Jose Lutzenburger, a man of Principle and Wisdom

Dr. Lutzenberger is considered widely to be the father of Brazil's Environmental Movement. (Fundação Gaia)

Jose Lutzenberger, a Man of Principle and Wisdom

Dr. Jose Lutzenberger, environmental hero, family farm advocate, and opponent of multinational trade agreements, died on May 14, 2002 at 75. Dr. Lutzenberger, who had a degree in chemical engineering, worked for a German chemical company until he asked the owner of an industrial-size orchard if he wasn't afraid to eat the apples after they were sprayed with pesticides. The owner replied that he didn't eat the fruit himself but only sold it to other people. When he heard this Lutzenberger immediately resigned.

An outspoken critic of modern agribusiness, Dr. Lutzenberger penned a scathing critique in 1998 entitled, "The Absurdity of Modern Agriculture-from Chemical Fertilizers and Agropoisons to Biotechnology." In it, he railed against the unsustainable nature of modern agriculture, which employs practices that "increasingly degrade the environment and impoverish biodiversity." He noted that "In the case of mass animal rearing for meat and eggs the methods are downright destructive, much more food for humans is destroyed than is produced." Dr. Lutzenberger wrote, "And then, in the chicken concentration camps and egg factories as well as the modern pig dungeons the poor creatures live under conditions of extreme stress."

He was equally critical of unsustainable forestry practices that destroy forests, particularly in the Amazon rainforest of his native Brazil. "Today in my country, Brazil, we are flooding thousands of square kilometers of pristine rainforest to make electricity for three mills that export aluminum," he lamented. "There is hardly a patch on this Earth that we are not yet in some way exploiting or getting ready to exploit for our orgies of consumption."

As so many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) watch the expansion of free-trade zones around the world, particularly throughout the Americas, Dr. Luztenberger assessed the impacts of these agreements: "We must realize that all these new free-trade agreements, NAFTA, GATT, and so on, were not made to benefit ordinary people. They were conceived by the powerful for the powerful. Transnational corporations need global markets, not only to get cheap resources from the Third World, but also to destroy within their own countries the social conquests of their workers."

In 1971, Dr. Lutzenberger helped found Agapan, Brazil's first environmental NGO and later, in 1987, started another group called Gaia (http://www.fgaia.org.br). In 1988, he won the Right Livelihood Award, established as an alternative to the Nobel Prize. In 1990, he accepted a position within the Brazilian government as Special Secretary for the Environment.

He will be missed greatly. His words live as a constant reminder for us to rethink the way in which we develop as a society. Dr. Lutzenberger proclaimed, "We must learn to look at Nature, at Creation, as something sacred of which we humans are only a part-or we will have no future. We need a new, actually very old, holistic ethics, an ethics of reverence for life in all its forms and manifestations."