Confronting Economic and Social Realities, 1980–1999 167
developing countries is only partly successful,
the environmental after shock will dwarf the
population explosion that preceded it.
Source: A. Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 119, 138-41. B. Edward
O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New
York: Knopf, 1998), p. 280.catastrophic by future generations. Most of
the stress originates directly or indirectly from
a handful of industrialized countries. Their
proven formulas are being eagerly adopted by
the rest of the world. The emulation cannot be
sustained, not with the same levels of consump-
tion and waste. Even if the industrialization of
DOCUMENT 134: Jurgen Schmandt, Hilliard Roderick and Andrew
Morriss on Acid Rain and Friendly Neighbors (1985)The earliest efforts to control industrial waste gases in order to reduce their negative impact involved building
taller smokestacks on factories. These tall stacks did nothing to reduce the amount of waste gases emitted;
they simply spread the pollution farther afield. In the 1950s, scientists began to suspect that certain waste gases
produced by industrial activity, including sulfur and nitrogen oxides, not only harmed the human respiratory
system, but also caused damage to crops and the natural environment when they precipitated out of the air and
settled on people, trees, and other living things. Federal efforts to control the production of the noxious gases
that caused acid precipitation were initiated with the Clean Air Act of 1955 [see Document 93], but at the time
the chemistry and mechanics of acid rain were not well understood. The National Acid Precipitation Assessment
Program (NAPAP) was created in 1980 to provide data about the processes leading to acid precipitation and to
evaluate its impact.
During these years, Canada began to complain that acid rain resulting from industrial activity in the central
United States was destroying forests in Canada. Eventually it became clear that bilateral cooperation would be
necessary if measures to reduce acid rain were to prove effective.
Jurgen Schmandt, an environmental policy analyst, and his colleagues offered a model for dealing with
complex multinational environmental problems like acid rain, emphasizing that appropriate action must be
taken on the national level in order for international environmental agreements to produce desired changes.
In the United States the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, with their cap-and-trade approach to emissions
[see Document 143], proved a very effective way of fulfilling its agreement with Canada to control acid rain.All current initiatives [concerning acid
rain]—in the United States, Canada, and
Europe—have in common that they focus on
one or two major pollutants (SO 2 and NOx)
and attempt to control acid rain under exist-
ing air pollution statutes. The existing policies
were designed to control local air pollution.
The proposed controls thus do not consider the
fact that much of the danger of acid rain (for
example, the damage to soils or drinking water)
may result from the interaction of SO 2 and NOx
with toxic pollutants, and from complex chemi-
cal processes that occur during the long-range
transport of the pollutants. All governments, in
our view, need to broaden their view of acid rain
and recognize the issue for what it is: a problem
of unprecedented complexity, with many aspects
that are not yet understood, with little precedent
to guide action, and with powerful economic
interests that see their livelihoods threatened. If
that much is agreed upon, it becomes clear that
what is needed is more than an expanded version
of the current Clean Air Acts in Canada and the
United States.
In the process of developing policy, it will
help to increase the dialogue between policy-
makers and representatives of different inter-
ests. Canada and the United States share their
environment. National policy in each country
affects the other. Informal dialogue offers the
opportunity for each nation to make its ideas
and concerns known without the constraints