quality wa ter. But,unlike Henry Ford so many decades ago,some water utilities are ignoring the signs so abundantly demonstrated in our news media.

Industry professionals should respond by using their undeniable expertise to give the public what it is asking for - better quality water. The millions spent on bottled water and home treatment devices are solid evidence that consum

ers are voting solidly with their pocketbooks.

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Collective noun urgently needed for lawyers "I do not like to speak ill ofany man but I strongly suspect yonder gentleman to be a lawyer."

Samuel Johnson

A mere three decades ago,engineers and chemists were the

dominant species at environmental meetings. It was, after all, their natural habitat and one which they had dominated

- albeit imperfectly - for well over a century. The only law yer you would meet at those environmental meetings was Henry Landis, then staff counsel for the Ontario Water Re sources Commission. This, of course, was in the ancient re

gime- when engineers quite literally surveyed all they ruled - which peaked around 1969 B.C.*,long before the commis sion became the environment ministry.

Environmental lawyers in this milieu were then so rare

they would now be thought of as an endangered species.

But the lawyers obeyed the Biblical injunction to go out and multiply. And multiply they did, with a vengeance. The traditional environmental disciplines - chemistry, civil and

chemical engineering- trained in more passive research and scholarship,found they had no natural defences against the new legal marauders whose keen intellects were trained in combative rhetoric and unmatched knowledge of the legal

terrain. After all,how many engineers and chemists are there

in our legislatures? You might need gas chromatography to locate one. How many lawyers are also lawmakers? You might need a computer to count them.

Having also penetrated governments,lawyers are able to make laws as well as argue cases. So, like the Roman ^Before CELA- the Canadian Environmental Law Association, founded in a spirit of pro bono publico.

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Legions, who also brought good roads and the rule oflaw to conquered territories, the new breed of lawyers challenged powerful corporate polluters, many of whom had been im mune to environmental regulation. Until recently Latin was essential to legal training. Indeed, such phrases as onus probandi, habeas corpus and caveat emptor are, paradoxically, linguistic remnants of the Roman conquests which brought the rule of law.

But once lawyers had entered the environmental field,

like many new species entering ecosystems, they had few natural enemies,or to phrase it more accurately,few enemies who were effective. Today,if you were to randomly throw a stick in any environmental conference, the odds are very good that your missile would connect with a lawyer.

We attempted to prove this theory under controlled conditions but failed when it was noted that some research

ers, mostly engineering students, were actually aiming the sticks at lawyers. When challenged, one of the culprits said he had aimed at the lawyers because there were no journal ists in the audience. Impudent? Yes, but he had a point which will emerge later.

The incident led to a realization that there is no collec

tive noun for a group of lawyers. We have a pride of lions, a flock ofsheep,a school of fish and even an unkindness of ravens.

For humans we have a bevy of beauties, but no collective noun for lawyers. This is surprising really for the law is not only one of the oldest learned professions but also the one with the best disposition for verbal rhetoric.

In 1994, a British newspaper fearlessly tackled the deli cate issue of collective nouns for another profession,the old est one in fact. Now I believe that truly great newspapers attract readers whose biting satire and insights match those of professional scriveners. The international edition of The Guardian seems to have a plethora of talented readers who respond to various absurd scenarios that seem so abundant 171

in the British Isles.

For example, when the British Wolfenden Committee's study on homosexual offences was nearing completion in 1957, it was realized that there was no collective noun for a

group of prostitutes. Reader Michael Robyns, of New Zea land, wrote that the committee went to that citadel of cor

rect English usage, the BBC, where they sought the elusive collective noun for prostitutes from various experts.

Television cook Philip Harben was said to have re sponded with:"What about a tray full of tarts?" Sir Malcolm Sargent, the eminent conductor, riposted with "a fanfare of strumpets," while the then poet laureate, John Masefield, being steeped in literature,amongst other things,offered "an anthology of prose," or "a novel of trollops."

Appropriately, a lawyer had the last word on the mat ter. It was recounted that the committee then turned de

spairingly to Sir Hartley Shawcross,who had been the attor ney general and a prosecutor at the Nuremburg Trials. With a lawyer's caution he declined to help, but with a brilliant, but pointed thrust,he warned:"Call them anything you like, but not on any account, a firm of solicitors."

For the fourth estate, a collective noun - the scrum -

recently evolved for those journalists who jostle around ce lebrities. After watching U.S. television paparazzi freneti cally covering the O.J. Simpson trial, I think it might be ap propriate to leave out the letter r from scrum, which ironi cally and appropriately, makes it a four letter word.

N.B. The Guardian of London publishes an international edition which combines articles from Le Monde, The Wash

ington Post and The Guardian. The Notes & Queries column,

by Joseph Marker of The Guardian, regularly attracts an un equalled range of witty anecdotes from around the globe.

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Do some journalists really cover their subjects?

We practised freelance writing for many years at a country retreat in Aurora where we also kept several horses. Armed with a duality of knowledge, we can confidently vouch for the etymological accuracy of the following items.

In the equestrian world, when breeding concludes,the stallion is said to have covered the mare. On television, when

anchors breathlessly report a news story, they often intro duce a reporter, whom they say, has been covering the story.

As many scientists know only too well, when the story sub sequently unfolds, the environmental facts are often covered much the same way as the mare was.

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About the Author.

Tom Davey has been a journalist in England,Australia, and Canada. He has worked as a magazine writer in London's Fleet Street; as a newspaper reporter in Melbourne;as a sub editor for Radio Australia in Melbourne; and later as a radio

and TV reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corpora tion in Hobart, Tasmania. His family settled in Aurora,On tario, over two decades ago.

In 1970, Tom became the first person working outside the United States to win a J.H. Neal Award from the Ameri can Business Press in New York,ironically for editorials sati rizing US environmental policies. Later he became the first Canadian to win a Schlenz Medal from the Water

Environment Federation in Las Vegas. That same year he was elected President of the Canadian Science Writers Asso ciation. A second Neal Award followed.

After working as Publications & Science Editor at the Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Toronto, he formed his own company, Davcom Inc., which edited magazines on contract, completed scores of articles for Southam and Maclean Hunter magazines, and had articles published in the Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, Kingston Whig Standard and the Toronto Sun.

For his serious articles as well as his satires, Tom won

Environment Canada's top award for communications in

1992, one year after David Suzuki won it. It was his second national honour from Environment Canada, but, as readers

will discover, the awards were not for obsequious odes to governments.

He has given many papers and lectures over the years.

The World Health Organization invited him to make a pres entation at its special conference on Toxic Spills in Rome, Italy. He has also lectured at the University of Toronto, Queen's University, and Humber College on both environ mental science and communications.

In 1994 he accepted a special citation from the AWWA for Environmental Science & Engineering magazine,as well as an award from the Canadian Business Press for an editorial

satire on voice appropriation. That same year, he was key note speaker at the Sixth National Drinking Water Confer ence in Victoria, B.C.

Most,but not all the pieces in this book,are from ES&E, with a few quotes from Tom's first book. All the Views Fit To

Print. Versions of the pieces on the Interim Waste Authority, Solace in Blunderland,and the satire on Noise Pollution were

also published in the Toronto Sun. Two pieces in this book refer to the expensive fiasco of not using cement kilns to in cinerate toxic wastes. He has lectured on this subject at Queen's University, the U of T's Institute for Environmental Studies, and several major environmental conferences and seminars. His articles based on this theme also appeared in the Globe & Mail, the Kingston Whig Standard and the Fraser Forum.

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Glossary

For reader convenience some associations or terms are listed

in historical sequence or appropriateness,rather than alpha betical order.(Dther acronyms and names are listed alpha betically. Political references are included only because En vironment Ministers have become prominent in recent years -indeed two recent Federal Environment Ministers were also

Deputy Prime Ministers. Some items in the glossary have been included to further an understanding of professional environmental associations and how they have contributed to pubic health.

AQTE - I'Association quebecoise des techniques de I'environnement. AQTE for over three decades has been a power

ful and influential association of engineers, scientists and manufacturers. While it changed its name in 1994 from

I'Association quebecoise des techniques de I'eau, the acro nym AQTE remained. Unlike many technical bodies in Canada, AQTE did not confine its activities to technical is

sues but spoke bluntly to politicians and media. No other professional environmental association matches AQTE for its newsmedia coverage and political influence.

AWMA - Air & Waste Management Assocation. Based in

Pittsburg, AWMA was formerly the Air Pollution Control Association. Its largest Canadian Section is in Ontario. For

many years AWMA Ontario held joint annual conferences with the PCAO. AWMA is to air what AWWA and WEF are

to drinking and wastewater treatment. In recent years they added a waste management focus to AWMA activities.

AWWA - American Water Works Association. Founded in

St. Louis in 1881, the AWWA is almost certainly the oldest 176

and largest environmental body in the world. Canadians have always been prominent,even dominant sometimes,in AWWA matters. There have been six Canadian AWWA

Presidents, the most recent being Steve Bonk of Ottawa.

Earlier, Dr. Albert Edward Berry of Ontario was the only person, American, or Canadian, ever to have been elected President of the AWWA and what is now the Water Envi

ronment Federation (See WEE). AWWA is based in Denver, Colorado.

Originally Canada was just one Section of AWWA,like New York State or California. Quebec was the first to form

its own AWWA Section under AQTE. Currently there are

five Canadian AWWA Sections;the largest is the(Ontario Sec tion AWWA. British Columbia has a Section within the BC

Water & Wastes Association while Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island formed the Atlantic Canada Section AWWA. All benefit from the

exchange of unmatched water research and development performed by the AWWA Research Foundation.

BCW&WA - British Columbia Water & Wastes Association

which combines membership of both AWWA and the WEF and conducts training seminars at operator level to advanced treatment processes.

BERRY, Dr. Albert Edward - Canadian bom scientist and

engineer and the only person, American or Canadian, ever to be elected as President of both AWWA and WEF. He was

the first General Manager of the Ontario Water Resources Commission and the recipient of countless honours from both Canadian and American environmental scientists and

engineers.

BOD - Biochemical Oxygen Demand,the traditional param eter to record the strength of wastewater, more correctly spelled BODg. It is often incorrectly referred to as Biological 177

Oxygen Demand.

BQ - Bloc Quebecoise,a Federal separatist party created and led by Lucien Bouchard who had been Environment Minis ter in the Progressive Conservative Government of Brian Mulroney. In its first election in 1992,the BQ became official opposition party, narrowly edging out the Reform Party which was also making its debut in federal politics.

CAP - Clean Air Program undertaken by the Liberal Gov ernment in Ontario, later watered down by the NOP Gov ernment when it attained a majority in 1991.

CEIA - Canadian Environment Industry Association, a

national body which also has provincial or area chapters.

COD - Chemical Oxygen Demand.

CWWA - Canadian Water & Wastewater Association.

EA - Environmental Assessment.

ES&E - Environmental Science & Engineering magazine -

first issue published in 1988 by Davcom Inc. which was founded in 1974. Davcom changed its name to Environmen tal Science & Engineering Publications Inc. in 1994.

FACE - Federation of Associations on the Canadian Envi

ronment, now the Canadian Water & Wastewater Associa tion.

LIBERAL PARTY - also very liberal with spending programs.

After some two decades of Federal governments,mainly Lib eral, Canada went from having one of the lowest national debts in the world to one of the highest. The current Deputy

PM,Sheila Copps has served as Environment Minister and is known as a profligate spender. Some of these facts are alluded to in some pieces. In fairness, it must be stated that Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives, were also big federal spenders,sometimes on wasteful environmental initiatives.

MISA - Municipal Industrial Strategy for Abatement intro178

had a powerful effect on the environment industry in Ontario in the late '80;lagged when the NOP came to power.

MOE and MGEE - Ministry of Environment. Often used by other provinces but more usually in this book, MOE refers to Ontario. When the NDP assumed power,they added the energy folio which became the Ministry of Environment and Energy.

NDP - Some explanations are required for non Canadian

readers unaware of the complexities of Canadian politics and their relationship with the environment. Although all Ca nadians know that NDP stands for the New Democratic

Party, American or UK readers have no understanding of the acroynym or its policies. In 1995,the NDP-a party some what analagous to the UK Labour Party - held substantial majorities in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario,

yet the federal NDP was virtually wiped out in the 1993 Canadian federal election which swept the Liberals into power under Jean Chretian. On June 8, 1995, the Progres sive Conservative Party of Mike Harris swept the Ontario NDP out of power.

OWMC - Ontario Waste Management Corporation.

OWRC - Ontario Water Resources Commission,a crown cor

poration set up in 1954 which subsequently became the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. OWRC was interna tionally renowned for its blend of private consultants and contractors working with the crown corporation.

PCs - Progressive Conservatives. Canada's oldest political oxymoron and also known as Regressive Preservatives. The Ontario Provincial PCs were in power for over 40 years. Dur ing this time they led the country by building impressive water and wastewater schemes, largely at the initiatives of civil servants such as Dr. Berry, Dave Caverly Ken Sharpe

and many others, rather than political concern. Federally, 179

Jean Charest was Deputy PM and Environment Minister when the large PC majority was reduced to a mere two seats in Ottawa when the Liberals swept into power in 1993. He retained his seat and is currently trying to rebuild his shat tered party. Interestingly his successor as Deputy PM,Sheila Copps (Lib.), also became Federal Environment Minister as Lucien Bouchard had been imder the Federal PCs.

PPQ - not the Provincial Parti Quebecoise, but one part per

quadrillion, an ability to detect toxins at 1 ppq,is compara ble to one second in 32 million years-an incredible figure to lay people yet one that is routinely performed by Canadian laboratories in environmental analyses. This amazing sta

tistic was quoted several times in various ES&E issues.

PPT - parts per trillion, an analytical detection capability approximating one second in 320 centuries. About 25 years ago, our laboratories could only detect toxins to parts per thousand.

PQ - Parti Quebecoise. The PQ is a separatist Provincial party

which regained power in Quebec in 1994 under party leader Jaques Parizeau who resigned after losing the referendum on Quebec's sovereignty in 1995. In Federal politics,as noted earlier, the separatist Bloc Quebecoise under Lucien Bouchard, won enough seats to form the official opposition in Canada. He resigned his House of Commons seat, later taking over as Quebec Premier from Jacques Parizeau.

WCW&WA - Western Canada Water and Wastes Associa

tion. Engineers,operators and scientists working in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, have a Section in the Western

Canada AWWA and are affiliated with WEE Strong focus

on operator training as well as advanced treatment process.

WEF - Water Environment Federation. Based in Alexandria,

Virginia, WEF is to wastewater treatment what AWWA is to drinking water. Starting as a part of AWWA activities, WEF 180

quickly branched out on its own but operates in friendly cooperation with AWWA. WEF is the largest and oldest group devoted to the research and implementation of wastewater collection and treatment. Now over 60 years old, WEF has had several name changes.

There have been two Canadians as WEF Presidents,Dr. Albert Edward Berry and Geoffrey Scott of Aurora,Ontario.

Unlike AWWA,WEF is represented in Canada by Member Associations such as AQTE in Quebec and the Water Envi

ronment Association of Ontario (which until recently was called the Pollution Control Association of Ontario). WEF is

represented in other Canadian Provinces by the BCW&WA and the WCWWA.

Known as the Water Pollution Control Federation

(WPCF)until it changed its name to the Water Environment

Federation during its conference and exposition in Toronto, 1991, WEF also has a research foundation for wastewater treatment issues.

181

What readers said about the author's editorials

Tom Davey has played a key role in bridging the gap between academics and policy makers and continues to be one of Canada's most influential communicators on environmental matters.

He is a most articulate, insightful and enthusiastic communicator - combined with a strong sense of humour.

Don Mackay, Ph.D., P.Eng., Trent University Right on! I enjoyed your Editorial Commentin the December issue (as well as the journal overall).

Gary W. Heinke,Ph.D., P.Eng., Dean, University of

Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering I recently had occasion to read articles of yours on PCBs which appeared in The Globe and Mail and ES&E

from

an environmental perspective I know that they are entirely accurate.

R.D. Samuel Stevens, Ph.D., President,

Solarchem Environmental Systems

I read with delight your editorial,"The incredible shrinking pie syndrome". As part of the environmental research community, and an editorial curmudgeon, your points hit home.

Martin Samoiloff, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Bioquest International Inc.

I very much enjoyed your editorial citing 'Fernand Braudel'.

One of my ambitions for my retirement is to read his Magnum Opus dealing with all the countries in the mediterranean basin.

F.C.L. MuIIer, President and Managing Director, Scholastic-TAB Publications Ltd.