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Science Technology and the Economic Future edited by Susan Raymond
Jon Roush
Senior Fellow, The Conservation Fund
Based on remarks delivered to the New York Academy of Sciences, November 14, 1995.
Americans have disagreed, and will no doubt continue to disagree, about the specifics of environmental policy. Under the twin banners of regulatory reform and deficit reduction, these disagreements have produced an attack on environmental laws. The preferences of the American people, however, expressed through recent elections and opinion polls, have reemphasized the degree to which environmental protection remains a priority for the nation.
The Assault on Science
Beyond any particular law or environmental issue, we have a greater cause for concern regarding environmental policy: increasingly, environmental lawmaking seems disengaged from the base of environmental science. Institutions that historically have served as the reservoirs of scientific findings for making and evaluating laws are now threatened. Some have been eliminated. Perhaps the most notable instance is the demise of the Office of Technology Assessment in 1995. With the passing of the OTA, Congress lost its main source of information about science and technology. Nothing has taken its place, and lawmaking is the worse for the loss.
I would be the first to agree that many environmental policies require regular review and reform. Laws such as the Endangered Species Act, which was the source of so much acrimony in 1995, need to reflect the changing needs of the people (for example, small land owners) as well as the changing base of scientific knowledge. But the answer is not wholesale abandonment of policy. We need reform based on careful observation (for example, we still lack basic information about the location and condition of the elements of biodiversity in America) and rigorous experimentation with alternatives. We are destroying the institutional capacity to carry out the science that will enable wise reform, with results more serious than simply endangering particular laws. We are cutting into the very muscle and sinew of knowledge upon which wise policy depends, today and into the future.
Deeper Implications for Resource Management
The deep suspicion of science, and the rise of "junk science" in policy making, would be laughable if it weren't so tragically harmful. America is enduring fundamental assaults on the generation and use of knowledge as a basis for resource management, at least when knowledge might contradict other, more powerful agendas and special interests. The assault is not always blatant; it can be quite subtle. Blatant or subtle, the effect is the same—to discredit the utility of science as a foundation for resource management decisions.
The debate over cost-benefit analysis is a case in point. Congress calls for rigorous cost-benefit analysis to justify regulatory initiatives. Usually the cost of regulatory action can be calculated with fair precision. That is true across a range of environmental issues, from the cost of abating pollution to the cost of complying with ozone requirements to the cost of leaving wetlands alone rather than filling them for parking lots. Yet unlike the costs, the benefits are often difficult or impossible to calculate. How can we quantify the benefits of human life or the quality of human life? How can we quantify the benefits of an environment full of life?
To confess our inability to quantify these things is decidedly not to say that they are valueless; it is to acknowledge that their evaluation involves ethics as well as information. To pretend that science alone can quantify these benefits is a perverse interpretation of science, a perversion born either of ignorance or hypocrisy. To call for cost benefit analysis as the sole decision-making tool, and then to fail to acknowledge its limitations and build that reality into decision-making, is a subtle attack on science itself.
Three Invisible Decisions Facing the Nation
These are not partisan issues. They are simply issues of congressional decision-making. Environmental wisdom and, equally, environmental foolhardiness are the preserve of no one party nor of any single branch of government. Conservation, good government, and good science are nonpartisan endeavors. There are friends and enemies on both sides of the aisle, although in the last few years the Executive Branch has shown itself to be a more consistent friend of the environment overall than has Congress.
As a nation, we are making three especially important but invisible decisions. They are invisible because they will not emanate from a single rational debate nor from a single group of people acting in one place at one time. They will emerge from incremental, sometimes imperceptible decisions and actions by all Americans the aggregate will determine our environmental directions.
First, how will we manage large, complex ecosystems? Many environmental systems are immensely complicated, chaotic, and poorly understood. Such systems have biological components, but also humanly created systems of economic, political, and social dimensions. For example, how shall we coordinate the actions resulting from multiple human decisions within a single, large watershed? The principles that we choose for ecosystem management will, by and large, determine the degree of success we have in passing a sustainable world on to our grand children.
Second, what should be the role of scientific thought and information in the formulation of policy? Environmental decisions must have a scientific base, but choices about the environment are also premised on values. How do we want science and values to interact? That institutions will inject science into policy, or keep it out? To what extent do we want to protect science from politics, or should we?
Third, what values should guide our management and use of public resources? Indeed, this question is at the heart of many of the nation's most contentious environmental issues. It is a question we must face with agonizing urgency. That values should guide the management of public land and water? Should we privatize or subsidize public land? How far should we go to conserve our common stock of biological diversity? How will we resolve the tensions between the private and the public?
The Private and the Public: Finding the Balance
The third invisible decision drives to the heart of a central dilemma. From the beginning, America has lived with a tension between the values of private, individual enterprise and the values of a community in which people share a responsibility. By and large, the tension has been healthy; it has given us resilience. The question now is one of balance. How much community are we willing to sacrifice for private gain?
Across the country, a wide variety of experiments are under way involving both private stakeholders and public agencies in ecosystem management. They are revealing a great deal about what works and what does not, as well as much about America's values and preferences. For example, in 1994, The Wilderness Society sponsored a one-year study with the University of Michigan to examine locally or regionally organized ecosystem management projects and to identify elements necessary for success. Four key findings result ed. First, successful ecosystem management needs expansive, and often expensive, technology. Information systems are particularly important. Second, success depends on good scientific information. Project leaders interviewed during the study placed utmost importance on reliable data. As one expressed it, "Use the best science available, and if it is not available, go out and get it." Third, both public officials and citizen participants need a high level education about ecological and social systems. The public do not need to be experts, but they do need to understand concepts such as gap analysis, economic development, and social impact assessment. Scientists need to reach out to the people. Finally, most projects in the study benefited from public investment. Government usually provided direct funding or tax credits, information, or technical assistance. Even people who initiated projects with an anti-government bias tended to modify that bias as they gained experience.
So, successful project managers cite good science, good information, and government assistance as critical factors of success. A Call to Arms for the Scientific Community
The combination of these two trends—the attack on science as the underpinning for environmental policy and the expressed need for good science by ecosystem managers—represents a call to arms for the scientific community. If scientists sit on the sidelines, much will be lost. What can scientists do? I would call on them to accept the responsibility that comes with expertise, to become scientist-activists. I don't ask that all scientists agree with my views about policies; I ask that all agree about the importance of information and science. Step out of the laboratory on occasion and enter the political debate to correct errors and defend informed inquiry.
What can scientist-activists do? Offer testimony, write letters, call talk shows. The air is filled with inaccuracies. Every time those inaccuracies go unanswered, it is a victory for anti-scientism.
Scientists also need to defend the institutions that mediate between science and policy. Respond to attacks on such organizations as the National Biological Service or the National Institute for Science and Technology. The real act of destruction in the attack on science is to drive a wedge between rational people. If that wedge deepens, the future will not be business as usual or science as usual. The scientific community must step in to defend science and, in so doing, defend democracy.
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