One of the main threats to the life of coal miners is methane, an undetectable odorless, colorless gas that seeps into underground mines and, in large concentrations, can kill. Until the advent of modern measurement technology, there was no way to measure methane concentrations directly. In the 18th century, miners discovered that canaries were much more sensitive to the effects of methane than humans, so miners began to take caged canaries to work with them. By observing the behavior of the canaries (specifically, whether the canaries were alive or dead) the miners could tell when it was safe to work in the mine, and when it was time to get out fast.

Our modern political world contains its share of ideas that are the equivalent of methane. These are those notions that are largely unprovable (but cannot be disproved either), usually outrageous (but with very serious consequences if true) -- ideas like the Air Force has hidden dead extraterrestrial in a secret base in the desert, or that the world will be consumed by Global Warming. How can a reasonable person tell whether these notions are true, and we should be genuinely concerned, or whether they’re groundless, and we should ignore them and go merrily along with our daily chores?

One way is the 20th century analogue of miners watching the behavior of canaries. Simply determine what behavior an organization would likely have if the story was really true, and then look for that behavior. If the behavior is detected (i.e., the canary dies), start to worry. Otherwise, go about your business.

Take, for example, the story about extraterrestrial cadavers in the desert. This tale began 50 years ago, when residents around Roswell, NM observed something strange in the sky. A rancher found some debris, and turned it over to the Air Force. Ever since then, stories have circulated that an alien spacecraft crash landed, and the Air Force took the spacecraft and the bodies of the alien crew members to a mysterious facility in Nevada simply called Area 51. According to the story, the U.S. government in general and the Air Force in particular have, for fifty years, kept this a secret from the public for fear of creating panic. 

Now let’s look for an appropriate canary or two -- for instance, the predictable behavior of elected politicians and the Air Force. Politicians get elected (and re-elected) by creating a need for their services and the services of government, not by keeping secrets or engaging in conspiracies. The Air Force justifies it’s share of the federal budget on the basis of defending this country against foreign threats, especially foreign threats that come from the sky. So if we did have dead extraterrestrial in the desert, along with a flying saucer, the expected behavior of politicians would be to call a press conference. And the expected behavior of the Air Force would be to build up the threat of alien invasion to the point where they would be in control of the space program and the Army, Navy and Marines (just in case the army of little green men -- and green women --actually made landfall). While it might have been possible to suppress the natural behavior of these canaries for a little while, it is reasonable to think that sometime, somewhere, reporters would have been called in for the press conference of the century.

Therefore, since none of this happened, it is safe to conclude that there are no little green bodies in a freezer in Nevada, and that we are not in imminent danger of alien invasion.

Now, on to Global Warming. This December, the Clinton Administration, under the deft direction of Al Gore, is sending a delegation to Kyoto, Japan to negotiate a treaty to control emissions of greenhouse gases in order to prevent Global Warming. Like methane in mines and alien bodies in the desert, Global Warming is a little difficult to explain. The theory is that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide (a non-toxic by-product of burning things, and what we exhale when we breathe) accumulate in the atmosphere and trap radiation from the sun. According to the proponents of this theory, if we don’t do something now (such as stop driving cars and stop using electricity), the world will be hot and under water by the 22nd century, and humanity will need to grow gills.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to detect Global Warming. So difficult, in fact, that the proponents of the theory have officially changed Global Warming into Global Climate Change, so they can tout as proof any unusual temperature, whether its high or low. Our President even went so far as to blame last winter’s floods in North Dakota on Global Climate Change. And every time there is a big hurricane (which the media always proclaims as the biggest ever, since a headline reading "Fifth Biggest Hurricane" doesn’t sell newspapers), the Global Climate Change people jump up and down and yell "See!"

But this Global Climate Change theory is really a tough thing to sell. The average Joe and Jane only know weather, and weather is pretty much the same as its always been -- unpredictable. According to Global Climate Change theory, the things that would really look impressive on the 6 o’clock news -- ice caps melting and island nations disappearing under an ever-rising sea -- won’t happen until the average Joe and Jane are dead and buried.

So, in spite of the apparent lack of concrete evidence to point to, expect to see the Administration pull out all the stops between now and December in a public relations campaign to try to convince you that Global Climate Change is so serious a problem that you should be willing to give up the use of your car, turn down the heat and turn off the air conditioning, and kiss your standard-of-living good-by.

I confess to being something of a skeptic. But since my employer pays me to spot emerging environmental issues, I can’t dismiss this one entirely. So I have come up with my own canary test to see when it’s time to start panicking (and time to convince my boss its time to panic as well).

Global Climate Change, if it exists, is the result of a build-up of carbon dioxide, which is the inevitable result of people burning things to generate energy. In fact, almost all sources of energy come from burning fossil fuels. But there are some exceptions. For example, hydroelectricity from dams and electricity from nuclear power do not generate carbon dioxide, and therefore do not contribute to the dreaded Global Climate Change. So biggest thing we could do right now to forestall Global Climate Change is to substitute these forms of energy for energy derived from burning fossil fuels.

Thus, if Global Climate Change were the threat to the world that its proponents claim, then one would expect that those most worried about it -- environmentalists and the Clinton/Gore Administration -- would also be supportive of proven sources of energy that do not result in additional carbon dioxide.

This, simply put, is my canary test for Global Climate Change. If the Administration and environmental groups really believed in the threat of Global Climate Change (and they should, after all, be the most knowledgeable about it), it is reasonable to expect the following behavior of them:

Solutions would be found to problems impeding the use of nuclear power, such as creating a disposal site for nuclear waste.

Research on a passively-safe nuclear reactor (preferably a breeder reactor, which uses much less nuclear fuel) would be increased.

Emphasis would be placed on increasing the supply of hydroelectricity.

So, what are the canaries actually doing?

President Clinton vetoes a bill creating a nuclear waste disposal site.

In 1993, the Administration cut off all research funds to the Livermore Laboratory’s promising research on a passively-safe nuclear reactor.

Not one environmental group has even considered changing its position on nuclear energy.

Several environmental groups are advocating the destruction of hydroelectric dams in the Western U.S.

Therefore, in spite of the rhetoric, the canaries don’t seem to be overly distressed about Global Climate Change. Sure, they clamber loudly that everyone else should sacrifice for the cause. But when given the true test of their convictions -- to behave like they believed what they’re espousing -- environmental groups and the Administration expose the truth.

The battle lines have been drawn over the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed new clean-air rules. Industry groups and their paid scientists are duking it out with independent health and environmental groups over whether the new rules are needed. That, at least, is the way it's being depicted. But the truth is far more complicated.

Many of the scientists attacking the proposed rules take research money from industry. But what is not commonly known since the media almost never report it is that almost every group and researcher pushing the costly new air pollution rules gets money from the EPA.

The American Lung Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council two of the most outspoken groups favoring the tougher new air standards have received millions in EPA grants in recent years. Several of the scientists pushing new standards have also gotten sizable EPA grants.

Backers of the new rules argue that these financial ties are meaningless. The science is solid that smog and soot the subject of the new rules pose serious health threats at current levels. Also, the EPA doesn't know what the research findings will be, and can't, unlike industry, hide unflattering results.

This federal money is just cover for the EPA, say critics, as it pushes new mandates that will cost industry and consumers billions of dollars a year. It's a way, they say, for the EPA to get apparently independent groups to lobby on their behalf. "The EPA is funding advocates on one side of the issue," said Thomas Delawareans, an economist at Loyola College in Baltimore who has written widely on the issue. "They're skewing the debate in favor of the EPA's position, and using tax dollars to do it."

In November, the EPA said it wanted to tighten the current air pollution standard for urban smog. And, it proposed to add a new pollutant to its list so-called fine particles that spew from smokestacks, auto exhaust pipes, barbecues and so on. Almost immediately, industry charged that the new rules would impose huge costs on the economy but would produce little gain.

For their part, health and environmental groups said the new standards, if anything, don't go far enough. That's been the way the story has been told by the media so far. A New York Times report described an EPA meeting in Salt Lake City two weeks ago. It quoted a letter signed by George Thurston, professor of environmental medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, saying that "tens of thousands of hospital visits and premature deaths could be prevented each year by more stringent air quality standards."

Although scientists linked to industry are identified as such in the story, no mention was made of the three-year EPA grant worth $383,000 that Thurston got last year to study the health effects of "acidic particulate matter."

A recent Wall Street Journal article attacked a meeting of scientists in Annapolis, Md., because it was sponsored by a group funded by the National Association of Manufacturers. The scientists were set to discuss the merits of the science behind the new air rules. The article quotes Joel Schwartz, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, decrying the meeting. The fact that Schwartz got a three- year $196,000 grant from the EPA last year to study the health effects of pollution on children was not mentioned in the piece. Nor did the article note that the Harvard School of Public Health, where many of the findings on the health effects of air pollution originate, got nearly $3 million in EPA grants last year alone, according to grant data from the EPA.

If industry-paid scientists skew results to favor their benefactors, one might suggest, the same may be true for government-funded researchers. "The EPA is not going to give you money if you say that air pollution isn't a health threat," said Steven Milloy, president of the Environmental Policy Analysis Network in Washington, which gets industry funding. If nothing else, Milloy and others argue, these financial ties to the EPA should be made explicit in news accounts, just as ties to industry typically are.

Thurston disagrees. "Whether I get funding from the government has nothing to do with what I say," he said. EPA funding is an open, peer-reviewed, public process, he argues. "A peer-review panel, external to the EPA, reviews the grants," he said, adding that industry grants don't operate that way. And, while industry can lock up research it doesn't like in a file drawer, "there's no file drawer with government research." Comparing industry scientists with those getting government money is misleading, he said. "It's not an equal thing."

The American Lung Association is often cited as an independent source of information on the health effects of air pollution and the need for tougher EPA standards. But the ALA has had a long and lucrative relationship with the Environmental Protection Agency. Between 1990 and 1994, the EPA gave the lung association's national office and its various state chapters more than $4 million. In 1995, the EPA gave the group close to 51 million more, according to the Federal Assistance Awards Data System, which tracks government grants.

In turn, the ALA sued the EPA almost every year, claiming the agency wasn't complying with the nation's clean air laws. In fact, many people cite the lung association suit as the reason for the new air pollution rules.

A case of biting the hand that feeds you? Not so, say some analysts.

"If you think the EPA is upset with the ALA suing them, think again," said Scott Segal, an attorney at Bracewell & Patterson and a professor of environmental management at the University of Maryland. "Truth be known, the EPA wants to be sued, because every time they are sued it expands the reach of the Clean Air Act."

Grants aren't the only source of EPA money for the ALA. The agency often asks lung association officials to testify before EPA hearings, and reimburses them for the cost of doing so. The association got $8,500 in travel costs paid by the EPA in 1995, according to government records.

And, suing the EPA isn't the only thing the ALA has been doing to push federal clean-air rules. The ALA helped deliver scores of witnesses to the EPA's Salt Lake City hearings two weeks ago. It also ran radio ads in several markets touting the benefits of cleaner air. Two years ago, the charity ran a series of radio ads attacking Republicans in Virginia, Connecticut and New York who had voted for the regulatory reform part of the House "Contract With America." The ALA's complaint: The Contract "fundamentally threatens our entire agenda to battle against lung disease."

The National Mining Association attacked the charity in early 1995, charging that the ALA tried to silence witnesses who wanted to testify against the EPA's tougher standard for sulfur dioxide. Two scientists affiliated with the ALA were told not to speak against the rule by the charity. The ALA said the scientists held positions with the organization that required them to be objective. And speaking out on this issue would violate that.

The lung association did not respond to telephone inquiries for comment.

The EPA has also been a generous donor to the Natural Resources Defense Council. In 1995 alone, the council got more than $1 million from the EPA. It, too, has returned the favor by repeatedly suing the agency. The suits always charge that the EPA isn't doing enough to protect public health. In a final twist, the EPA turned around and paid the NRDC's legal bills. Between 1993 and 1996, the agency forked over more than $150,000 for the NRDC's legal costs.

Several air pollution studies were funded in part by grants from the EPA. One of the key studies on fine particles the subject of the new EPA rules found that this kind of air pollution boosts the risk of dying by 17%. That translates into thousands of lives lost each year, the study asserts.

That study ran in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The journal's publisher? The American Lung Association.

There is a lot of discussion in the news about morals and values. Everyone seems to agree that they are important and that people today do not seem to have them to the degree that they should. What seems to be missing, however, is a good discussion on a definition of morals and values, or even a good explanation of the problem and possible solutions.

The first problem in any discussion of morals and values is the automatic assumption that they must fall under the domain of religion. In the separation of church and state, America placed our value system in the domain of the church to be taught by the church. In doing do, we have denied that there are values common to all current world religions, values that are rightfully part of our American heritage.

A few such values include honesty, hard work, and the Golden Rule. In fact, if you focus on those values and morals that nearly everyone agrees on, you find yourself with an impressive list that includes important things like "Do not kill" and "Do not hurt others." But if these values are to be effectively taught to young children in today’s world, they need to fall into the realm of the state.

Of course, there are touchy extremes to these values such as the debate over abortion and euthanasia, but these do not cloud the basic fact that killing people is wrong. Unfortunately, public discourse often focuses on these extremes of morals, rather than on basic morals -- the commonly agreed middle ground. For people who did not have the opportunity to learn strong values at home or church, this focus on extremes and controversy makes all issues of morals appear flexible and debatable. 

Since schools do not feel it is proper to teach basic morals (it sound too much like religion), they teach "politically correct" concepts instead. The stress placed on concepts such as multi-culturalism and diversity in the absence of an absolute moral framework has resulted in an entire generation incapable of seeing the difference between right and wrong actions. One example of this is the real-world case of a classroom of school children who, when asked, could not say that the Holocaust was "wrong" because it was consistent with the Nazi’s belief system. Without an absolute moral framework to provide the basis for moral decisions, children today cannot make moral decisions, and thus, in a sense, dare the world to be evil. 

The emphasis in education today is to view the world as made up of various cultures, but to be staunchly non-judgmental regarding their worth. Being non-judgmental is fine for those who start with a strong moral sense and can distinguish acceptable variation from aberration. Without moral grounding, however, children today can preach saving the environment and advocate animal rights, yet are unable to see anything wrong with genocide if it is part of a people’s belief system.

Our children need to learn this simple truth: just because something is part of an established belief system, it is not necessarily good.

All of this leads to one possible solution -- stop worrying about children’s "self-esteem" and "teaching religion in schools" and begin to impose strict discipline and teach morals. More than anything else, schools need to stress and enforce basic moral decency and teach children to analyze situations morally. Although schools cannot be blamed for all of children’s’ moral problems, which reflect the problems of society, they can be a powerful tool to make society more moral.

Until our society concludes that morals need to be stressed in public forums like schools, it will remain the role of churches to fill the void. The solution to America’s moral problems must begin with individual churches. In particular, our Unitarian Universalist congregations need to devote time in their Religious Education programs to teach children those fundamental morals and values that are the foundation of all other things. Our UU Purposes and Principles are a very good starting point. Every child in our R.E. programs should understand our Principles well enough to apply them to the issues they are faced with, and be confident that the values behind the Principles are right in any context.

If done correctly, our UU children should be able to identify the Holocaust as "evil" whether or not is was part of the Nazi’s belief system. They should clearly understand that saving the environment is right for reasons of ethics ("I should preserve the interdependent web of all existence") and not for reasons of selfishness ("I’m part of a powerful movement that can tell others what to do"). This will not solve all our moral problems, but at least it would be a good start.

One of the more frustrating things about the UUA’s war against the religious right is that we have chosen to generate the kind of mindless passionate hate that a good war demands.

In this particular war, we UU’s are subjected to caricatures of the religious right as consisting of a mix of the following:

Ignorant, poor white Southern trash,

Born-again working-class northern whites, and

Slick "conservative" demagogues who form organizations that exploit the ignorance, naiveté and latent hate of the above groups.

Unfortunately, like all stereotypes, these are unjust, inaccurate and intentionally misleading. More important, these stereotypes serve as a smokescreen to hide the fact that the religious right is asking the right questions. Although they often have the wrong answers, they do have answers, while we do not. So rather than attack the religious right on the issues, we are reduced to attacking members of the religious right on a human level (ironically, a direct affront to our own first principle to affirm and promote the worth and dignity of every human individual).

To really understand the religious right, we need to recognize that there is one question underlying nearly everything they do: Is there a higher, absolute moral code that humans are compelled to live by? Much of the ire of the religious right is triggered by the secular world’s insistence that all morality is transient and relative, that there are no absolute moral values. Most of the issues the religious right takes on is to highlight this one question.

One example of an absolute moral truth is the commandment "Thou shall not kill." To highlight this truth, the religious right has picked two issues -- abortion and euthanasia. Both of these issues lie in an ethical gray area that involve balancing the existence of a human life (actual or potential) with the quality of life of a human (of a potential parent or the individual). In this ethical gray area, the religious right has staked out a clear, unambiguous position that highlights their belief in moral absolutes -- pro-life. We have also very conveniently (for the religious right) reacted by staking out a position that highlights our apparent lack of belief in moral absolutes -- pro-choice.

One of the more interesting battles of this moral war between absolutes and relativism is the battle over partial-birth abortions. In this battle, the religious right scored a major (and perhaps decisive) victory. The religious right picked the most morally abhorrent example of abortion rights run amok, the practice of sucking the brains out of a partially-delivered fetus to ensure that it would be dead on delivery. They knew the reality that this practice occurs more often than most want to admit, and that nearly all Americans would find the practice objectionable. They also hoped that the pro-choice movement would react badly and defend the practice.

From a public relations standpoint, it was a rout. Congress passed legislation that the President vetoed, after pressure was applied by pro-choice groups. Clinton was convinced by the pro-choice movement that this was a justifiable, little-used procedure. But then one of the leading pro-choice advocates admitted to lying publicly about how often the procedure was used, lying that he felt was justified for the "greater good of the cause." Whether or not legislation banning partial-birth abortion passes or not, the religious right scored on the issue that matters most -- the inherent "evil" of moral relativism.

There are two points we need to address if we really want to prevail against the religious right. We must first understand that the religious right movement is made up of many sincere, intelligent, and moral people with a different point of view (otherwise, we have to concede that we are being outmaneuvered by rubes). Then we must respond not by reaction but by putting before the American people the right answers to the very valid questions the religious right is asking. Ironically, the very best response to the religious right might be to simply believe in, promote and witness our own Purposes and Principles, and apply them to the problems that this country faces.