Commoner - The closing circle nature, man and technology

Also by Barry Commoner

SCIENCE AND SURVIVAL

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

Copyright 1971 by Barry Commoner. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

ISBN: 0-394-42350-X
eBook ISBN: 978-0-8041-5287-7
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-127092

A substantial portion of the book first appeared in The New Yorker Magazine.

The chapter on Lake Erie is adapted from an article written for The World Book Year Book, copyright 1968, Field Enterprises Education Corporation.

Portions of this book have appeared in Environment, Archives of Environmental Health, Progressive, Saturday Review, Todays Education, No DepositNo Return (Addison-Wesley), The Balance of Nature (U.S. Department of Agriculture), and Nuclear Power and Public Policy (University of Minnesota Press); portions will appear in M. Taghi Farvar and John M. Milton, eds., The Careless TechnologyEcology and International Development (Natural History Press), and F. Singer, ed., Is There an Optimum Level of Population in the United States? (McGraw-Hill).

v3.1

For Lucy and Fred

The environment has just been rediscovered by the people who live in it. In the United States the event was celebrated in April 1970, during Earth Week. It was a sudden, noisy awakening. School children cleaned up rubbish; college students organized huge demonstrations; determined citizens recaptured the streets from the automobile, at least for a day. Everyone seemed to be aroused to the environmental danger and eager to do something about it.

They were offered lots of advice. Almost every writer, almost every speaker, on the college campuses, in the streets and on television and radio broadcasts, was ready to fix the blame and pronounce a cure for the environmental crisis.

Some regarded the environmental issue as politically innocuous:

Ecology has become the political substitute for the word motherhood.Jesse Unruh, Democratic Leader of the State of California Assembly

But the FBI took it more seriously:

On April 22, 1970, representatives of the FBI observed about two hundred persons on the Playing Fields shortly after 1:30 p.m. They were joined a few minutes later by a contingent of George Washington University students who arrived chanting Save Our Earth. A sign was noted which read God Is Not Dead; He Is Polluted on Earth. Shortly after 8:00 p.m. Senator Edmund Muskie (D), Maine, arrived and gave a short anti-pollution speech. Senator Muskie was followed by journalist I. F. Stone, who spoke for twenty minutes on the themes of anti-pollution, anti-military, and anti-administration.FBI report entered into Congressional Record by Senator Muskie on April 14, 1971

Some blamed pollution on the rising population:

The pollution problem is a consequence of population. It did not much matter how a lonely American frontiersman disposed of his waste. But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.Garrett Hardin, biologist

The causal chain of the deterioration [of the environment] is easily followed to its source. Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticide, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxideall can be traced easily to too many people.Paul R. Ehrlich, biologist

Some blamed affluence:

The affluent society has become an effluent society. The 6 percent of the worlds population in the United States produces 70 percent or more of the worlds solid wastes.Walter S. Howard, biologist

And praised poverty:

Blessed be the starving blacks of Mississippi with their outdoor privies, for they are ecologically sound, and they shall inherit a nation.Wayne H. Davis, biologist

But not without rebuttal from the poor:

You must not embark on programs to curb economic growth without placing a priority on maintaining income, so that the poorest people wont simply be further depressed in their condition but will have a share, and be able to live decently.George Wiley, chemist and chairman, National Welfare Rights Organization

And encouragement from industry:

It is not industry per se, but the demands of the public. And the publics demands are increasing at a geometric rate, because of the increasing standard of living and the increasing growth of population. If we can convince the national and local leaders in the environmental crusade of this basic logic, that population causes pollution, then we can help them focus their attention on the major aspect of the problem.Sherman R. Knapp, chairman of the board, Northeast Utilities

Some blamed mans innate aggressiveness:

The first problem, then, is people. The second problem, a most fundamental one, lies within usour basic aggressions. As Anthony Storr has said: The sombre fact is that we are the cruelest and most ruthless species that has ever walked the earth.William Roth, director, Pacific Life Assurance Company

While others blamed what man had learned:

People are afraid of their humanity because systematically they have been taught to become inhuman. They have no understanding of what it is to love nature. And so our airs are being polluted, our rivers are being poisoned, and our land is being cut up.Arturo Sandoval, student, Environmental Action

A minister blamed profits:

Environmental rape is a fact of our national life only because it is more profitable than responsible stewardship of earths limited resources.Channing E. Phillips, Congregationalist minister

While a historian blamed religion:

Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt. We shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.Lynn White, historian

A politician blamed technology:

A runaway technology, whose only law is profit, has for years poisoned our air, ravaged our soil, stripped our forests bare, and corrupted our water resources.Vance Hartke, senator from Indiana

While an environmentalist blamed politicians:

There is a peculiar paralysis in our political branches of government, which are primarily responsible for legislating and executing the policies environmentalists are urging. Industries who profit by the rape of our environment see to it that legislators friendly to their attitudes are elected, and that bureaucrats of similar attitude are appointed.Roderick A. Cameron, of the Environmental Defense Fund

Some blamed capitalism:

Yes, its officialthe conspiracy against pollution. And we have a simple programarrest Agnew and smash capitalism. We make only one exception to our pollution standeveryone should light up a joint and get stoned. We say to Agnew country that Earth Day is for the sons and daughters of the American Revolution who are going to tear this capitalism down and set us free.Rennie Davis, a member of the Chicago Seven

While capitalists counterattacked: