Saving the World From Itself

AMERICANS HAVE JUST begun to discover the damage that decades of careless industry have done to their environment. In Restoring the Earth John Berger tells the story of people who have tried to clean up damaged ecosystems and, if not restore them to their pristine states, at least make them habitable.

Restoring the Earth is not so much a book as a series of in-depth magazine pieces held together by their ecological focus and inspired by an imaginative conclusion and a forward cum benediction from Morris K. Udall. However, what the book lacks in coherent structure, it makes up for with good journalism and an imaginative choice of topics.

If there is a theme to Restoring the Earth, it is the recognition that stopping pollution is no longer enough to ensure a healthy environment for future generations, or even for this one. "This book is about a few Americans who fervently believe a blighted environment is not acceptable and who are optimistic about restoring the Earth ecologically," begins Berger. He then goes on to show, by example, what we can and can not expect from restoration and what sort of initiative and commitment restoration efforts will require.

Some of Berger's stories cover standard topics of environmental abuse: pumping industrial waste straight into rivers until they are opaque with sludge, or a plant's 20 years of illegally disposing of toxic chemicals making groundwater poisonous. In recent years the frequency of such pollution has become all too clear. In Massachusetts alone, there are over a thousand toxic waste dumps that will take the next hundred years to clean up under current laws.

While Berger sings the praises of "resource restorers," his account of environmental problems is neither glib nor blindly optimistic. His desciption of the clean-up of the devastated site of a Hooker Chemical Company plant in Michgan tempers hope for restoring a savaged ecosystem with a realistic sense of what can't be done--of political inertia and of the irreparable harm that has already been done.

AFTER YEARS OF citizen complaints and warnings from the state, Hooker settled out of court in what a state official called one of the "ten most important environmental settlements of recent times." The company agreed to take all chemicals and contaminated soil on the site and contain in a gigantic clay vault larger than 13 football fields and to clean the groundwater through massive pumping and filtering.

The Hooker clean-up was "state-of-the-art," but soon after the vault was sealed more contaminated soil was found and studies discovered that the extensive purge-well system was recovering only half of the polluted groundwater. Hooker was unwilling to spend more on clean-up and the state has been unwilling to sue a second time. And even had the system worked perfectly, could it have permanently contained its load of poisons? Said one community activist, "To the best of my knowledge, there is not one single example of such a vault in the world today which has not leaked sooner or later--and usually more sooner than later."

But Berger does not mean to be a doomsayer. The Hooker clean-up was a limited, if flawed success; it mandated responsibility and reclaimed, if not restored, lost ground. Berger's later chapters describe equally imposing cases of ecological destruction, but also less daunting problems that lead to more perfect reclaimation, and even restoration.

That much of the damage already done to the earth can not be undone is obvious in Berger's accounts of surface mine reclamation--especially in his description of the radioactive gases and dust and groundwater spreading from thousands of abandoned uranium mines in the Southwest. He finds more hope for real rejuvenation where people reclaim land from overuse and physical abuse rather than industrial devastation.

Ray Schulenberg has spent years recreating the communities of natural prairie vegetation that once covered the Midwest. He has gathered seed by hand, replanting, and weeding acre by acre to save these species and their ecosystem from extinction. The prairie grasses--which can rejuvenate over-cultivated land, fight erosion, and provide inexpensive grazing fodder and ground cover--were all but wiped out by intensive agriculture and the introduction of non-native species.

Other resource restorers have rebuilt salt marshes by planting native vegetation and fought to save redwood forests by buying land and replanting damaged stands of trees. While the preservation of redwood forests is an aesthetic, though not unimportant, victory, the reintroduction of salt marshes on the overpopulated and overused Atlantic coast fights erosion, provides a haven for besieged wildlife, and helps remove heavy metals and organic compounds from waters contaminated by industrial waste. The list of restoration activities goes on as Berger's chapters run the gamut of contemporary environmental problems.

BERGER CLEARLY ADMIRES the resource restorers he writes about, and the admiration is merited. These people have struggled long and hard and have rejuvenated ecosystems to show for their efforts. Yet the most noticable weakness in his accounts is a tendency to portray his subjects with overly lavish admiration. His description of one person as "a decisive, heavyset man with keen blue eyes, extraordinary energy, unwavering determination, and intense curiosity about nature" is typical of the adulatory hyperbole that sometimes becomes boring and grates on Berger's otherwise compelling narratives.

The stories in Restoring the Earth are salutory and gripping. Berger's choice of fascinating topics carries him through a long series of disconnected vignettes even when the needlessly idolizes his subjects. While he only begins to explore the scope of the project he has taken as the title of his book, Berger does describe the first steps of a daunting but indispensible task.

The book's conclusion is a brief attempt to draw theoretical lessons from the experiences it recounts. It is entertaining and meaningful when Berger presents a utopian vision of a once decaying and polluted industrial city that has cleaned itself up and now exists in equilibrium with the environment.

While much of the city Berger descibes can be glibly dissmissed as fanciful, his point should be heeded. We must radically alter the way we live and work if we are to stop destroying the earth's natural equilibrium and start being a part of it. Self-contained apartment buildings that run on solar energy, produce food, and recycle their own wastes may not be politically or economically feasible, but they are a standard that can help us move in the right direction. Like the rest of this book, they provide a basis for criticizing current practice.

Berger is the last to expect the sort of perfect restoration in his utopian vision. His book presents hope with a large dose of very guarded expectations. Yet the people he describes have started down the right road. As Congressman Udall declares at the end of his forward: "Their stories are an inspiration and a beginning. What follows is up to us."