By Scott Harper
Today is Earth Day, the 41st anniversary of the unofficial start of the American environmental movement, a time when many roll up their sleeves and plant trees or clean up streams, or simply reflect on the state of the planet.
With the latter in mind, The Virginian-Pilot asked 16 local scientists two basic but pertinent questions:
- What is the most underrated environmental problem facing the world today?
- And, which is the most overrated?
While no real consensus emerged, the scientists - from Old Dominion University, Norfolk State University, Virginia Wesleyan College and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science - made some intriguing, and sometimes surprising, observations.
The two problems seen as the most underrated were overpopulation and rising sea levels related to climate change.
Speaking of the globe's current 6.7 billion head count, Jens Bischof, an ODU geologist, wrote in an email: "Of these people, most live in abject poverty, and about 1 billion every day go without adequate amounts of food or drinkable water."
Bischof, a native of Germany, studies ice patterns in the Arctic.
"As a bumper sticker in Germany said long ago: We
are treating this planet as if we had another one in the trunk compartment," he said. "That's our main problem. In fact, it's the only one."
Rising seas are especially relevant to Hampton Roads since the region has long been considered the second-most vulnerable metropolitan area in the country, behind only New Orleans.
More than half the scientists who replied to the questionnaire mentioned rising sea levels as the most important problem facing coastal Virginia.
"Sea level rise for us here in Hampton Roads is the most serious, as it is going to affect this community slowly but surely," said Larry Atkinson, an ODU oceanographer.
Some scientists were reluctant to talk about overrated issues, worried about stirring a controversy. Of those who did respond, a common theme became clear: Most thought the continuing political debate over global warming - and about a distrust of science in general - is especially wasteful.
Poornima Madhava, a psychology professor at ODU who is studying public perceptions of sea level rise, put it this way:
"The most overrated problem is the never-ending political debate about whether climate change is 'real' or a 'myth,' " she said. "The truth is, it doesn't matter anymore! Whether sea level rise happened due to 'natural' causes or whether it's human-induced is no longer relevant.
"Regardless of causes, it's happening! - the 'why' is no longer as important as the 'what to do' to help the public deal with it."
Some scientists said there are no overrated environmental problems, that all are worthy of media attention and funding. One said oyster restoration in the Chesapeake Bay gets far too much attention and might not even be working. Another, Emmett Duffy, said curbside recycling, while valuable, has become too important in public opinion.
"What I mean is that it's easy to fixate on individual bottles and cans and think we're saving the world, which often distracts us from what we really need to do," said Duffy, a professor of marine science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, a branch of the College of William and Mary.
To Duffy, the most underrated problem is "virtual reality."
"Kids especially are increasingly divorced from nature," he wrote in an email. "Many can name more Pokemon characters than animals."
He then took the argument deeper.
"Estrangement breeds apathy and even fear. Isolation from the outdoors withers the love and appreciation of nature that are fundamental to preserving a healthy relationship between people and our larger home."
Lytton Musselman, a botanist at ODU, still remembers the first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970. He had just written an article about how American prairies were being lost to human encroachment, and recalled the marvel at the numerous protests and events on college campuses nationwide that year.
Musselman said the "scariest" issue to him today is the reduction of potable water at a time of increasing global population. Yet, he added, there seems no end in sight to the dumping of contaminants into public waterways.
Camellia Moses Okpodu, a biologist and director of the Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence at Norfolk State, said potable water is the most underrated - and potentially explosive - issue in the near future.
"I think that as India, the Middle East and China become more industrialized and populated, a water shortage will become a global issue," she wrote in an email.
Okpodu said global warming receives a huge amount of intellectual energy and money, and perhaps rightfully so, but "I am concerned that we are not giving enough attention to clean air and water."
ODU's Musselman declined to pick an overrated problem, but said the most underrated continues to be the one he wrote about 41 years ago today - the "fragmentation of our environment."
"People are moving into these new developments to appreciate the very things in nature that the developments are destroying," he said. "We still have that frontier mentality, a this-is-mine attitude."
H. Alan Rowe, chairman of the chemistry department at Norfolk State, said the most underrated problem is the lack of safe and secure management of nuclear wastes.
Sixty-one sites across the country hold the radioactive wastes they generate, including nuclear power plants in Virginia, without any clue of a permanent storage facility, he said.
Elizabeth Malcolm, an associate professor of ocean and atmospheric sciences at Virginia Wesleyan, had a somewhat different take on both questions. She was the only scientist to say environmental injustice is the most underrated problem today and that Hollywood portrayals of ecological disasters are the most overrated and damaging.
"The burdens of environmental problems are not equally distributed, and often, poor and minority communities are most affected," she wrote, also noting that the United States still sends hazardous wastes to Third World nations instead of dealing with them itself.
Malcolm said movies and TV shows often wrongly depict environmental disasters as occurring suddenly and with shocking consequences, such as New York City being covered in ice in the climate-change film "The Day After Tomorrow."
This is not what typically happens - not even close, she wrote.
Environmental change happens gradually, sometimes without notice. To portray it otherwise, Malcolm wrote, leads to public confusion and ignorance of reality.
"But that doesn't mean we can sit back and relax," she wrote. "The impacts of climate change have already started, and predicted impacts are wide-ranging, from increased outbreaks of infectious disease to changes in water availability."
Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com
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