Environmental Science & Engineering - www.esemag.com - September 2003
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The day the earth was moved

Environmental theatre was better than the movies

by Tom Davey, Editor

Earth Day was triumphantly proclaimed by activists in 1970 as the “Birth of the Environmental Movement.” I do not believe this to be so, but it was certainly the year students demonstrated their concerns in mass rallies across North America, giving the media a new focus on ecology. But even earlier, students from the University of Toronto had held a beautifully-staged mock funeral to mark The Death of the Don River, accompanied, no less, by a rendition of Chopin’s Funeral March; the “mourners” wore funeral garb including top hats. As media events, both the Funeral and Earth Day were spectacular successes. For the first time, the environment became a cause célèbre with powerful political significance.

The Funeral, paradoxically, marked the birth of Pollution Probe which was quickly to become a force to be reckoned with. Articulate university students and professors, unburdened by the complex realities of either economics or environmental science, with a coterie of young reporters, quickly mutated into a new species - Ecoactivists - who created a series of stunts which were then reported with a barrage of warnings which alarmed the general public.

On the West Coast, Greenpeace emerged, beginning with a protest against atmospheric nuclear tests near the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. While Pollution Probe’s mock funeral had been a theatrical event whose novelty yielded much media coverage, Greenpeace developed a series of daring stunts which attracted media attention on a global scale, eclipsing Madison Avenue’s finest efforts. When Shell attempted to sink the redundant ocean oil storage rig, Brent Spar, Greenpeace created a worldwide furor. The then German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, asked the British to rescind their approval to sink the oil rig. When Shell capitulated, former British Prime Minister, John Major, who had succeeded Margaret Thatcher, described company officials as “wimps”.

The unfortunate Brent Spar now began to emulate the mythical Flying Dutchman, forced to cruise the oceans with its oil-burning tugs while facing rejection on land and sea. Ultimately it was towed to a fjord in Norway and dismantled. It’s likely the oil burned by tugboats at sea towing such a massive object would probably exceed the residual oil in the Brent Spar. But what a coup for activism! Two of the most powerful countries in the world had seen their international policies reshaped by non-elected activists.

When fourteen people were ejected from Brent Spar, nine journalists were also ejected, a quite astonishing ratio. When reporting this story, I wondered in print that, if this trend persisted, future activists would soon bring their own individual journalists to cover their protests, much like today’s film stars have their own personal trainers.

But even before this environmental feeding frenzy began, many significant environmental advances were made. In 1968, Philip Jones, P.Eng., a professor at the University of Toronto, began drawing attention to the serious problems of eutrophication of our lakes and rivers. I interviewed him that year when he was seeking a reduction in the amount of phosphates put in laundry detergents, to reduce the amount entering our waterways. At that time, there were little or no nutrient removal facilities in wastewater treatment plants. He felt the problem had been compounded when the universal use of washing machines allowed the washing process to be untouched by hand, permitting more powerful domestic detergent formulas to be introduced.

The article was widely quoted by the media. Dr. Jones was also interviewed several times on television. MacMillan of Canada published a collection of environmental essays in an anthology called Crisis, which included my interview of Dr. Jones. I was invited to Ottawa to interview the then Federal Minister of Mines, Energy and Resources, Joe Greene. Amazingly there was not a single Canadian Minister of the Environment either federally or provincially at that time. The Canada Water Act was amended restricting the amount of phosphates in laundry detergents.

Meanwhile other environmental crises were happening, alarming the public. A federal Ministry of the Environment was created, with British Columbia’s Jack Davis becoming our first Minister of the Environment. The provinces quickly followed suit and a crop of environment ministers sprung up across Canada as the public demanded government action on previously ignored ecological issues. Environmental stunts had yielded more political action than environmental engineering.

In 1969, a mercury scare emerged, ultimately unfolding in deaths and sickness in Minamata, Japan. At that time I interviewed Norvald Fimreite, a scientist from Finland who was doing a thesis on several mercury problems at the University of Western Ontario. While many factors were involved, it emerged that it was the methylation of mercury that was a key factor in the neurotoxicity. Methylmercury, unfortunately, enabled humans to biologically absorb the toxic metal which might otherwise have passed though their systems. As well, methylmercury is thousands of times more toxic than metallic mercury.

With the interview over, I was driving back to Toronto when the radio breathlessly reported that the continent- wide Earth Day was an environmental revolution. While I welcomed this new awareness, there were important omissions in the plethora of radio and television coverage. I heard no mention of the long list of historical pioneers who had been saving lives through research and engineering a century and a half before Earth Day was triumphantly, but erroneously proclaimed as “The Birth Of The Environmental Movement”. Pioneers such as Dr. John Snow identified cholera as a water-borne disease in the 1850s, with no financial or technical support. His findings were dismissed by the medical elite of that day.

Canada’s Willis Chipman, Dr. George G. Nasmith¹, and Dr.Albert Berry, England’s Dr. John Snow, and Ardern, Lockett and Fowler, America’s Dr. Abe Wolman, are but a few of the amazingly prescient environmental engineers and scientists who practised real environmentalism many decades before a new environmental boutique species emerged. Prior to this phenomenon, experts on television were identified as being engineers, doctors or architects. After the ‘70s it was commonplace to hear unsubstantiated, often inaccurate statements made by speakers who were simply identified as “environmentalists”. Many expressed genuine concern yet were often oblivious to scientific realities.

More recently, environmental groups have attracted members with learned credentials but it is both inaccurate and premature to talk of the birth of the environmental movement in the ‘70s. Afterbirth would be both adjectivally and historically more accurate.

In media lists citing “Environmental Heroes of the Planet”, in celebration of the new millennium, not one of the revered pioneers such as Ardern, Lockett and Fowler was cited. As environmentalists expropriated theatrical talents to further their cause, it is perhaps appropriate to say that the omission of the real pioneers in the roll call of Environmental Heroes of the Planet is like Hamlet without the Prince.

¹ In World War 1, Lieutenant-Colonel Nasmith was in charge of battlefield drinking water and sanitation for both British and Canadian armies, later receiving a CMG for services to the British Army. He later became a founding partner of Gore, Nasmith and Storrie in 1919, now CH2M HILL Canada. He was at Ypres in 1915 on the occasion of the first gas attack and also helped some troops mitigate the effects of the deadly chlorine gas.

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