Given the MMJ’s unwavering commitment to upholding industrial responsibility to and for the environment, we cannot let go unnoticed the death in March, when our last issue was almost ready to be published, of American chemist F. Sherwood Rowland, even if his career and courage had no direct links with mining. Rowland would have remained one among the many Nobel Prize winners whose research had important implications for life on Earth but he went beyond them and became a scientific hero by displaying the commitment and energy to fight for global action to rescue the planet from impending disaster.
It all started in 1974 when Rowland, then in his mid-40s, realised in his laboratory at the University of California that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFS – then a common ingredient in air conditioners and refrigerators, aerosol sprays and many consumer products – would destroy the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, which protects Earth from the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation, unless their release was quickly phased out. He was so worried that he started campaigning for a ban on the industrial production of CFCs as soon as the journal Nature published his study.
The developed world was a consumers’ paradise in the 1970s, and CFCs played a role in expanding the frontiers of that paradise. These compounds of carbon, fluorine and chlorine were prized by industry because they were extremely inert chemicals with excellent physical properties, and were used in everything from deodorants to refrigerators. What Rowland and his postdoctoral student Mario Molina had found, to their shock and dismay, was that, although CFCs are sufficiently stable to survive in the atmosphere for decades, when they do react the results could be catastrophic.
In the stratosphere 12 to 30 miles above Earth ultraviolet light does occasionally break down a CFC molecule. This starts a chemical chain reaction in which a single CFC can destroy as many as 100,000 of the ozone molecules that absorb most of the ultraviolet radiation before it can reach the ground.
As Rowland began his campaign against CFCs, even some of his fellow academics felt he was pushing his results too far. And the chemical industry fought fiercely against him. These were also the worst days of the cold war and an article in the trade magazine Aerosol Age speculated without much finesse that he was a KGB agent out to destroy capitalism.
These days mining practices in the Mongolian Gobi are debated and discussed in South America and Australia, and complaints against alleged environmental malpractices by companies working in Mongolia can be lodged at the Government level in North America, but four decades ago, it took time for activists to get their act together. But his message spread and became loud enough in the early 1980s for politicians to wonder if and CFCs could be phased out. The catalyst that forced their hand was a report from the British Antarctic Survey in 1985 that it had observed an “ozone hole” over the South Pole. The scientific evidence was now irrefutable: CFCs were already destroying atmospheric ozone.
The Montreal Protocol was issued in 1987. The international treaty prescribed a progressive ban on CFCs. The chemical industry quickly developed ozone-friendly alternatives for refrigeration, aerosols and other CFC applications – and nature is repairing the upper atmosphere.
Rowland set out his philosophy in a series of questions at a seminar on climate change in 1997: “Is it enough for a scientist simply to publish a paper? Isn’t it a responsibility of scientists, if you believe that you have found something that can affect the environment . . . to actually do something about it . . . so that action actually takes place?” he asked.
It is not a question just for scientists. All of us should ponder where our responsibility lies in the face of clear evidence that whatever short-term justifications they may have, much in our development paradigm is unsustainable.
… and another who is expected to do so
President Obama’s surprise and inspired nomination of Jim Yong Kim for the presidency of the World Bank has taken some of the sting out of the nasty anachronism of the “wink-wink” succession rule whereby Europeans get to choose who heads the International Monetary Fund and the US picks the president of the World Bank. However, it will not allay the widespread resentment at the monopolistic privilege that allows such important positions to be filled on the basis of nationality, and not merit.
Tainted as his nomination is when seen from that angle, Kim’s qualifications for the “world’s top development job” are quite comprehensive, though not universally convincing. They range from academic expertise in medicine and anthropology to hands-on work on healthcare delivery in developing countries. He is known to think outside the box and flits easily from development and public health to trade and economics.
Other names are being suggested and much will be said of Kim’s perceived shortcomings and of how others are expected to be more adroit in re-tooling global and national finances for development, food price volatility, filling the massive infrastructure gap, global climate change etc. but an intriguing aspect has been introduced to the inevitable debate by what Kim said in Dying for Growth, a book he co-edited and co-authored in 2002, which was vocal about the inequality in health outcomes resulting from uneven patterns of economic growth.
Some see the book as putting too great a focus on health policy over broader economic growth, but while that is a position that can evolve as an author’s perspective changes, there is considerable dismay among traditionalists that the book at places openly criticises “neoliberalism” and “corporate-led economic growth”, arguing that in many cases they have made the middle classes and the poor in developing countries worse off. A New York University professor of economics, William Easterly, has said, “Dr Kim would be the first World Bank president ever who seems to be anti-growth. Even the severest of World Bank critics like me think that economic growth is what we want.”
In the introduction, Kim and two other co-authors, say, quite unequivocally, “The studies in this book present evidence that the quest for growth in GDP and corporate profits has in fact worsened the lives of millions of women and men.” His supporters explain that the avowal should be taken in context, and that the authors were actually saying only that the distribution of gains from economic growth decides whether it makes life better for the poorest. Joyce Millen, one of the co-editors and a professor of anthropology, has assured a newspaper that Kim “fully understands” the need for economic growth. “What we have said in the book is that economic growth, in and of itself, is insufficient and will not automatically lead to a better life for everyone.”
This may very well be, but I cannot help feeling how much better it would be if Kim asserted that he did mean just what he wrote, and that the hype about globalization and liberalization should be reassessed. To me, that would bolster his claim to lead the World Bank into being a bank for the whole world, and to ensure that North, South, East or West, donors and recipients all see themselves as partners in developing a new bank for a new world.
Given the MMJ’s unwavering commitment to upholding industrial responsibility to and for the environment, we cannot let go unnoticed the death in March, when our last issue was almost ready to be published, of American chemist F. Sherwood Rowland, even if his career and courage had no direct links with mining. Rowland would have remained one among the many Nobel Prize winners whose research had important implications for life on Earth but he went beyond them and became a scientific hero by displaying the commitment and energy to fight for global action to rescue the planet from impending disaster.