Eugene weekly., May 10, 2007, Page 13, Image 13

BY TED TAYLOR
Discretion or Obligation
How should government view a looming catastrophe?
S
‘Our government is driving this country
towards runaway greenhouse gas emissions.’
— Mary Wood
tion and 3.2 billion people suffering water
shortages; it will convert the Amazon rainfor-
est into savannah and trigger the kind of mass
extinction that hasn’t occurred on Earth for 55
million years.”
Wood sees the need for a mass mobiliza-
tion. “The attack on Pearl Harbor galvanized
America in a way that we desperately need
today,” she said. “Almost overnight, the pri-
vate business sector began retooling and over-
hauling production lines. The automobile in-
dustry scaled down car sales and channeled its
workers and materials into the production of
defense vehicles. The financial world sold war
bonds. Communities planted victory gardens
to grow food locally so that the commercial
food supplies could be sent to the military.
Consumers made do with the bare minimum.
States lowered their speed limits to conserve
gas.” A volunteer speakers’ bureau rallied sup-
port for the war effort in every community, she
added.
This model could work to slow global heat-
ing, she believes, but public attitudes need to
change. “Intelligent as we are, it’s hard for us
to take seriously any threat that is not immedi-
ate. In other words, we’d be better off being in-
vaded by Martians,” she said. She also sees
global warming being presented by the press as
an environmental issue. “Americans are funda-
mentally confused about government’s role to-
wards our environment, and that confusion op-
erates as a deadweight against decisive ac-
tion.”
She also blames government at all levels.
Instead of defending our atmosphere, she said,
“our government is driving this country to-
wards runaway greenhouse gas emissions.
County commissioners are approving trophy
home subdivisions and destination resorts as if
D ru m s Ac r os s Am er ic a f or Pe ac e
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Drum for Peace along with Samba Ja!!
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Bri ng your dr
global warming didn’t exist. State environ-
tories about rising temperatures on
mental agencies are approving air permits as if
planet Earth are ubiquitous, and yet a
global warming didn’t exist. The Forest
sense of public urgency has not
Service is approving timber sales as if global
emerged. Instead of mobilizing resources to
warming didn’t exist. And the electric
save our environment, our national,
power industry is racing to build
state and local governments are tak-
more than 150 new coal-fired
ing us in the wrong direction by
power plants across the U.S.,
allowing discretion in permitting
banking on federal approval as if
pollution, according to Mary
global warming didn’t exist.”
Wood, a professor in the envi-
How did our atmosphere get
ronmental law program at UO.
caught in Wood calls a “legal death
“We have to reverse what is
spiral”? Wood said hundreds of envi-
now still a climbing trajectory of
Mary Wood
ronmental statutes and regulations
greenhouse gas emissions and bring it
have been passed since the 1970s to protect our
down within 10 years at most, then reduce it 80
natural resources. But, “had environmental
percent by 2050,” said Wood in her talk to City
law worked, we would not have this ecological
Club of Eugene on May 4. “You can think of
crisis on our hands. The heart of the problem is
these requirements as nature’s mandate.”
this: While the purpose of every local, state and
Global heating is “leagues beyond what
federal environmental law is to protect natural
civilization has ever faced before,” she said.
resources, nearly every law authorizes the
“We are locked into a temperature rise of at
agencies to permit the very pollution or dam-
least 2 F. This alone will have impacts for gen-
age that the statutes were designed to prevent.”
erations to come, but if we continue business
Woods said the permit systems were never
as usual, [scientists] predict Earth will warm as
intended to subvert the goals of environmental
much as 10.4 F, which will leave as many as
statutes, but most agencies today spend nearly
600 million people in the world facing starva-
all of their resources to permit rather than pro-
hibit environmental destruction. “Most offi-
cials are good, dedicated individuals, but as a
group, they dread saying no to permits.
Essentially, our agencies have taken the discre-
tion in the law and have used it to destroy na-
ture, including its atmosphere.”
Instead of operating in a framework of dis-
cretion, Wood said government agencies need
a framework of obligation. “The reframing I
suggest draws on Supreme Court jurispru-
dence that has been around since the beginning
of this country,” she said. “It characterizes all
of the resources essential to human survival —
including the waters, wildlife, and air — as
being packaged together in a legal endowment
which I call Nature’s Trust. Our imperiled at-
mosphere is one of the assets in that trust.”
Wood praised Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy
for her leadership in tackling global heating on
the local level, but she also warned against
small steps leading to complacency.
Wood concluded her talk saying that global
heating “dwarfs any threat we have known in
the history of humankind. Giving our govern-
ment political discretion to allow further dam-
age to our atmosphere puts the future of this
nation and the rest of the world in grave dan-
ger.”
She said if Americans “take the lead to re-
frame our government’s purpose as a trust duty
to safeguard the commonly held atmosphere,
we may soon find every other nation in the
world engaged with us, not against us, in a
massive, urgent defense effort to secure the
systems of life on Earth for all generations to
come.”
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The full text of Mary Wood’s talk is available online at
www.eugeneweekly.com
MAY 10, 2007 13