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I actually found your response very positive. It seems to me there's a question of both ends and means that we're struggling to elucidate. Let's take the qeustion of advisory groups, boards, task forces etc. I would argue that there is a role for environmentalists on all of these. They should certainly make it clear, internally and externally, what their positions are on the issues to be discused and also how they will deal with attempts to co-opt them or to attribute to them views which they do not support. In my view, the larger question is one of education, both of the players and the public. Within the corporate community certain companies and many employees in all of the companies, are coming to realize that they must use the Precautionary Principle with respect to issues such as Global Warming. As recently as September, the president of BP, which had recently taken over AMOCO, shocked a seminar at Harvard (according to information I was told) by coming out very strongly on the "green" side of the issue. He apparently went as far as to indicate that executives of AMOCO who weren't prepared to work for sharply lowered emissions should resign before they were fired. Now I'm not saying why he took this position. What I am saying is that by serving with industry types one gets a chance to argue with them one on one on particular issues. If you convince them, great. but even if you don't, they've heard the arguments "inside the tent". Of course nothing is as "cut and dried" as that. Your advice to your Montreal friend to stay away from the process was wrong in this case. If (s)he had something important to learn and communicate about the region that the project might influence, we'll never know. Finally, there's this question of money, especially in this region which has a small population and not much money floating about. If people like you friend and I don't get some additional cash we have to leave. All that does is leave the field to others who care less about the problems we're discussing. Sometimes we joke around here about "prostituting" ourselves to lawyers or insurance people or industrial types. In reality, you work symbiotically with these people as you do with the media. In my case, getting $600 a day for a couple of days work this summer makes up for getting $2300 for an entire course. You do the sums--by doing the first I can afford to do the second (THOUGH we're working to increase the course numbers). I may have more on this later. OH ________________________________________________________________ Owen Hertzman E-mail: Owen.Hertzman@Dal.Ca Dept. of Oceanography Phone: (902) 494-3683 Dalhousie University FAX: (902) 494-2885 Halifax, NS CANADA, B3H 4J1
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