Lynton Keith Caldwell: An Environmental Visionary and the National Environmental Policy Act

12. Retirement: A New Focus on Global Environmental Issues

331 On November 21, 1983, his seventieth birthday, Caldwell felt little desire to celebrate, not least because Indiana University had advised him that he would have to accept mandatory retirement in June. “For my part,” he wrote in January 1984 to IU president John Ryan, “I do not intend to use the ‘emeritus’ designation. Like a family heirloom, I don’t mind having it, but it will not appear under my signature. . . . [I think that] Indiana University might legitimize continued association of senior faculty by some more appropriate designation that signals ‘at work’ rather than ‘out to pasture.’”1 Helen’s pleas that he should now reduce his workload and spend more time at home fell on deaf ears. Instead, in early 1984 Caldwell accepted a new invitation to become one of six initial members of the World Council for the Biosphere (WCB)–selected “for their contributions toward the understanding of global environmental problems and their geographical backgrounds”–with their first assignment to coordinateaweeklongeventinDelhi ,India,inconjunctionwiththeJunemeeting of the International Society for Environmental Education (ISEE).2 In early March 1984 Policies Studies Journal published “Land Use as an International Issue,” an article in which Caldwell discussed the increasingly global impacts of the detrimental environmental effects that one nation’s unsustainable use of its natural resources could have both on itself and on others.3 Later that month, still much sought after as an advisor on NEPA-related issues, he spoke at the U.S. Corps of Engineers’ annual Environmental Planning Conference on ways to achieve a better balancebetweensocietalandenvironmentalneedsinenvironmentalasRetirement : A New Focus on Global Environmental Issues twelve 332 Lynton Keith Caldwell sessment.4 On April 9, not unhappy that he had to absent himself from a dinner being held to honor retiring faculty, he flew to Denver to chair an ASPA panel assembled to assess NEPA’s role in the 1980s.5 In early May Duke University Press published one of Caldwell’s best-knownbooks,InternationalEnvironmentalPolicy:EmergenceandDimensions ,amajorreferenceworkforwhichtheBoardoftheInternational Studies Association awarded him its prestigious Harold and Margaret Sprout Award.6 Considered by Richard Falk of Princeton University as “invaluable, coming at this time of renewed interest in international policy dimensions of environmental issues,” the book soon became a leaderinitsfield.7“ItgivesallofusatDukeUniversityPressanextremely wonderful feeling in hearts, minds, and account ledgers to congratulate you for producing a truly superb book,” Reynolds Smith wrote to him in July. “I believe it is fair to say that we consider International Environmental Policy the cornerstone of our environmental studies list. It’s been a pleasure and an honor for me to work with you on this project.”8 “I am simply delighted to receive a complimentary copy of your long awaited important book,” Caldwell’s longtime colleague Harold J. Coolidge,presidentoftheIUCN andfounderoftheIUCN NationalParks Commission, wrote to him in June. “I congratulate you on having done such a comprehensive job and shall write you further after having read your important report which is extremely timely!”9 Other reviews were also favorable. “Keith Caldwell can justly be considered the dean of American academic environmentalists,” wrote Eugene Skolnikoff of MIT.10 Peter Coates of Cambridge University noted:“Sincetheenvironmentalmovementcameofageinthedeveloped worldduringthelate1960s,LyntonKeithCaldwellhasbuiltareputation as one of its most astute analysts.”11 Several reviewers also noted the newly pessimistic tone that Caldwell had interjected into this book: “In tactful and unstrident tones, Professor Lynton K. Caldwell of Indiana University has given us grounds for only the most limited encouragement in his encyclopaedic survey International Environmental Policy,” wrote Douglas R. Weiner.12 Duncan Poore added: “The most impressive feature [of the book] is the exquisite balance that the author brings to the discussion of such topics as growth, development, social justice, and the International Economic Order . . . [but] his conclusion is [only] Retirement 333 cautiously optimistic.”13 As time has shown, the rationale Caldwell provided then to explain his fears for the future of humanity has proven remarkablyaccurate,eventhough,despite theaccelerateddepletion and pollution of natural systems that has occurred in the interim, his warnings still remain largely unheeded.14 At the outset of his book, with a nod to James Lovelock’s concept of Gaia as a living, self-regulating organism able to withstand a certain amount of insult, and as he had suggested in his 1982 article “Is the World Environment Threatened?,” Caldwell expressed the hope that ultimate tragedy for humanity–indeed, for all living species–might yet be averted if normally “antagonistic” nations, faced with “a common threat,” could be persuaded to...