RE: librarians as advocates for common sense environmental information

[James Marple <jesl@carolina.net>]

Jim

  I have circulated your list to the groups I advise to replace my less useful criteria. My primary concern, however, is not the flawed scientific studies circulated by profiteers through government, but basic planning premises that misguide the people we elect. Using California as an example once more:

  The Metropolitan Water District has misled the news media and politicians into accepting a need to expand their system for importing water to Southern California. One tool for this was exaggeration of water needs. Another was concealment of the total costs of their service.

  The false perception of water need was achieved in part by flooding libraries, schools and government documents with claims that a family of four uses up to an acre-foot of water yearly. USGS figures show that an acre-foot will supply nine persons and US Census figures show an average home size of 2.5. The apparent need was more than doubled with this device. This misperception was bolstered by predictions of earthquake damage that would halt inports, making enormous reservoir capacity seem necessary to serve the inflated needs.

  The concealment of imported water's environmental/economic cost was carried out through the same documents plus carefully orchestrated presentations by "captive" news columnists and senior State officials that persuaded the public to spend as needed to correct environmental damages and lessen the potential for "disastrous" water shortages. 

  It seems to me that members of this discussion group could learn much by examining what has to be seen as the World's greatest water scam, since MWD's success came through dissemination of false and misleading information to the public. If libraries are to be proper databanks then they must find ways to identify massive misinformation campaigns by special interests and, hopefully, ways to filter/balance these.

  It is noteworthy that major environmental groups cooperated with MWD scheming in order to achieve their ends. This points up a need for librarians to work together in examining information from all sides of an issue or individual project. 

Your guidelines for recognizing false planning premises would be appreciated by we who can only watch as good people are deceived.