PULSE:NEWS&OPINION :: AUGUST 04, 2004

Environmental laws will never be enough

“The ecosystem concept recognizes that you are new, yet not new. The molecules in your body have been parts of other organisms and will travel to other destinations in the future. Right now, in your lungs, there is likely to be at least one molecule from the breath of every adult human being who has lived in the past 3,000 years; the air around you will be used tomorrow by deer, lake trout, mosquitoes and maple trees.”

— “Managing the Great Lakes Basin as Home,” 1986

One of the joys of writing a book is meeting and listening to the reactions of readers. For the last three months, I’ve been roaming Michigan independent bookstores, meeting fellow citizens passionate about protecting the Great Lakes that surround us. There’s more wisdom in them than there is in my book — but there’s also reason for alarm about the future of the Lakes.

On the one hand, a consciousness of the beauty, majesty and fragility of the Lakes, which contain 18 percent of the world’s surface freshwater, has taken hold. A longtime friend, Libby Harris of the East Michigan Environmental Action Council, offered one of the wisest aphorisms. “We think of the Lakes as vast and us as vulnerable,” she told me. “But it’s really we who are vast, and the Lakes that are vulnerable.”

There’s reason, too, to be hopeful when you meet an activist like Darlene DeHudy of Grand Haven, who is fighting an industry proposal to ram a pollution discharge pipe through a sand dune and into Lake Michigan. DeHudy grew up near the lake and says she will always love it. When she moved temporarily to Grand Rapids, she said, she couldn’t stand being away from the great water. The air and water inland were different, she said.

Lake Michigan “truly is one of my best friends,” she added. “How could I not stand up for it?”

On the other hand, there’s the obviously intelligent woman I met on a nature hike. “Until I read your book,” she said in disappointment, “I thought the government was protecting the Great Lakes.”

Think about that. In a country born of resistance to tyrannical authority, in a time as cynical as any in ages, even well-educated, concerned citizens assume local, state and federal officials are doing the job of conserving the Lakes. Meanwhile chemical threats proliferate, sewage overflows persist, a new alien species arrives in the Lakes every six months on average, climate change could lower the level of Lakes Huron and Michigan five feet this century, water bottlers and thirsty regions of the U.S. covet our water, and coastal wetlands are under attack. How can this gap between public assumptions and government realities exist?

The answer: easily.

Somehow, the environmental movement, and perhaps others descended from the rich citizen activism of the 1960s, has gone awry. When Michigan became the first state in the nation to ban most uses of DDT in 1969, it was the result of almost a decade of persistent, forceful, well-informed and sometimes angry action by volunteers. When Michigan became the first industrial state to slap a deposit on beer and soda containers in 1976, it was because volunteers gathered over 300,000 signatures in record time to place the issue on the ballot.

Now citizens often leave action to others — the so-called professionals. By writing an annual membership check to an environmental group or separating their recyclables at home and turning them over to collectors, they think they’re doing enough. Instead, the green groups may inadvertently be enablers, giving citizens the belief that someone else is taking care of the environment for them and they need not fight for new laws or more conscientious public officials.

But there’s an even deeper problem. Can we ever pass enough laws to protect our home, the Great Lakes? Is a tougher Clean Water Act or Wetland Protection Act — even long-overdue controls on alien species in the ballast water of oceangoing vessels that enter the Lakes — going to do the job?

Probably not. These laws are necessary, but far from sufficient to protect the Lakes. Instead — somehow — we’re going to have to change the way we think about and act to protect them. It boils down to basic terminology.

“The notion of environment is like that of house — something external and detached,” said Canadian scientists Jack Christie and Jack Vallentyne in their 1986 paper on ecosystem protection for the Great Lakes. “In contrast, ecosystem implies home — something that we feel part of and see ourselves in even when we are not there. A home has an added spiritual dimension that makes it qualitatively different from a house. It is a happier place because of the caring and sharing relationships among its inhabitants.”

A lot of us, like Darlene DeHudy, think of one of the Great Lakes as our personal friend, and ourselves as part of the community of the Lakes. That’s the best hope for the future of the “sweetwater seas.” Because in the end we won’t foul our own nest, the home of our children and grandchildren, and other living things.

(Dave Dempsey is the policy adviser for the Michigan Environmental Council, a coalition of environmental organizations. His column appears biweekly. If you wish to comment, please see the letters policy on Page 3.)