Friends Of The Earth

November/December 1975

One of the world's most effective environmental groups is San Francisco-based FRIENDS OF THE EARTH. Although FOE publishes Not Man Apart -a twice-a-month tabloid magazine packed with authenticated, hard-to-find facts that every concerned citizen needs-far too few of MOTHER's readers regularly see a copy of NMA. We are therefore quite pleased that FOE's staff has agreed to write a regular FRIENDS OF THE EARTH column for THE Mother Earth News.

INORGANIC VS. ORGANIC FARMING

MOTHER's readers have known it all along . . . and a recent hard-to-ignore study of sixteen organic and sixteen inorganic farms in the Corn Belt has now confirmed those beliefs: Organic farming can produce better food, at less expense, and with less adverse impact on the planet than highly mechanized, energy-intensive "agribiz" techniques.

The study, by Dr. Barry Commoner, was undertaken when the prices of fertilizer tripled last year in the wake of the Arab oil embargo. Commoner found that while "natural" farms produced 8 percent less food per acre than their mechanized counterparts, they also spent far fewer dollars to raise their crops than it cost the agribiz farms to raise theirs. Net result: more profit for the organic farmers at less expense to the land they tilled.

LEGAL BEAGLES

Environmental lawyers have scored some big victories since our last report to MOTHER, and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund had a hand in all of them:

Slow growth advocates won a smashing decision when an ordinance limiting the growth of the town of Petaluma, California was judged constitutional by a federal appeals court in San Francisco.

Petaluma (site of the world arm-wrestling championship and home of a large percentage of California's chickens) found itself growing in all directions, at a pace that threatened to overwhelm the surrounding countryside as well as the town's schools, water system, and other facilities. So Petaluma did something about the situation: The mayor and city council drew up an ordinance limiting the growth of housing developments, and Petaluma's voters endorsed the measure by a 10 to 1 margin.

But the developers, knowing what was "best" for the town (or were they thinking only of their own pocketbooks'!), dragged Petaluma into federal court. The resulting decision sided with the developers and against the ordinance. Petaluma however, appealed that decision, Justice Douglas (God bless his soul) intervened on behalf of the town, and a higher court's panel of three judges voted unanimously to overturn the previous ruling.

The case now may well be taken to the Supreme Court, where there's no telling what might happen. In the meantime, though, the burgeoning movement to curb urban and suburban growth has a respectable judicial opinion in its pocket with which to counter developers and their work.

Redwood National Park just may survive now, thanks again to the Sierra Club's legal eagles. The park is threatened with massive erosion and siltation caused by commercial logging on slopes above RNP. (Timber companies have shown their "public spirit" by cutting trees right up to the park's boundaries. Legislation to expand Redwood National Park is alive in Washington, and the loggers apparently want to "get their licks in" before such a decision is made.) The courts, though, have recently ordered the Interior Department to take steps to protect the park, even if it means going to Congress for money to buy up more land.

One other legal/forestry item: Clear-cutting now appears to be officially illegal . . . but don't be surprised if the Forest Service doesn't see it that way.

The Organic Act of 1$97 says that the Forest Service can sell (for cutting) "dead, mature, or large growth trees". Lawyers for the Sierra Club, Izaac Walton League, and West Virginia Highlands Conservancy-however--contend that clearcutt.ing involves a hell of a lot more trees than that . . . and suggest the practice therefore violates the Organic Act. The organizations filed suit challenging several such sales of timber in West Virginia's Monongahela National Forest . . . and won! The Forest Service, though, has taken the farfetched position that the court decision affects only that one national forest . . . an interpretation which is flimsy, at best. Don't be surprised if timber sales involving clear-cuts are soon challenged everywhere. (If you live near a national forest that's up for such "harvesting" and want to stop it, write to the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, 311 California St., San Francisco, Calif. 94104 for advice.)

POLLUTED PORTFOLIOS

The Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, and National Audubon Society all came in for a pounding recently when the Los Angeles Times revealed that those organizations own stock in the very businesses they criticize most: oil companies, electric utilities, strip mining firms, and other big polluters. Time magazine picked up the story, and angry members have been berating their organizations ever since.

Dave Brower, president of Friends of the Earth (which, by the way, came out smelling sweet . . . we don't have any money to invest) rushed to the defense of the groups caught with egg on their portfolio faces. In a letter to the L.A. Times, Brower observed: "It would be almost impossible for (Audubon, et al.) not to invest in polluters, or for individuals not to. If you are insured, or have deposits in a bank, or fly or drive or read or eat, you are helping polluters in their daily rounds . . . .

"It seems to me that there are two courses open to the management of environmental organizations, and indeed to all investors, not excluding universities.

"One is to take advantage of stock ownership and to show up at stockholder meetings and demand that the corporations be environmentally responsible and stop talking nonsense about how they must pollute in the U.S. or abroad in order to create jobs. There are myriad jobs in abating pollution . . . worthwhile jobs, well worth investing i n because the world is better off for the work done.

"The other is to take prompt advantage of what the Council on Economic Priorities is now making possible: the shifting of investments to corporations who are performing best in the effort to 'clean up'."

NUCLEAR NOTES

The TVA's reactor at Browns Ferry, Alabama suffered a near-catastrophic accident recently when two electricians set the place on fire while checking for air leaks with a candle. The report of the incident reads like high farce. with every possible mishap (yes, including many that the nuclear industry says can't take place) mishappening.

Two new pro-nuclear booster groups have been formed, with large infusions of dollars from the atomic industry. Watch out for "Americans for Energy Independence" and the "American Nuclear Energy Council" . . . their messages may well turn up in your newspaper and with your utility bill.

Twenty-five hundred scientists, engineers, and doctors-including nine Nobel laureates-have signed a declaration of concern over nuclear power and sent it to President Ford, The statement stops short of advocating what FOE thinks is necessarya complete and immediate halt to construction and operation of all commercial reactors-but it does recommend "a drastic reduction in new nuclear power plant construction starts" and a halt to the program of exporting nuclear plants to other countries. Newspapers across the U.S. largely ignored the statement, which was released on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.

The Prometheus Crisis, by the folks who brought you The Towering Inferno, will be published by the time you read this. Movie rights are already sold. The Prometheus is a hypothetical nuclear plant in southern California that suffers a catastrophic accident. Early rumors say the book is wellwritten and technically accurate. It and the movie should read legitimate nuclear concern widely.

MISCELLANY

EPA Administrator Russell Train has banned the pesticides chlordane and heptachlor due to "imminent cancer hazards" to humans. The two, pesticides cause cancer in animals, and were found in 73 percent of all dairy products and 77 percent of all meat, fish, and poultry samples examined in a study by the EPA.

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The big environmental confrontation of this year (and next) may well prove to be the battle over plans to build a huge, coal-fired electric generating plant on the Kaiparowits Plateau in southern Utah. Pollution from the installation would contaminate some of the cleanest air and most beautiful landscape in the country . . . all to provide unnecessary kilowatts to Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.

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The government and the oil companies have been anxious to lease Outer Continental Shelf lands for exploratory offshore drilling. Conservationists oppose these hasty leases. For one thing, we don't even know how much oil is there. Last year, for example, the U.S. Geological Survey said that the Atlantic offshore area contained ten to twenty billion barrels of crude. This year, the USES says there's only two to four billion barrels.

Various state governments are now fighting against the giveaway leases. California's legislature just passed a bill forbidding new leasing or drilling. . . and the Golden State's hotshot new governor, Jerry Brown, signed the measure into law. Many of California's officials even questioned whether the U.S. should ever lease oil lands to private multi-national corporations, whose policies and price-setting methods are not always calculated with the public's best interests at heart.

Alaska's Governor Hammond, however, has decided to go ahead and lease the Beaufort Sea for oil and gas development. He's primarily motivated by his state's sinking financial status. The pipeline project, once thought a boon for Alaska, has since cost "the Last Frontier" much more than originally estimated. Crime is up, prices are tip, welfare is up, and so are the tempers of pipeline workers. State revenues are down. Governor Hammond thinks, apparently, that even more development will solve Alaska's development problems. Sine all evidence is to the contrary, we can only wonder . . . .