Global Environmental Politics Problems, Policy and Practice

Introduction

In 1962, Rachel Carson, an American biologist, published Silent Spring. This book came to have a profound impact on the American environmentalist movement and environmental regulation. Carson was the first to alert us to the human and environmental damage caused by using chemical pesticides in agriculture. Her opening pages set out a ‘fable for tomorrow’ in which once fertile farms became barren, and healthy communities fell ill to unknown diseases. She described ‘a spring without voices’, where silence replaced birdsong. Signs of these maladies were already evident in many American towns. The reason, she argued, was the excessive misuse of chemical pesticides. Less than two years after the book was released, Carson died of breast cancer. The connections between chemical exposure, disease, and pollution are now more widely understood. But at the time Rachel Carson inspired acclaim and disdain in equal measure. The chemical industry went to great lengths to discredit the scientist and her findings. She was depicted as ‘hysterical’, a ‘bird and bunny lover’, and a ‘spinster’ without a PhD (Lear 2002: xvii). Nevertheless, Silent Spring remained on The New York Times bestseller list for several years. Carson wrote for a public audience, describing complex processes in simple, elegant prose that ordinary citizens understood. This helped galvanise public concern and demands for accountability. In the years following her death, the US Congress banned the domestic production of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), a potent chemical marketed widely as a pesticide after World War Two. However, exports of the chemical were not banned. Understanding this inconsistency between domestic environmental concerns and international trade practices is one of the core tasks of this chapter.

In earlier chapters we have examined a number of ways in which states, businesses, and citizens try to respond to environmental problems. The kind of response we examine in this chapter might be called ‘non-action’, NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard), or problem exporting. Each of these terms captures a different element of what we will call ‘problem displacement’. Problem displacement allows privileged groups (often, but not exclusively, rich industrialised countries) to enjoy the material benefits of modernity while casting the negative consequences onto less privileged groups (often, but not exclusively, povertystricken countries).

In this chapter we will first review the chemicals and metals that are central to modern production and industrial development.