Culture Change e-Letter
#54
Teresa Heinz Kerry
A First Lady of sustainability?
by Jan Lundberg
For the first time in U.S. history, the White
House may soon be guided by principles of sustainability: the capability of the
ecosystem to accommodate economic activity indefinitely. If John Kerry becomes
president, his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry would push environmental policy
domestically and globally in the direction of lessening threats ignored by the
Bush administration: toxic pollution, global warming, and petroleum dependence.
On February 6 at the University of Tennessee College of Law, Heinz Kerry spoke
with me during and after her address on health and energy-related issues.
(I had spoken there the day before.) This was
just prior to
the Tennessee primary election which John Kerry won. As she spoke in favor of massive
renewable-energy technology investment and the revision of disposal practices to
redirect waste into reusable products, one could have wondered if this was a
re-run of Clinton-Gore posturing for some “green votes.”
The answer is no,
if we consider her long-time interest in toxicology and nonprofit work, as well
as the depth of her understanding of the issues. She gave examples of the threat
of indoor pollution and medical and dietary risks to public health, such as
estrogenic carcinogens. She also displayed knowledge of how research is
manipulated by industry.
“There is no sustainability in the way we think,”
she said. How refreshing to hear such a realization from someone who could be at
the pinnacle of policy formation, after decades of the U.S. frittering away
nature’s health and wealth. An example of reorienting economic priorities
toward sustainability is Heinz Kerry’s “cradle to cradle” approach to
reducing consumer junk that has almost entirely gone directly to landfills:
before counting on recycling and reusing, products must be manufactured with
materials and processes that make it possible to avoid the usual “cradle to
grave” syndrome. She displayed a nontoxic ball of fiber, colored with
vegetable dye, made by a major chemical manufacturer, designed to become a basic
material for an updated consumer product to replace what has already had its use
as a rug.
Heinz Kerry repeatedly mentioned that her husband had gone to four
Kyoto Protocol conferences, more than any other candidate or past major U.S.
politician. This in itself is not sufficient comfort for anyone concerned about
climate change. However, she did not imply that we must give up on nature as we
knew it and adapt to global warming. That approach is what most governments and
their corporate backers advocate, but such a view is rapidly becoming
discredited and untenable by the latest developments in climate science news:
(a) one quarter of all species, approximately, will be extinct or going extinct
by mid century, thanks to human-induced global warming, and (b) the imminent
shut down of the Gulf Stream, due to global warming’s icecap melt and greater
rainfall on the ocean, is setting up the northern hemisphere for a sudden ice
age within a few years.
An ice age for the nations using most of the world’s
oil – straining heating oil supplies that would be diverted from diesel fuel
manufacture, for example – would trigger a global energy crisis. Along with the
fact that world oil extraction is peaking – an historic event triggering for
the world economy such unavoidable supply tightness that it can’t be
alleviated in time to avoid economic collapse – fossil-fueled growth may be in
its last days. Heinz Kerry has no naivete about advocating a completely
renewable-energy economy: She said “we need to keep using fossil fuels and
nuclear.” She says “no more nuclear plants should be built because we
don’t know how to deal with the radioactive waste very well.”
Although Heinz
Kerry has the charm and patience of the best nonpolitician you would want to
spend an evening with, she nevertheless could not sign a petition to
Tennessee’s governor, placed before her by a local activist fighting
mountain-top-removal coal mining. Although there can be no justification for
what this extreme form of extraction does to streams and rivers, Heinz Kerry’s
aides successfully argued on the spot that her signing the petition could be
used by “the right wing.” But a copy of the petition was accepted for her
future possible signing.
Heinz Kerry is a most informative commentator on key
issues relating to our survival as a species. Moreover, she is open to a broad
inclusion of these issues, unlike the funded environmentalist establishment.
Here is how she responded to a question before the audience regarding petroleum:
I asked, “Given problems such as global warming, unending road building that
causes urban sprawl, and overpopulation related to over-dependence on petroleum
for agriculture, would you advocate the formation of citizen petroleum councils?
These would utilize industry expertise to identify threats to sustainability,
and be created on local to international levels to arrive at solutions.”
Her
response was that such an idea was along the lines of what should be
“mandatory education.” She felt that schools, PTAs and churches should be
utilized for such initiatives as citizen petroleum councils, although she
warned, “Americans are busy. They also like to take care of matters when they
feel like it, although they do deal with a crisis once they get going.”
The
importance of dealing with petroleum might justify our temporarily disregarding
some of John Kerry's disappointing political stands: He is gung-ho for huge
Homeland Security funding, and he voted for the Patriot Act and the attack on
Iraq. Perhaps worst of all, his economic agenda may be Clinton-Bush all over
again: he has been pro-NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). But we
should encourage progressive tendencies such as his concern over climate change,
and those of his wife's, and not cut ourselves off from alliances even when
other disagreements may turn out to be unresolvable.
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