The Making of a Conservative Environmentalist

Rating:
Summary: The Education of Gordon K-
Review: Politicians tend not to be problem-solvers. This becomes especially obvious in practical matters like the environment, where private citizens are motivated less by political philosophy than by the desire to clean up a local river, to cure a sick relative, or to reduce the pollution from a local factory.

Gordon Durnil's book is about the tensions between his role as a problem-solver and the Kafkaesque operations of government which usually have little to do with solving problems. A lawyer from Indiana and former Republican State Chairman, Durnil was appointed to an international commission to investigate toxic substances in the Great Lakes region. Of particular concern was the growing evidence that persistent toxic substances were having a dire effect on human health, as demonstrated by increases in cancer, reproductive problems, and in children, learning disabilities and immune deficiencies.

Durnil spent most of his time going to meetings and writing reports. He interviewed scientists from the U.S. and Canada from industry, government, environmental groups, and academia. Although it appears that one of the purposes of the commission was to figure out its purpose, Durnil believed that the commission functioned best as a catalyst for action by gathering these groups together, trying to get them to listen to each other, and then releasing information to the public. More specifically, he found sufficient evidence that the commission ought to do what it could to eliminate toxic substances from the region.

The reader gets taken into this world of government almost as if it were a science fiction novel. There is the strange, legal language of abstractions and acronyms; the tangled web of authority and numerous committees, where responsibility is difficult to locate; the contradictions and illogic of numerous actions and inactions; the exasperation that Durnil felt from trying to negotiate this maze. The incompetence of government might be comic if it didn't have dire consequences. There are numerous obstacles to the truth, which Durnil divides into separate chapters as reactions from government, industry, environmental groups, public, press, and health-care professionals. Sometimes it seems there are nothing but barriers, leaving Durnil with nothing but questions.

One of the more interesting obstacles was the resistance by fellow Republicans. Few were interested in the consistency between conservatism and conservation, the constitutional obligation of government to protect its citizens, or the common-sense desire for clean air and water. On this issue there ought to be nonpartisan consensus. But then that would imply that problem-solving is a high priority among politicians, and politicians tend not to be problem-solvers.