Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
For the U.S. delegation, however, there were a few important and some-
what unexpected wrinkles in Stockholm that undermined the adminis-
tration's public relations goals for the conference. First, despite pointed
and repeated attacks on the administration's approach in the months lead-
ing up to Stockholm by the president's domestic opponents, the Nixon
administration seems to have been unprepared for the extent to which
nations critical of American foreign policy used the environment as a way
to attack the United States politically in the official conference forum. Just
as at home, the main issue in Stockholm was Vietnam. During his opening
remarks on the first day of the conference, Swedish prime minister Olof
Palme charged the United States with engaging in “ecological warfare” in
Southeast Asia. “The immense destruction brought about by indiscrimi-
nate bombing, by large-scale use of bulldozers and herbicides is an outrage
sometimes described as ecocide,” he declared, echoing statements made by
Claiborne Pell on the Senate floor in the previous months.
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Palme framed
the United States' destruction of the Vietnamese environment in terms of
a larger relationship between armaments and environmental destruction.
He called on the conference to urge an end to large-scale arms production
worldwide. The Chinese delegation put an even finer point on the Swedes'
criticism. Tang Ke, head of the delegation, asked the conference to “strongly
condemn the United States for their wanton bombings and shellings, use
of chemical weapons, massacre of the people, destruction of human lives,
annihilation of plants and animals, and destruction of the environment.”
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Similar criticisms came from individuals outside the official conference
who were participating in the informal Environment Forum, where promi-
nent environmental activists and nongovernmental organizations voiced
the myriad environmental concerns of constituents not represented at the
United Nations.
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Also referred to as an “earth forum” and a “counter-
conference,” the event included almost five hundred accredited NGOs—
many of them American, including the Hog Farm hippies— and scores of
prominent individuals, including some official conference observers and
delegates.
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One jilted environmentalist excluded from the official U.S.
delegation called it “a sort of environmental Woodstock for the world's
affluent youth.”
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Participants espoused diverse objectives and viewpoints,
but most opposed the war in Vietnam and supported binding limitations
on nuclear weapons. They held a major protest of the Vietnam War in
Stockholm during the second week of the conference.
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