Paradigm shift needed

One characteristic of the post-World War II era was cheery optimism about the potential for solving problems with synthetic chemicals. Perhaps the best example was DDT, which was going to rid the world of insect-borne disease. Look how well that turned out.

Spraying DDT over Oregon forest, 1955

    In the fifties and sixties, we all tended to trust safety and effectiveness claims for household and garden chemicals. Synthetic fertilizer was going to make soil stewardship irrelevant by spreading unlimited quantities of the basic plant nutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. We learned that doing this destroys soil fertility while causing dead lakes and rivers as fertilizer runs off fields and lawns into nearby waterways.

Fertilizer runoff causing algae overgrowth and eutrophication

    There was 2,4-D, invented as a defoliant during the war and brought home as Scotts Weed and Feed to eliminate broad-leaved weeds from American lawns. 

     Imagine what would have happened if Scotts had brought home Agent Orange from the Vietnam War—by then, public attitudes toward war materials had shifted significantly. Since the 1940s, 2,4-D has taken us down a path toward increasing insistence on monocultural lawns, with all the water and chemical inputs necessary to maintain them.

Grass doesn't grow this way naturally

    The 1970s brought Roundup (glyphosate), marketed by Monsanto as a benign product to spare us the trouble of bending down to pull weeds. 

Roundup is ubiquitious

By the 1980s, genetically engineered “Roundup-ready” crops resistant to the herbicide enabled spraying this product on agricultural fields. Farmers took up the practice on a massive scale. As a result, we’re all eating Roundup, which a United Nations agency has declared a probable human carcinogen, a hormone disruptor, and a contributor to antibiotic resistance.

    Neonicotinoid pesticides, my garden nemesis, are the next in this series of chemicals first thought to be harmless. From the 1960s to the 1990s, the most commonly used pesticides were organophosphates, which had high toxicity for humans, other mammals, and birds. Neonics are safer for the people applying them, and since the nineties they have dominated the market, used for treating both seeds and growing plants. 

     Now we know that neonics are very persistent in plant tissues and toxic to many insects, including honeybees and other pollinators. 

Neonics poison pollinators

I recently learned that some insects have already developed resistance to neonics. That’s the predictable result of widespread use of any pesticide, analogous to development of antibiotic resistance in treated bacteria.

    Maybe we can stop thinking about living systems in such simplistic ways. Instead of charging in with blunt instruments like herbicides and pesticides, we need to think about what keeps natural systems in balance. Diverse populations and healthy growing conditions help plants to weather the onslaught of pests and diseases. Every organism has its place in a natural community.

Biodiversity protects plant health

    Insect populations are dropping worldwide. We need insects if we’re going to continue living on earth. Times have changed since the fifties. We’ve stopped watching TV Westerns. Let’s also stop thinking of plants and insects as good guys versus bad guys.

The endangered EPA

It’s been a big week for climate change deniers and polluters. First Scott Pruitt, the new leader of the Environmental Protection Agency, opined that carbon dioxide from human activity isn’t causing global warming. Then Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz sponsored a bill to eliminate the EPA altogether. Meanwhile, the Trump administration proposes to cut EPA funding by 25 percent.

    Where would we be if the EPA hadn’t been at work since 1970? Without it, gardens would be in poor shape for so many reasons.

As spring flowers open, I'm grateful to the EPA for protecting the garden environment

    Remember acid rain? Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from Midwest power plants used to drift eastward, damaging northeastern forests. The big oak tree that anchors my garden would likely have succumbed to this toxic mix, along with many of its fellows. Instead, thanks to air pollution standards, New England forests rebounded. 

    Back when America was “great,” lead from gasoline routinely accumulated in garden soil. Our lot is small; no part of it is far from roads and car exhaust. If it weren’t for the EPA’s phase-out of leaded gas, we might not be able to eat vegetables from our own yard without risking brain damage from lead poisoning.

With lead in soil from exhaust, we'd have to skip the home-grown tomatoes

    I can thank the EPA for keeping me in shape to garden. Mental health used to be a smoky job, with many of our patients chain-smoking. EPA insisted on the link between secondhand smoke and cancer, lung and heart disease. Clinical encounters are now smoke-free. If I’d breathed secondhand smoke for 40 years, would I still be able to wield a shovel or a rake?

    The EPA has banned or restricted toxic chemicals we formerly used in our landscapes, starting with DDT. In 1972, many bird populations were dangerously low, poisoned by DDT as it concentrated up the food chain. Now bald eagles are back, and healthy native birds visit my yard.

Bald eagles chicks, safe without DDT

    Businesses chafe at EPA regulations that prevent them from exploiting our natural resources and sticking the rest of us with the externalized costs in money, health, and environmental damage. That seems to be the motivation for Pruitt’s long career of suing the EPA and his current mission to destroy it.

     Now more than ever, we need the government scientists who’ve been supplying the data on climate change that the Trump team plans to ignore or shred. I can only imagine how sad and infuriating it would be to see your life’s work heading for the electronic recycle bin.

Berkeley data hack saving NASA and DOE research--photo by Jamie Lyons

Because of that data and much more from climate scientists around the world, the previous administration forged ahead on regulations like the Clean Power Plan, which restricted carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, directing us toward renewable energy sources. 

     If climate change continues to accelerate, gardeners can expect more extreme weather and increases in flooding and drought. For the sake of our gardens and our life on Earth, I hope we’ll benefit from the EPA’s protection for many years to come.