AAAS Briefs

Crosscurrents In Environmentalism The environmental movement is now divided into three parts, Sierra Club Chairman Michael McCloskey told participants at a symposium on "two decades of environmentalism." And science may be, in part, to blame for the split. Once a fairly coherent campaign, with different groups adopting similar strategies, environmentalists have gone their separate ways as the movement gains steam. In one camp are such mainstream groups as the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, and the National Wildlife Federation, who argue for the use of government regulations to clean up the environment. A second faction, including the Environmental Defense Fund, the Conservation Foundation, and the Nature Conservancy, depend more heavily on market mechanisms as a means to promote change. Finally, radical groups such as Greenpeace and Earth! First have become both confrontational and controversial in their fight for a cleaner environment. This splintering has occurred in part because of the intractable nature of so many environmental problems, along with the perception that the mainstream organizations have become complacent and too conservative. And scientists, while busy collecting data to document the problem, have yet to come up with workable solutions to these global crises. In addition, the pace of government regulation is too slow for many activists. "There's a thousand and one ambush points," says McCloskey. "It's disempowering to the public." Cutting Right To The Point The issue of climate change and the rate of global warming has emerged as the latest ideological battleground in science. In fact, the disagreement has become sharp enough to disrupt even a mild-mannered and largely theoretical discussion about the extent of our uncertainty on the subject. After listening quietly to such prominent "liberal" panelists as the University of California, San Diego's, Roger Revelle and Norman Rosenberg of Resources for the Future discuss the importance of conservation to reverse the steady rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, Lawrence Livermore physicist Gregory Canavan decided that he'd heard enough. "I just want to see if I understand what you're saying," began the SDI scientist, rising from his chair with a gleam in his eye. "Aren't you really saying that, if we want to reduce CO2, all we really need to do is take a chain saw and cut down all the trees in our backyards?" Panel member Joe Edmonds, an economist at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory, conceded that Canavan was right in saying that planting billions of trees to soak up the excess carbon dioxide and then burning the trees for fuel doesn't solve the problem. And Edmonds admitted that burying the biomass was one long-term way to remove carbon dioxide from the system. But he wasn't quite ready to accept Canavan's next point - that "encrypting" the trees was, in fact, just another way to "make an artificial ocean." And it was clear from the murmurs in the audience that the immediate cause of increased atmospheric temperatures was not humanity's growing use of fossil fuels; rather, it was a war of words between proponents on opposite sides of a very inflammatory issue. Biogeographic Maps Need Revision Most of the world's biogeographical maps are misleading because they ignore the diversity in the oceans, says G. Carleton Ray, research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia. Whereas colors on the continents divide land according to distinct distributions of plants and animals, too often oceans appear on maps in a uniform blue. But Ray points out that distinct biotic provinces do exist, especially in the rich waters along coasts. And knowing more about the boundaries of these regions can help us to understand the biodiversity of oceans, he says. Scientists once thought that these provinces would be defined by the physical characteristics of the ocean. But Carleton's work in the Bering Sea indicates that the situation is more complex. Looking at the distributions of 86 species, ranging from invertebrates to birds and mammals, he has found that groups of species can be divided into six distinct assemblages. "It is assumed that the driving forces in the ocean are physical," Carleton explained at a symposium on biodiversity of the oceans, "but none of these assemblages follow the oceanographic interpretations." In other words, the biotic provinces he sees do not coincide with water masses determined by the currents. Physiologic responses of organisms are major factors in determining distributions, he concludes, and must be taken into account as biogeographers redo their maps. Passion, Not Money, Is The Key to Success Neither snow nor airport congestion nor an overnight journey could keep Stephen Jay Gould from speaking at a symposium on the National Science Foundation's graduate fellowship program. Nor would the lack of NSF support have deterred him from examining snails in Bermuda, he told participants. Gould says he financed his graduate study at Columbia University with loans and a $1,800 NSF fellowship and, in contrast to his own graduate students, never thought about funding. "It gave me what I needed - the freedom to learn to be a scholar and not a potentate," he says. In looking for a common trait in great evolutionary biologists, the Harvard professor and author says he has found just one: passion - a fire in their bellies to pursue their scientific inquiries. "They loved what they were doing." He, too, has that fire, and says he would have studied snails in Bermuda no matter what. But he admits that intellectuals like Darwin had something most modern scientists lack: time to think. Students today seem obsessed with getting grants. "I wish we could protect graduate students from this rat race," says Gould. A younger copanelist agrees. "A lot of people think you have to be a little crazy to get into science these days, especially academic science," says Robert Hanson, a professor at Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. Like Gould, Hanson was an NSF fellow. But unlike Gould, who knew at the age of five that he wanted to study paleontology, Hanson's interest in science crystallized only after he attended an NSF summer science training program. After stellar training as a research scientist, Hanson has decided that his passion for science involves teaching as much as research and so has settled down at a small liberal arts college, where he intends to pass on that passion to his students.

AAAS Briefs

The Scientist Staff

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of