Making Peace with the Planet Won't Be Easy

It had arrived again, the day that newspapers, TV and magazines had been hyping. April 22, Earth Day, or, as it was known in 1990, "The Dawn of the Environmental Decade." But despite the sunny skies and big promises to "clean up the planet," I was uneasy.

   Should I have been more content? Maybe. After all, the news that we faced a crisis of global, potentially catastrophic proportions was finally reaching the masses. I had been urging people to take individual and collective action since the first Earth Day twenty years before. Yet most of the "save the planet" messages, and even an emerging eco-consciousness, felt unsettling rather than reassuring.

       On the previous Friday, for instance, CBS's Dan Rather had reported that we were making headway in reducing smog over many US cities. Really? In most urban areas residents faced smog levels up to 150 days a year. Rather's report and others seemed misleading. The idea that environmental protection laws passed after the original Earth Day had produced real gains provided a false sense of security.

Ecological Security Logo 

      Newspapers congratulated themselves for using recycled paper. But there was no sign of reducing the amount of mindless pap promoting a "consumer society" that perpetuates waste and pollution. And of course, major corporations touted their newfound commitment to environmental protection while conveniently omitting their toxic crimes.

      Time Warner sponsored The Earth Day Special and promised to do its part. But what about Time magazine? asked my son. He knew that its 30 million glossy copies were produced on non-recyclable paper every week. 

     Too cynical? It was Earth Day, after all. Time to forgive and recycle, right? But I just couldn't buy into the "we can do it" mood. Something simply wouldn't leave my mind. Reality. Things were getting worse, not better. The hype no longer convinced me that "we will do it," at least until we understood was was really wrong.

      Celebrating Earth Day was educational and fun. But I wasn't impressed, and either was the planet.

      Maybe the problem was too much information. For several months I had been part of a local environmental task force. We'd looked into what Burlington, Vermont could do to create more "ecological security." That phrase, used to name a conference I'd organized to bring together the peace and environmental movements, was an attempt to refocus locally at the end of the Cold War. Our insecurity, it suggested, stemmed from diverse threats to the natural world. The Task Force was expected to create a factual record and come up with bold yet feasible remedies.

      We managed to develop a respectable list of first steps, among them proposals for a local ban on the use or sale of all products producing CFCs, the creation of citywide bike lanes, buying development rights to the delicate Intervale area, establishing a collection and storage facility for hazardous wastes, and a community panel to oversee biotechnology operations at the university. Like lists of "simple things you can do" being distributed at the time, such changes were clearly necessary. Still, on reviewing their work, some Task Force members felt defeated.

      Had we succeeded only in developing another laundry list, while failing to identify the underlying problems? Wouldn't other actions by the government and private interests negate the improvements we suggested? No funds for recycling had been included in the new Public Works budget. And despite a stated commitment to explore alternative transportation, the city administration still proposed new roads and the expansion of others. Some even thought it advisable to build a road over the edge of a recently closed landfill. Without limits on development and changes in energy production, even not-so-simple things would have a negligible effect.

      Despite the best intentions, the Ecological Security Task Force had fallen into a trap described by Barry Commoner in his book, Making Peace with the Planet. Environmental degradation was built into the design of the modern means of production, he argued, and therefore traditional "control" approaches to environmental protection are bound to be inadequate. Trapping or even destroying pollutants merely postpones or shifts the problem. The only way to eliminate a pollutant is to stop producing it. Once produced, it's too late.

      What this suggests is the need for a radical set of changes in lifestyle and production practices. Not to minimize the "every person can make a difference" viewpoint, big institutions do have the biggest impacts. At the local level, government, the university, the hospital complex and the commercial sector would all have to take major steps to reduce waste, stop using or producing non-recyclable or toxic materials, and re-use as often as possible. Voluntary action alone wouldn't cut it.

      You'd have to be living in an oil drum not to see the problem. Air pollution, the Greenhouse Effect, ozone depletion, hazardous waste, acid rain, vanishing wildlife, garbage islands, and more. Plus the dangerous drift of society. Natural products replaced by synthetic petrochemical creations; natural agricultural fertilizers by chemical alternatives; trains, trolleys and buses by private, inefficient and polluting cars; reusable goods by throwaways. Shops, vehicles, factories and farms had become seedbeds of pollution.
      And this was before we understood the phrase "climate change" or began to experience "extreme weather." 

      Although its charge stopped at the city line, the Ecological Security Task Force recognized that the problems did not. They could only be addressed through regional and broader cooperation. Looking only at the bottom line, corporations had produced much of the mess. But the public was being asked to handle the clean up. In general, environmental laws passed since the first Earth Day had not dealt effectively with what industry produced.

      When General Electric proudly proclaimed that it would review the environmental impacts of its products and spend $200 million on protection, it was important to keep in mind its rarely mentioned 47 contaminated toxic waste sites, past radiation experiments, toxic releases and status as one of the world's major nuclear contractors.

      The challenges are enormous. But what can make a difference is an active, even angry citizenry. And this was another reason for my Earth Day blues. Despite all the study and talk, I could not see the groundswell of popular outrage that was needed for a successful movement. Sure, recycling was catching on and the state was "environmentally conscious." But being conscious isn't enough. There must be real demands, ones that force all levels of government to use their purchasing and regulatory powers to eliminate polluting technologies and products, and also rapidly develop alternatives. In particular, the planet and its inhabitants cannot afford the squandering of resources, both material and human, that more than $1 trillion a year in world military spending represents.

       We also need alliances that force businesses and governments to prevent pollution at the source. And it won't get easier as we go along. Steps like halting the production of toxic chemicals or the use of nuclear energy won't be embraced with nearly the enthusiasm of a general "save the planet" campaign. Every time people press for an ecological goal, the response is bound to be a competing economic need. After postponing action for so long, the clean up won't be cheap.

      So yes, I am skeptical. It's easy to tell ourselves that "minor" sacrifices will be enough, or that corporations will factor in the environmental impacts as they assess the balance sheets. But these artificial entities are designed to make money, not to protect anything. Under the current capitalist system, they are machines that use the air, water and land without calculating the long-term costs. Meanwhile, most people in the developed world have not truly acknowledged that their lifestyle is built on environmental waste and degredation. As Paul Erhlich put it, there aren't too many people, just too many rich people. 

      Will we wake up in time? Are we finally getting serious? These days I wouldn't bet on it. But I look forward to being wrong.

Blind Ambitions: Iran, the Shah and His Friends

To George Meany the Shah of Iran was "a murderer and robbed his country blind." The AFL-CIO leader made that assessment in November, 1979 while simultaneously condemning the "blackmail" strategy of armed, mostly young Iranians who had seized the US Embassy in Tehran. 
      Yet despite his distaste for both sides, Meany still thought US should defend the dying monarch. Murderer or not, said the labor leader, "for some reason he was our friend."

      But whose friend was Mohammed Riza Pahlevi? And why were they friends for so long? Only after he departed the "Peacock throne" did the truth start to emerge, especially about his long and deep ties with David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger and Allen Dulles, a trail of greed and repression that went back decades and continues to produce unsettling, often brutal consequences.

      The Shah was a crucial, often demanding partner in building Iran into a petrochemical powerhouse and US regional gendarme for the Persian Gulf. The arrangement had allowed the Pahlevi family to amass an estimated $25 billion, much of it managed by Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank. Toward the end, as the exiled dictator wasted away from lymph system cancer, Kissinger and Rockefeller remained trusted financial advisers. They were also instrumental in securing his controversial admission to the US in late October, 1979. But by then their shared vision had been crushed by a Muslim revolution.

      The alliance dated back to the 1950s, even before Chase became Iran's premier bank. It began when the National Front, led by Mohammed Mossadegh, proposed in 1952 that the British-controlled oil company be nationalized. Rockefeller and the C.I.A. had other ideas -- to help the military put the Shah back in power and win a share of Iranian oil for the major US oil companies. 

      As the public learned only years later, the coup was financed, with the approval of C.I.A. Director Allen Dulles, for a modest $100,000. Dulles claimed that Mossadegh was attempting to create a Communist state, a convenient and effective pretext to install a ruler who was willing to represent US interests in the region. Through long-term contracts, oil interests did extremely well after that, while Chase handled much of the money and loaned the regime at least $4 billion. Some private deals were also cut, one involving large personal payments to the Shah, Rockefeller and Dulles, funneled through the National Iranian Oil Company and Swiss banks.

      Long before the Iranian takeover of the US embassy, the post-Shah government knew all this and began transferring funds out of the Chase London branch. But anger turned to rage when word leaked out that the Shah's old friends, Kissinger and Rockefeller, were urging US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to grant him asylum. Resisting at first, Vance eventually gave in, setting off a diplomatic disaster even worse than the one that followed the Shah's flight from his country.

The Trilateral Commission briefs President Ford 

    Predictions that the monarch would fall had circulated long in advance. But they were rejected by another friend with Rockefeller connections, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man in charge of Iranian policy throughout the Carter administration. Before that assignment he had been the founding director of the Trilateral Commission, a transnational corporate league assembled by Rockefeller in 1973. Once in the White House he supported the build up of Iranian military forces, following the policy established by Kissinger. And he assumed, in spite of pessimistic C.I.A. reports, that the Shah would (and should) survive in power.

       As demonstrations escalated Iranian capital, largely hoarded by the many millionaires created by the oil boom, fled the country. Yet even after George Ball, a former Under-Secretary of State and Trilateral member, filed a report concluding that the Shah was finished, White House policy did not budge. Ball's findings, received by Carter a full year before the revolution, were never officially released. 

      Instead, Vance tried to establish contact with Muslim leaders close to Khomeini. But that approach was also blocked by Brzezinski. Keeping the Shah in power seemed to trump other considerations -- from the possibility of a working relationship with the new regime to the danger of a hostile Iranian population armed with sophisticated weapons and technology. They also had an economic weapon, oil.

      No matter who accused the Shah of crimes against humanity, however, some old friends remained faithful. One reason was control of his wealth after he was gone. But there was another. In some cases his friends were also accomplices in his crimes.

      In the 1950s, for example, after restoring the Shah to power, the C.I.A. funded and guided Iran's secret police, SAVAK. Trained by both US and Israeli Intelligence agencies, it became infamous as one of the most brutal tools of "legalized" terror, a worldwide network of 60,000 agents who specialized in harassment and torture of the regime's opponents.

      With covert US funding, the Shah also helped provoke a rebellion in Iraq. Beginning in 1972, over $16 billion was channeled to Kurds who were conducting an armed struggle against the central government. Kissinger embraced the plan, and made sure it was implemented over the objections of the State Department by bypassing the Forty Committee, which normally approved such covert operations. 

      It was a cynical move. Neither Kissinger, Nixon nor the Shah actually wanted the Kurds to win. The main point of the war was to sap Iraq's resources, setting the stage for eventual treaty concessions.

      A US House Select Committee report on the C.I.A. acknowledged at the time that the Kurdish operation was initiated as a favor. By this time, the Shah was able to get such concessions in exchange for his partnership. But it was secret enough that the arrangements were confirmed in person with John Connally, who was about to join Nixon's re-election campaign. 

      Aid to the Kurds continued for several years. Meanwhile OPEC quadrupled the price of oil, vastly expanding Iran's oil revenues. During the same period, the regime purchased more than $12 billion in arms from the US. But the Kurdish rebellion ultimately outlived its usefulness. Once a treaty between Iran and Iraq was signed in 1975, covert aid to the Kurds was abruptly withdrawn.

      The day after that treaty was signed, an all-out search and destroy mission was launched, scattering the rebel forces. All pleas, even from C.I.A. personnel stationed in the region, fell on deaf ears. Kissinger and Nixon meanwhile refused aid for the refugee population that US funding had helped to create. Asked to explain the betrayal, Kissinger responded, "We're not missionaries."

      And after all, giving the Shah what he wanted had produced lucrative oil concessions, billions for arms manufacturers, and a false sense of security for those worried about alleged Communist incursions. On the other hand, he also drove his country into debt and maintained his power with repressive tactics that bred a deep hostility among millions of Iranians. 

      The fall of the Shah was probably inevitable. But by ignoring warning signs and refusing to adapt his "friends" turned that loss into a global disaster.

This article first appeared in the Vermont Vanguard Press in November, 1979. Here is the original version.