Review, June/July, 1999 Sierra Club Newsletter, Loma Prietan chapter.
by Joanne Lauck

The Piracy of America: Profiteering in the Public Domain edited by long time activist and ecologist Judith Scherff (author of The Mother Earth Handbook) is a series of well-written, eye-opening original essays and book excerpts written by environmentalists, scholars, and religious leaders. Together they document the ways in which corporations combat environmentalism and plunder the public domain. Countless examples confirm that a fixation with profits and a narrow self-interested approach to development by corporation decision-makers profoundly conflicts with the human and democratic rights and interests of the American people in ways that relate to the public good.
The unifying thread throughout the book’s essays, that distinguishes it from other accounts of ecological degradation, is the recognition by many of the contributors that the public domain resources (America’s wildlife, forests, waterways and mineral resources, the air we breathe and our climate) are inextricably tied to our physical and spiritual well being as well as to human justice issues related to the generation, control and apportionment of wealth. In fact, in these pages a recovering sense of our spirituality, breaking through the asphalt of a spirit-denying mechanistic model, becomes the underpinning of the struggle for social and environmental justice.

The framework is set in the foreword where Thomas Berry, author, theologian, and cultural historian, points out with characteristic heart and eloquence that the loss of our forests and wildlife and the pollution of our air, water and soil constitute a loss of soul. For every night, he explains, when the sky is so obscured with artificial light and pollutants that a child can’t see the stars in the heaven, he or she loses the kind of experience that awakens a sense of meaning, beauty, and the sacred. In short, his or her soul life is diminished. In the wake of the Littleton, Colorado tragedy, Berry’s understanding of how a child’s soul life must be awakened and then nourished by the appropriate experiences takes on even greater relevance.
While acknowledging that we all share some of the responsibility for what has happened to the natural world, Berry points out that some people are more adept in exploiting the natural world by a kind of piracy that skirts around regulations and doesn’t recognize any rights but its own.  Consequently, those in command of the corporations have come to wield immense power over both the human community and the natural world. The pillage of public domain resources is made possible in part because corporations influence science, the media, and Congress and compromise their integrity in relation to environmental protection. In short, the current mix of public and corporate policy generates private profit at public cost.
Next, The Very Reverend James Parks Morton invokes the wisdom and spiritual depth of his friend Laurens van der Post and the Bushmen of the Kalahari in a beautiful essay called “The Science of Communion.” Judith Scherff also picks up the numinous thread in her introduction reminding us that religions the world over believe that the earth is a divinely inspired creation and that dominion means “to take care of.” It does not mean ownership, possession, control and destruction of natural resources.  She says, “The collusion of political and corporate manipulation of laws and the abuse of power which denies populations of humans and nonhumans adequate basic resources—while we continue to think of ourselves as a Christian nation and a democracy—is what this collection is about.”  It is also, she adds, an explanation of why environmental issues have become human rights issues.

Besides the inspiration-giving images and words that affirm our interdependence with the natural world and promise to stir us to action, The Piracy of America also brings infinitely practical ideas of combating environmental deterioration. Essays describe new modes of activism including the discovery of hazards and causes of illnesses by lay people, environmental organizing in public services, successful court battles, and new innovations in science and technology.

The book is divided into three sections: Tracking Corporate Greed and Destruction in the Public Domain, How Corporations Combat Environmentalism, and On the Environmentalist Front. In the first section essays by Conger Beasley, Jr., Douglas Trent, Ann Vileisis, and Johanna Walk & Susannah French respectively address the destruction of native species, forests, rivers, and the abuses of current mining practices that are allowed under an outdated mining law passed in 1872.

Also in this section I was happy to see an excerpt from Dr. Sandra Steingraber’s Living Downstream (See Loma Prietan review, Sept. 1998), an important book that links cancer to environmental contamination. In this excerpt Steingraber addresses herbicides and the folly of broadcasting over the landscape chemicals that kill by a variety of different poisoning mechanisms.

The second section begins with an illuminating excerpt from Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle’s Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law and Endangers Your Health (1996). They describe how the nation’s chemical industry pours billions of dollars into our research universities and thereby influences the direction and results of chemical research in this country. It is why, for example, existing product, particularly those that are dangerous to human health and the environment, are so hard to get off the market. But lest you think it all gloom and doom, in this excerpt Fagin and Lavelle also introduce us to a prominent weed scientist from the University of Minnesota who left the pocket of the chemical company that gave him grants after an epiphany in 1993.

Next is an excerpt reprinted from Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (1995) by John Stauber & Sheldon Rampton. This piece will do much to erase the cherished and apparently naive view of the free press as a fierce watchdog of the public interest. It seems that with corporations buying up major and minor news media, what we see and hear is very much subject to what they want us to see and hear.

Glenn P. Sugameli follows with an essay which describes a widespread form of piracy, a kind of extortion that has been legalized where corporations are free to ignore environmental, natural resource, public health, worker safety, zoning, civil rights and other laws unless they are paid to comply. Yet another describes the regressive “wise use” movement and the insurgent right wing.

The final section, my favorite, includes an uplifting essay on citizen science, specifically the discovery of hazards and causes of illness by lay persons who gather data and collaborate with experts. Forest ranger turned forest activist Jeff DeBonis follows with a personal account of how he moved from participating in a conspiracy of silence about destructive forest practices to speaking out against the alliance between the Forest Service and the timber companies. Other essays in this stellar collection address the evolution of our right to a healthy environment, the agriculture of the future, the problem of ecological denial, and our complicity with evil where evil is deceptively ordinary taking the form of simple conformity, complacency, and inattention.

This anthology is a call to pay attention, ask questions, and get involved. There is no mincing around the many issues. We are asked to bring a sharp and discriminating eye to the propaganda around us that tells us that corporations have our best interests in mind and that through them we will realize prosperity and well being. This is not the case nor will ignoring what is happening bring anything but further grief. The good news is that a network of resistance and viable alternatives is growing like weeds throughout the world. Perhaps our job is to find our particular niche, send down a tap root to the wellspring that links us to the web of life and flourish so others might draw inspiration and nourishment from who we are and what we do.