ACID RAIN IN CANADA AND GERMANY

About half an hour of the two-day Quebec meeting between Reagan and Mulroney in March was devoted to acid rain; a joint team was appointed to examine the question. This evoked ridicule among the media dunces, but the stand of both was perfectly correct. Mulroney's position was that not much bargaining can be done until Canada cleans up its own act (it is behind the US in automobile emission standards, and its smelters are among North America's worst Polluters). Reagan very sensibly requires more research before taking action.

"By then it may be too late," say the sham-environmentalists.

One of the more promising theories holds that it is photochemically produced ozone which damages the needles, acid mist which leaches out the nutrients, and frost which kills the weakened trees. The theory is about to be tested in a West German governmental pollution lab, where trees will be put in climate chambers to be given various doses of sunlight, pollution, frost and acid.

The first discovery has already been made: namely, that this has never been done before. That's right: the first hard evidence on acid rain is only about to be provided. Your indignant congressman's accusations are speculative guesses estimated by nebulous hunches.

The figure on the right is taken from an article in the West German journal Stromthemen, which had nothing to do with acid rain, showing coal consumption in West Germany (and the penetration of English into German).

Yet in 1965 there was very little pollution control compared with that in 1984. And nobody had ever heard of acid rain in 1965.

And another clipping from Germany. The photo on the left was published by Stern magazine in July 1984 with the caption "In the neighborhood of power plants trees perish most quickly,."

The other photo is from the utility journal RWE Verbund, taken from the same vantage point in the summer of 1984. Stern's photo was taken in the winter (there is snow on the ground), after the poplar trees had been trimmed.