Polluted waters. Acid rain. Endangered species. Global warming. Habitat destruction.
Ecological crises, conservation biologists suggest, have an impact on all terrestrial life. For this reason, there exist scores of scientists, lobbyists and lawyers who make environmental protection their life's work.
It's a frustrating job, an occupation in which successes are few and far between. And Professor Pat Parenteau has made a career navigating the rough waters of ecological law.
Parenteau, who is co-teaching a course on ecological law at Dartmouth this fall, is the director of the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School, and has over 25 years of experience in the field of environmental and natural resources law.
He has traveled across the country and around the globe delivering presentations on issues affecting water quality, wetlands, environmental audits and biodiversity. But within the circles of ecological law he is best known, perhaps, for handling a number of key cases under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
The 1978 legislation created a committee of high-ranking government officials that gained the nickname "God Squad" -- because of their power to specify which species become protected, thus, in a sense, playing God.
The act was set up to recover species in the danger of extinction, to resolve conflicts between economic activities and those species and to have the power to grant exemptions. Parenteau -- whose book, "The God Squad," is the definitive handbook for lawyers dealing with the ESA -- believes the law still does not carry enough weight and needs to be amended.
"The act has too narrow a focus on individual species," Parenteau said. Instead, he believes, the committee should focus on the relationship of the larger landscape and interdependent species.
The law "doesn't define measurable biological standards of recovery," Parenteau said, noting that the ESA doesn't provide time frames, deadlines or have specific recovery plans or standards.
There are approximately 3,000 species eligible for endangered status, and it's a slow process to qualify species one at a time, Parenteau said. Enforcing the ESA becomes particularly complicated when the provisions of the act clash with private property.
Parenteau advocates two modifications to the ESA: the act has to be amended with greater and more specific deadlines, and there must be a combination of restrictions and incentives to discourage the destruction of wildlife habitats and encourage their protection.
Otherwise, Parenteau said, the ESA will becomes what he called a "feel good law" that, while appearing to promote conservation, allows species to slip into extinction. Without measurable progress, a range of financial incentives and a shift of priorities towards preserving ecosystems instead of species, the ESA becomes little more than legislative fluff, Parenteau said.
Despite his legal credentials, Parenteau's work often takes him out of the courtroom and into the environment he is so committed to protecting. He was a member of the EPA team that instigated the high-profile case made famous in the book and film, "A Civil Action."
Working with the EPA in the field in a research-- rather than a legal -- capacity, Parenteau was a part of the team that discovered the carcinogenic contamination of the waters in Woburn, Mass. and brought suit against W. R. Grace, a large chemicals and materials company.
The Woburn case was, in retrospect, a perfect example of the difficulty of applying private law, or torts, to ecological cases; the case was ultimately settled for an amount far below what many believed would be truly punitive.
Still, Parenteau maintains that the novel and film were a great way for people to see the immediate impact of environmental contamination in their lives and also how difficult it is to prove cause and effect in a case of ecological law.
For a staunch environmental advocate like Parenteau, it is even more difficult to fight for the environment when your own government doesn't back you. He described the Bush Administration as the "worst administration I've ever seen ... negative across the board" in terms of environmental protection.
He is similarly disenchanted with Congress' ecological stance.
"The current status quo is in the hands of those who don't want to change," he said.
In his class, he often recalls the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. The corporation was sentenced to pay $5 billion in damages, an amount that Exxon's CEO labeled, "chump change -- won't affect first-quarter earnings," Parenteau said.
Despite these recent disappointments, Parenteau expressed optimism for the future of environmental protection and ecological law.
"Unless and until the public makes a conscious effort to vote for environmental protection, then nothing will happen" Parenteau said.
Indeed, Parenteau noted, there has been much progress in environmental protection. Legistlation and court decisions of the 1970s and 1980s mandated tougher standards on air and water pollutants that resulted in a decrease in airborne pollutants, cleaner rivers and an overall improvement in water quality.
Another piece of ecological law Parenteau counts as a "win" for the environment is the the chlorofluorocarbon legislation of the 1980s that has since brought about a 90 percent reduction of the pollutants in the atmosphere.
Still, environmental protection remains an uphill battle. Global warming, exponential loss of habitat to human activity and energy waste continue to consume the planet.
Parenteau concluded that the government and the population at large must take more of a holistic approach to conservation and consider all the elements that make up the ecosystem. This shift from species to ecosystem management is currently popular amongst biologists, but legislation remains mostly species-oriented. For this reason, though, ecological lawyers are only more necessary.
"Ecosystems are the webs that hold all life together; they are the reservoirs of the earth's biological diversity," Parenteau said.
