The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
—Edmund Burke
I first visited the United States in 1966, when I was a conservative young mother with three babies and a new medical degree. I took a job at Harvard Medical School, in the cystic fibrosis clinic of the Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and worked part-time while continuing to care for my children. Because of the American films and television shows that I had grown up watching in Australia, I expected a gangster to be lurking behind every lamppost and the streets to be filled with neon lights and fast-food joints. Instead, I found the beautiful, orderly villages of New England and the quiet, reserved, but deeply caring people of Down East and Boston.
The years 1966—69, however, were years of political turbulence and violence. I witnessed the anti—Vietnam War movement, heard protest songs on the radio, watched flower children on television, and wept into my ironing as I listened to George Wald deliver an incredibly powerful and moving address on the day of the 1969 antiwar moratorium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In March of 1968, I heard the redoubtable Louis Lyons raging one night on the radio as he described the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr., exhorting all of us to march in the streets against such iniquity. A few months later, one sultry Boston summer morning, I turned on the television to see Bobby Kennedy lying bleeding from the head on the floor of a Los Angeles hotel. I found myself screaming at the TV, “Not again!” Several days later, I drove up to the Berkshires listening to the broadcast of his funeral from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and wept as the choir of nuns burst into the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah.
With a sense of dread, I saw Richard Nixon elected to the presidency that fall. Impelled by a growing desperation, I wrote to him about the cold war and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, and I am sure that he used part of my letter in his inaugural address. I even wrote to Senator Edward Kennedy about my deep concern about nuclear war and the importance of the upcoming ABM Treaty, and he actually replied with a thoughtful letter, which excited this rather naïve young doctor from Down Under.
It was a thrilling time for me. Radicalized politically, I realized that democracy was a workable proposition, because the turmoil seemed to be igniting change. Anything, I thought, was possible.
In 1969, I returned to Australia and two years later successfully “took on” the French government, which was testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere over some remote Pacific islands. The French tests violated the Partial Test Ban Treaty and created radioactive fallout in my small city of Adelaide, in South Australia. After nine months of a public education campaign warning about the medical dangers of strontium-90 and radioactive iodine in mothers’ milk, 70 percent of my fellow Australians rose up and demanded that our government take action to stop the tests. The government did so, and the French were forced to test underground. I had been transformed into an activist in the United States, and my life was never to be the same again.
I have a deep regard for America as a land of excitement, change, and opportunity. It is also the country that will determine the fate of the Earth. Why do I make such a sweeping statement? Because the United States is the wealthiest and militarily the most powerful country, and because its powerful media penetrates into every corner of the world, establishing the models that most people wish to emulate. Thanks to its influence, millions of Chinese, Africans, Indians, and Latin Americans want cars, refrigerators, ice cubes in their Coke, air conditioners, and disposable packaging.
Because the US population represents only 4 percent of the Earth’s people but uses 23 percent of the energy, this lifestyle is not an appropriate model for billions of other people. Such extravagant living is the leading cause of ozone depletion; global warming; toxic pollution of the air, water, and soil; and nuclear proliferation. Each US resident causes twenty to a hundred times more pollution than any Third World resident does, and rich American babies are destined to cause a thousand times more pollution than their counterparts in Bangladesh or Pakistan.1 Canadian citizens copy the lavish lifestyle of their southern neighbors, as do most citizens of the wealthy developed countries. Many developing countries, too, as well as the dismantled Soviet Union, India, and China, are now enthusiastically embracing the “wonders” of capitalism, as their people demand this affluent lifestyle. But 6.72 billion people cannot possibly emulate the lifestyle of 300 million Americans and expect the planet to survive. Furthermore, the Earth’s population may increase to 14 billion within the next century.2
Some eminent scientists predict that if we do not act now to reverse the cumulative effects of global pollution, species extinction, overpopulation, and the ongoing nuclear threat, it will soon—possibly within ten years—be too late for the long-term survival of most of the planet’s species, perhaps even Homo sapiens.
My vocation is medicine, and as a physician I examine the dying planet as I do a dying patient. The Earth has a natural system of interacting homeostatic mechanisms similar to the human body’s. If one system is diseased, like the ozone layer, then other systems develop abnormalities in function—the crops will die, the plankton will be damaged, and the eyes of all creatures on the planet will become diseased and vision-impaired.
We must have the tenacity and courage to examine the various disease processes afflicting our planetary home. But an accurate and meticulous diagnosis is not enough. We never cure patients by simply announcing that they are suffering from meningococcal meningitis or cancer of the bladder. Unless we are prepared to look further for the cause, or etiology, of the disease process, the patient will not be cured. Once we have elucidated the etiology, we can prescribe appropriate treatments.
Unfortunately, the etiologies of the diverse diseases afflicting our planet are complex and difficult to face when examined in fine detail. The initial, wondrous promises of capitalism and corporate free enterprise have not always led to careful and responsible management of the Earth’s natural resources and treasures. And the ills of communism led in many cases to disastrous pollution and wanton neglect of nature.
In this book, I outline the diagnosis of planetary ills and then analyze the causes of these diseases. This discussion involves a critical dissection of transnational corporations and their impact on US society and the world at large. It also includes a brief analysis of the now defunct communist system relating to pollution and ecological damage.
I am trained as a physician, and my approach to problems is thus always medical. I have therefore arranged this book using the criteria one would use to diagnose and adequately treat a patient:
The first two years of medical school, devoted to the study of basic biological sciences, are often difficult, because a tremendous amount of information must be absorbed. But they are essential to the production of well-rounded clinicians who can practice the art and science of medicine. Similarly, the first six chapters of this book are packed with basic facts about the demise of our planet, but we must have these facts at our command in order to be adequately equipped to save the Earth. As I have already said, I have a great regard for the United States and its people. I admire their resilience, creativity, and largesse. What follows in this book may strike some readers as harsh and overly critical. Yet I write out of love—and concern—for the United States and for the planet.
Students at a college in Napa Valley recently asked me, “What do you think of American people?” Having never encountered that question before in public, I searched for an honest and responsible reply. I had to say that Americans are the kindest and most caring people on Earth. They desperately want to do the right thing, but they are just not sure what that is. Is it to fight a war in the Persian Gulf and support George Bush and feel patriotic? Or is it to care for the homeless and address the domestic issues of racism and economic inequality? Or is it to save the planet?
There are no easy answers to these questions, but I will attempt to find some in this book. Let’s not be afraid to look at our own society in a critical fashion, because from a caring and rigorous analysis, we will fashion a cure for the dying Earth.
If you love your country enough to cure its ills, you will be able to love and cure this planet.
With minor recent revisions, these were my optimistic words in 1991. Since that time, following the election of George Herbert Walker Bush and the first Gulf War, eight years of President Bill Clinton, and another eight years of President George W. Bush, many things have changed.
Unfortunately for the world, these presidents, their staff (excluding Vice President Al Gore), their cabinets, and the Congress were so preoccupied with the events of the day that they paid little attention to the steady beat of ominous ecological predictions emanating from the scientific literature or indeed from the first edition of this book—global warming, melting glaciers and polar ice caps, steadily rising sea levels, devastating hurricanes and cyclones, frequent and massive flooding, debilitating droughts, over a hundred million people facing starvation, extinction of many of the world’s species and forests, and the onward surge of human population density.
Finally, the world can no longer ignore global warming, for it is upon us. But the solutions to this seemingly insoluble problem are at hand and will be presented in this book. They are simple, relatively cheap, and readily available. The main impediment to their implementation is the ominous and ubiquitous control of our politicians by great and powerful corporations, their money, and their lobbyists. When the politicians decide, or are finally forced, to really represent their constituents, then salvation from these human-made dilemmas can and will be attained.