A Green Peace Corps

Image Gallery The greatest threat to any nation's security is the destruction of its environment. © MARTHA COOPER/PETER ARNOLD. INC.;

The greatest threat to any nation's security is the destruction of its environment.

THE WORLD NOW HAS AVAILABLE TO it a window of environmental opportunity even bigger than the hole in the ozone over Antarctica (and, we now learn, over Australia as well). It couldn't come at a more timely moment.

The president of the Soviet Union and the new president of the United States have both recently stressed their commitment to protecting what's right with the environment and fixing what isn't. President Gorbachev has just pledged to cut back on his military forces. The onus is now on Mr. Bush to do likewise. The two leaders can redirect the funds not spent on military budgets toward environmental programs, which in turn could steer their countries and the rest of the world onto a new course.

We could finally see a major cooperative effort to restore damaged ecosystems, and similar efforts to find ways of providing food, energy, clothing, shelter and material goods without degrading the environment in the process. Concurrently, the countries could mount a joint campaign to bring population growth under control.

Soon after taking office, the new president should make good on his campaign promise to convene an urgent international conference on the environment. Better, he could urge the United Nations to play host to such a meeting, as it did once before in 1972.

The agenda for such a meeting could be taken from today's newspapers: global warming, deforestation, famine, overcrowding, overfishing, overeverything. The monumental difference now, however, from other times, is that there may actually be enough money available to make real, solid environmental progress—if some of those trillions that have been going to military programs can be diverted to healing the earth.

These efforts are by no means unconnected. Stealth bombers, Star Wars, MX mis siles, SS-20 missiles, MIG fighters and all the rest are meant to provide security, a scandalously expensive kind of security. Insofar as the $500 million that is spent on a Stealth bomber is $500 million not spent reforesting eroding hillsides or restoring torn-up marshland, then it is the falsest kind of security imaginable: No society can ever be truly secure if its natural support system is being degraded—and make no mistake; every natural system on the planet is under stress.

So long as we're advising Mr. Bush, here's a thought for Mr. Gorbachev. Pledge not only to remove a half-million troops from Eastern Europe; promise also to put them to work on environmental restoration projects in the Soviet Union and abroad. This could lead to the creation of a multilateral Green Peace Corps!

And the two countries, or the UN, could establish urgent research and development efforts to find and accelerate the adoption of manufacturing processes that do not require toxic materials, of agricultural systems that don't require massive amounts of synthetic pesticides, and of ways to encourage recy cling of all possible materials.