The Uses of Ecology: Lake Washington and Beyond.

• Author: Carlough, Leslie A.

Perspectives vary on how environmental science should be integrated into law and public policy. This Review considers the perspectives of a scientist and a policy maker. While both agree that scientists should become more involved in the education of the public and decision makers, they differ on how this should be accomplished. Edmondson advocates scientific vigilance to environmental problems and ad hoc, event-specific solutions to them. Caldwell maintains that science is fueling a radical reorientation of social perspectives and objectives that will form the policies of our post-modern world. The authors agree that the future is uncertain and will be determined by how we address major environmental challenges of the present.

1. INTRODUCTION

   The environmental movement has fueled widespread public interest in the scientific bases of environmental problems.(1) This popular interest, in turn, has been translated into a multitude of state and federal legislative efforts to clean up, protect, and conserve the environment and its resources. Agencies implement most of these statutes through rules based on scientific advances and technologies.(2)

   Some technologies are widely accepted for the purpose of fashioning simple and useful standards to guide individual behavior. For example, new methods of chemical analysis led to effluent and water quality standards used in controlling the dumping of pollutants into the nation's rivers. However, some technologies have raised questions about environmental problems, or have suggested solutions of debatable effectiveness that are not easily implemented. For example, scientific experiments have suggested that human combustion of organic materials may indirectly lead to the global greenhouse effect and warming.(3)

   In forming decisions about environmental policy, many agencies must consider easily applied scientific findings as well as those that are more difficult to apply.(4) But critics often question the adequacy of the government's consideration of prospective scientific theory, and reports that governmental decisions are often based more on special financial interests than on environmental considerations are nearly cliche. While most agree that policy makers should make better use of science, perspectives vary on how science and policy could be better integrated.

   This Review examines the views of two authors. Section II considers The Uses of Ecology: Lake Washington and Beyond, by W.T. Edmondson.(5) Professor Edmondson is well-known for his pioneering research on lake ecosystems and his involvement in public education regarding environmental problems. Section III reviews Between Two Worlds: Science, the Environmental Movement, and Policy Choice, by Lynton Keith Caldwell.(6) Professor Caldwell has been heavily involved in the political side of the environmental movement for several decades and was a driving force behind enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970.(7) Section IV compares the perspectives of the two authors, finding that, while the authors' views differ concerning how to integrate science into law and policy and how the policies themselves should be implemented, they agree that major problems such as global human population growth must be confronted if there is to be hope for the future of our environment.

2. THE USES OF ECOLOGY: A SCIENTIST'S PERSPECTIVE

   Edmondson uses his experiences as a scientist on Lake Washington to answer the question: "What can an ivory-tower, egghead ecologist do to help the people understand and solve problems of environmental deterioration?"(8) In Part 1 of the book, Professor Edmondson recounts his experiences as a limnologist working on Lake Washington and his involvement in a campaign to clean up the lake. The story began in 1955 when coworkers in Edmondson's lab found an abundant concentration of the blue-green algae, Oscillatoria rubescens, in a water sample from the lake. This is the same species that heralded a sewage-related eutrophication, fouling of the water, and loss of fisheries in Switzerland's Lake Zurich at the turn of the century.(9) The abundance of this indicator species in Lake Washington implied that the water was on the verge of precipitous deterioration. Although, at the time of the discovery, the quality of Lake Washington's water was still acceptable,(10) concern that the quality would further deteriorate from over-use by the growing population led the City of Seattle to appoint a committee to study the problem.(11) The committee, with Edmondson as unofficial science advisor, eventually stopped the deterioration by diverting sewage through improved primary and secondary sewage treatment plants that emptied into Puget Sound rather than the lake.(12) If Seattle had not taken action, the lake would likely have become murky and foul smelling. However, within several years of the diversion, the lake showed significant improvement. Today it is clear and widely used for recreation.(13) While Seattle's solution sounds easy, it involved lobbying for a special state Metro Enabling Act(14) that, after a public vote, allowed several Seattle suburbs and local communities to work together on a solution, funded by various agencies administrating on several levels and working under a special regional agency.(15)

   The importance of the story is that the local public reacted to predicted environmental damage and implemented preemptive solutions before the problem became unmanageably bad. Knowing when enough information is available to warrant action based on scientific predictions is difficult.(16) However, Edmondson is satisfied that, given an adequate scientific hearing, the public, through the political process, will choose the proper course of action.(17)

   Part 2 applies the ecological principles and ideas learned in Part 1 to problems in Puget Sound, Mono Lake, the Panama Canal, and the global atmosphere. Edmondson also discusses ecology in the context of the phosphorus detergent controversy of the 1970s to demonstrate the types of conflicts that can occur between economic interests and environmental interests. Essentially, the problems arise when one party takes an action that benefits itself, while at the same time causing a detriment to another without giving the other a compensatory benefit.(18) In the detergent controversy, the industry's continued use of high-phosphorus detergents benefitted the industry through profits(19) (and consumers through cleaner clothes because more powerful cleaners had not yet been developed), but the added nutrients stimulated vegetative and microbial growth, choking the nation's waterways at a cost to everyone.

   Edmondson recounts how, in the context of the phosphorus problems of the 1970s--as well as the tobacco smoke and acid rain problems of today--the industry defended its interests by attempting to discredit scientific studies that suggested its products or procedures were environmentally unsafe. Industrial opponents often have similar reactions to such studies(20) and use the same tactics, including creative misinterpretation or omission of relevant data or statistics, focus on irrelevant information,(21) and attacks on opposing scientists' credibility.(22) While these may be good strategical moves in the legal game, they are inappropriate and frustrating to a scientist who is trying to evaluate and present evidence in an objective manner.(23) These distracting arguments also interfere with the efficient transfer of information to the public and to decision makers.

   Part 3 reviews several long-term study sites, stressing that long-term ecological research is needed to detect and avoid environmental problems. Many ecological processes and environmental problems occur over an extended period that short-term studies can not evaluate, and the answers to many questions related to quicker-paced processes and environmental problems depend on having a record of prior conditions.(24)

   Edmondson draws a bright line between long-term studies that answer a series of questions concerning one ecological system and studies that take a long time to answer a single question. The former studies are more easily funded because they generate tangible results in the short run, but the latter are needed to detect changes in systems that occur over long time scales. Edmondson is careful to note that, in his opinion, long-term research does not mean merely the sustained monitoring of environmental parameters; it means research about various facets of a single system over time.(25) The value of accumulated data sets from various studies concerning one system is worth more than the sum of the separate studies because a scientist looking for answers to unpredicted results in one project can examine data collected in another project on the same system.

   The value of research is an important issue in today's politics. Research is expensive and there is no consensus on how the government should distribute its limited research dollars or how it can get the highest value out of those dollars. Currently, most granting systems rely on the ingenuity of individual researchers, and award grants to unsolicited proposals within areas of study designated by the grantor based on a system of critical and anonymous peer review. Competition is keen among researchers vying for the few government dollars, and very few proposals are actually funded.(26)

   Environmental and other civilian researchers hoped that the end of the Cold War and the down-scaling of the military budget would relieve some of the competition pressure by freeing up research money.(27) Instead, Congress has expressed a desire to reevaluate the role that research plays in achieving national policy goals, and has threatened to exert more control in setting research priorities.(28) As Edmondson describes, this is not a new idea. The National Science Foundation used a similar granting system when it solicited grant proposals to examine...