The wall within.

The forests were dead, dying, or sick. Through them ran a tan fence topped with barbed wire and surrounded by a broad noman's land guarded by police dogs, soldiers in watchtowers, and helicopters with men sitting in open side doors, holding guns. That's how I found the forests of Germany's Harz Mountains when I researched An Acid Rain Trilogy," a story that appeared in the November/ December 1987 issue of AMERICAN FORESTS. The Harz forests were declining, apparently because of Waldsterben, or air-pollution-caused "forest death' (see AMERICAN FORESTS, january, 1986). The tall fence was "the wall" separating East and West Germany.

My story posed a question: If we humans aren't wise enough to stop the kind of craziness apparent along the wall, how shall we ever be sophisticated enough to overcome the environmental disaster of Waldsterben?"

On October 3, 1990, the day East Germany ceased to exist, I was at the exact spot where I set the lead of my 1987 -Trilogy" article. Now no wall stood there. No watchtowers, no barbed wire, no helicopters. Tourists picnicked in the no-man's-land where in 1987 they'd have been shot

Standing there in the cool, dazzling October sunshine, I was intoxicated by the winds of democratic change blowing through Europe. My downbeat question posed in 1987 blossomed into a new, more positive one. Now it became, "Since we humans obviously can focus our energies and work hard to accomplish mind-boggling changes, shouldn't we be able to solve or at least reduce such complex problems as Waldsterben?" During subsequent weeks of freelancing across Europe, that question was always on my mind.

One day on a beautiful fjord in Norway, I listened as fish farmer Torrill Morten complained that acid rain was hurting Norway's fisheries industry.

"In Norway, maybe we have some Waldsterben problems,' she said, but I think that with us, acid rain mostly damages our streams. Our government puts in lime, trying to neutralize the waters, but we can't put lime in all of them."

Then Torrill looked me straight in the eye and said: "Over here we get the impression that Americans hinder the efforts of other developed countries to clean up the air. Your society in the U.S. is built around everyone having a car. Your mass transit system is not well developed. When a Norwegian sees how much air pollution an average one of us makes in comparison with how much the average American makes, we get very frustrated. Why should Norwegians make any effort at all if you Americans don't even try?' (See "How Much is Enough?' on page 37.)

Whether it's good reasoning or not, when Europeans talk about air pollution with an American, they just can't avoid making this point. American society is world-famous for its energy-wasting, car-oriented, throwaway habits, and many non-Americans resent these traits. In fact, when I stayed in a German apartment recently and at night sometimes didn't reach my fifth-floor door before the automatic, electricity-saving switch blacked out the stairwell, I resented it, too.

Torrill's attitude toward wasteful Americans brings up what may be the most serious problem that faces societies dealing with complex global problems such as Waldsterben. That is, people have feelings. When we humans are hurt, aggravated, slighted, annoyed, threatened, we seldom behave rationally. This goes not only for individual humans, but also for entire societies. Ask anyone enjoying even a nodding acquaintance with history if this isn't true. Yet rational human behavior on an international level is precisely the only route available by which humanity may overcome problems such as Waldsterben.

So with regard to Waldsterben, what would be "rational behavior" for our society? How about this:

We should use our energy resources much more efficiently. Substantially higher prices for goods and services produced by environment-degrading methods

would accomplish this. Our government should see that environmental regulations formulated by environmental technicians, not politicians, are enforced. American businesses investing in clean technologies should never find themselves at a disadvantage with a competitor that does pollute. For example, if a factory in Asia produces a cheaper product because it is allowed uncontrolled smoke emissions, while our American factory must install scrubbers in its chimneys, then the foreign article when it comes into the American market should be hit with an appropriately stiff "green tax,- which would even the playing field.

As I type this at my home in rural western Kentucky, I see in the local newspaper on my desk a couple of Waldsterben-relevant items that convince me that plenty of folks out there would say "Balderdash!" to such a definition of rational behavior.

The first newspaper item deals with United Mine Workers President Richard Trumka's pledge to take his union's battle against the Clean Air Act to the grassroots. Trumka knows that my neighbors who dig high-sulfur Kentucky coal fear that acid-rain legislation will put them out of a job.

The second bit of relevant local news is that in my little county way out in the boonies (McLean County, population about 9,500 and dropping because of lack of jobs), Barmet Aluminum Corporation generates 11.8 million pounds of pollution each year.

Moreover, there's Waldsterben-relevant stuff to think about behind the news. It's sticky stuff, too. Sticky because talking about it requires some very subjective statements. But maybe all statements about complex human behavior must be subjective. Here goes:

From past experience I know that plenty of folks out there believe that in these times of high unemployment, merely to bring up such subjects as the Clean Air Act and Barmet Aluminum's 11.8 million pounds of pollution is anti-American and anti-family. "Fragile global ecology" is seen by an awful lot of people as a fantasy thought up by whining liberals who just want to stir up trouble. If my opinion seems ridiculous, just remember the rhetoric heard during recent U.S. elections and look at who won them.

Of course, what's happening is that basic human nature is blossoming here. We humans always find it easier and therefore preferable to ignore complex problems completely or to see them in terms of black and white, right and left, good and bad ...

Therefore, though the winds of democratic change in Europe gladden my soul, the newspaper on my desk back home causes me to conclude that until an unmistakable eco-disaster of enormous magnitude and consequence strikes, any changes most likely will be too little, too late, or in the wrong direction.

If we happen to have such a cynical view about the possibilities of society changing, yet we still want to do something to fight against such specters as Waldsterben, just what is there that an individual human can do?

In the German city of Munster, with this question on my mind, I walked into the philosophy department of the respected Westfalische WilhelmsUniversitat (founded 1773), where I found Dr. Ludwig Siep, a noted specialist in bioethics. He honored my question with a thoughtful reply.

Maybe the main course open to most of us is simply to try to live our own lives according to bioethical principles," he said. "And to know what is ecologically ethical, first we must identify our norm. One popular norm says, We are ecologically ethical if what we do enhances the prospect that we humans, as a species, will survive.'

"However, I don't think that this definition is enough. What if we humans pass through a stage in which technology helps us create a world in which we survive as a species, but life for individual humans becomes monotonous, uninspiring, and empty?"

Such as a world without forests?" I thought to myself.

Dr. Siep's remarks brought up yet another question: In our society, despite impressions conveyed by the six o'clock news, most people do try hard to live ethically. The average person, in fact, generally is surprisingly good.

However, just imagine what would happen if, say, an impartial judge from Mars should be asked to rate an average American on his or her ecoethical conduct. As evidence, the judge would be provided with statistics on how much energy the average American consumes, how much garbage we generate, how much water we pollute, and how many acres of tropical rainforest we have caused to be destroyed. Well, especially if the Martian judge should compare our eco-behavior with that of most other cultures, who could blame the judge if he or she judged us as eco-terrorists?

Maybe average Americans are ethical in general life because we have a norm in place that evolved slowly as our society evolved. But our understanding of humanity's situation on the blue planet has only recently begun to sink in. For most of us, a generally acceptable bio-ethical norm is not in place. And Dr. Siep says that to behave eco-ethically, we need one.

Carrying the thought further, in what other way than through education can we humans begin to grasp what an appropriate eco-norm should be? If we accept that education is the key to acquiring an eco-norm and that humanity's abuse of nature is threatening the earth's ecology, then obviously education should assume the highest priority in our list of goals. Yet statistics show that our culture's young people know less than the young people who came before them.

I asked Dr. Siep where one can turn for guidance in norm-building.

Maybe the best place is in classical Greek philosophy, - he replied without hesitation. "The Greeks were always concerned with finding the appropriate measure for culture. Greek philosophy conceives of culture as an agency for improving nature, but instead of improving nature by oppressing it or dominating it, they suggest that man should learn how to work with it. A typical paradigm is that of the grape grower in his vineyard. In a productive vineyard we see a kind of cultivation that is a dialogue with nature."

After leaving Dr. Siep's office, I walked for a long time in a cold rain falling on Miinster's streets. In much of Munster's inner city, motor vehicles are banned; people walk down the narrow, cobblestone streets. The inner city's main building is the cathedral, known as the Dom, built during the 12th and 13th centuries.

That day, walking home in the rain along the peaceful streets near the Dom, it occurred to me that in a small way I-as well as all the other folks around me who were walking instead of driving-had something in common with the artisans who long ago built the Dom.

Here we were, each of us making a tiny contribution to global ecology by walking instead of riding. Of course, our contribution was almost laughably insignificant. However, the smallness of our effort was exactly the thing uniting us walkers with those craftsmen of the Middle Ages who built the majestic, towering cathedral.

For each medieval worker who carried a stone toward the future site of the Dom must have felt that his little effort also was hopelessly insignificant. Yet today the Dom stands, and it is beautiful.

Perhaps someday, then, simply because human society has changed one stone at a time, humans will see standing a majestic cathedral called "healthy global ecology" and Waldsterben will be just a footnote in history.

As we know is already the case with The Wall. AF