THE ENVIRONMENTALIST AND THE BOMB UPDATE: DAVE BROWER

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This is where those of us in the environmental movement can help the disarmament cause, for we've been thinking about planet-sustaining issues for a long time. Currently, many groups are approaching the atomic war issue from different angles, and this is all to the good. The Union of Concerned Scientists has brought its expertise to help scientists and policymakers anticipate the possible consequences of unbridled technology. Physicians for Social Responsibility has made the health disaster of a nuclear war clear to citizens who will believe their doctor, if no one else. The church — at least some of it — is reminding people of the sacredness of life and our moral obligation to preserve it. Now, the environmental movement needs to extend its traditional scope to encompass a nontraditional but transcendent need . . . helping people discover how we can all take care of this planet well enough so that we can afford to wage peace .

This new emphasis doesn't mean that we conservationists should ignore or forget the usual global threats. As Hazel Henderson says, "It's not a question of 'either or' . . . it's 'both'." We have to assume that we'll wipe out the nuclear threat, whereupon we'll still have all the ongoing preservation issues to face. So we have to work on both war and conservation causes at the same time, even if it means putting in a few extra minutes a week for the sake of the planet.

And it's not, as some critics would suggest, cause-hunting "trendiness" that has led many environmentalists to suddenly try to head off atomic war. It's not that we're tired of such ongoing issues as nuclear power, but that we're frightened of nuclear war. That's especially true now that we have a President who can talk about limited nuclear war and say we should sell nuclear technology freely because it's none of our business who has the bomb. The risk of an explosive holocaust has increased since Reagan came to office.

Actually, there's a direct connection between atomic power plants — which Friends of the Earth has been fighting for years — and nuclear weapons. A country that doesn't have atomic generators has no excuse to be making weapons-grade plutonium and uranium. Yet we keep on exporting so much nuclear technology to so many nations — remember, for instance, when Richard Nixon wanted to sell reactors to the Shah of Iran? — that the Stockholm Peace Research Institute has estimated some 40 countries will have the bomb by 1990 . . . making atomic war inevitable.

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