Southeastern Michigan Environmental Resource Association (smera)
Giving Hell vs. Giving Help Third of a Seríes
ENVIRONMENTAL LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF MICHIGAN
by Solomon Eagle
The too frequent view of public officials concerning businesses is a variant on the adage about sparing the rod and spoiling the child. The pious p.o. argument goes that if government spares the rod of stiff regulations and vindictive clout, those nasty, spoiled companies will waltz off gleefully in all directions violating every law in sight. That 's too simple-minded for even p.o.'s to maintain convincingly.
With countless examples from the bleak and bloody pages of history to guide them, why do officials at the DNR and elsewhere cling fast to the conviction that an adversarial attitude toward Michigan business is the only way to beat pollution, clean the environment, wash the wind, protect the public, and keep those desperado companies in line? Lord Chesterfield in one of his 236 letters to his "Dear Boy," Philip Stanhope, warned that he intended to "dissect and analyse you with a microscope, so that I shall discover the least speck or blemish." Stanhope, for all his famous papa's monitoring and advice, didn't turn out very well, achieved little, and died at 36. So much for striving to push people - and companies - into obedience, goodness, and greatness.
On November 21, 1988, the acting head of the Environmental Response Division at the DNR was quoted as saying, "In connection with Act 307 cleanups in Michigan, we're going to give the polluters hell." Giving hell may be fun and games at the Division, but how effective is it at accomplishing cleanups?
Battles seldom clean up anything, and battlefields are never praised for their tidiness. Solomon Eagle and other old warriors can testify to that axiom. Challenges to combat such as "giving the polluters hell" bring verbal pollution into the state. Business people, the innocent as well as the guilty, fear they're in for an expensive pushing around by the Lansing zealots. And they're inclined to cry for "Help." Help, not hell, is what the state's business community always needs in its struggle to accomplish two obvious goals of every business and job provider in the state--to stay alive and to keep clean.
No business is deliberately an imitator of The Odd Couple's Oscar Madison. Businesses don't deliberately pollute, because social and moral concerns aside, pollution is inefficient and costly. No business loves a mess for its own sake or fouls the environment for the heck of it. Give a company with pollution problems reasonable support, assistance, and comprehensible rules; and that company, the Eagle predicts, will eagerly try to qualify for the Spic and Span Corporation Club.
The DNR Environmental Response Division isn't alone in the impulse to storm, shout, and rattle sabres to chastise profitmakers and employers (when they survive the incessant flak from the bureaucraps). The federal GAO recently said the EPA in its cleanup efforts should "bring all the tools of the law to bear against those who pollute." That reads better than it works. In action, such tools are too often used to torment, badger, and accuse rather than to encourage, assist, and support. Without judicious care on the part of the tool and law wielders, foulup rather than cleanup can result.
Maybe there's too much inclination to give hell instead of help to our troubled polluters. Since hell doesn't do the job, why not give help a chance? And maybe it works both ways. Could be that even with our bureaucracies, crusading politicians, and the DNR, there's something to be said for giving them help and consideration, not hell. Or perhaps we're simply feeling a temporary affliction of fondness for our governmental overseers and the DNR in the month of St. Valentine's Day. Please, DNR, be our Valentine, not our Simon Legree.
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