Fighting to Save the Earth from Man

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Interesting to note that this was written over 36 years ago, during the Vietnam War...

Feb. 2, 1970

The great question of the '70s is:

Shall we surrender to our surroundings or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land and to our water?

—State of the Union Message

NIXON'S words come none too early. The U.S. environment is seriously threatened by the prodigal garbage of the world's richest economy. In the President's own boyhood town of Whittier, a part of metropolitan Los Angeles, the once sweet air is befouled with carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, lead compounds, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, fly ash, asbestos particulates and countless other noxious substances. The Apollo 10 astronauts could see Los Angeles as a cancerous smudge from 25,000 miles in outer space. Airline pilots say that whisky-brown miasmas, visible from 70 miles, shroud almost every U.S. city, including remote towns like Missoula in Montana's "big sky" country. What most Americans now breathe is closer to ambient filth than to air.

The environment may well be the gut issue that can unify a polarized nation in the 1970s. It may also divide people who are appalled by the mess from those who have adapted to it. No one knows how many Americans have lost all feeling for nature and the quality of life. Even so, the issue now attracts young and old, farmers, city dwellers and suburban housewives, scientists, industrialists and blue-collar workers. They know pollution well. It is as close as the water tap, the car-clogged streets and junk-filled landscape—their country's visible decay, America the Ugly.

..................

Web of Life

Ecology is often called the "subversive science." Only 70 years old, it avoids the narrow specialization of other sciences—and thus appeals to generalists, including people with a religious sense. Ecology is the systems approach to nature, the study of how living organisms and the nonliving environment function together as a whole or ecosystem. The word ecology (derived from the Greek root oikos, meaning "house") is often used in ways that suggest an attitude rather than a discipline. Anthropologists and psychiatrists have adapted it to their work. Poet Allen Ginsberg declaims it like a revolutionary slogan. But few yet grasp its subtle meanings—as Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska proved last summer. Arguing for fast development of his state's oil-rich North Slope, Stevens referred to his dictionary. "Ecology," he declared, "deals with the relationship between living organisms." Then he added triumphantly: "But there are no living organisms on the North Slope."

Stevens missed the whole point: the arctic ecosystem is full of life (including Eskimos) but is so vulnerable to pollution that the North Slope threatens to become a classic example of man's mindless destruction. The intense cold impedes nature's ability to heal itself; tire marks made in the tundra 25 years ago are still plainly visible. What most worries ecologists, in fact, is man's blindness to his own utter dependency on all ecosystems, such as oceans, coastal estuaries, forests and grasslands. Those ecosystems constitute the biosphere, a vast web of interacting organisms and processes that form the rhythmic cycles and food chains in which ecosystems support one another.

The biosphere is an extraordinarily thin global envelope that sustains the only known life in the universe. At least 400 million years ago, some primeval accident allowed plant life to enrich the atmosphere to a life-supporting mixture of 20% oxygen, plus nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide and water vapor. With uncanny precision, the mixture was then maintained by plants, animals and bacteria, which used and returned the gases at equal rates. The result is a closed system, a balanced cycle in which nothing is wasted and everything counts. For example, about 70% of the earth's oxygen is produced by ocean phytoplankton—passively floating plants and animals. This entire living system modified temperatures, curbed floods and nurtured man about 5,000,000 years ago. Only if the biosphere survives can man survive.

To maintain balance, all ecosystems require four basic elements: 1) inorganic substances (gases, minerals, compounds); 2) "producer" plants, which convert the substances into food; 3) animal "consumers," which use the food; and 4) "decomposers" (bacteria and fungi), which turn dead protoplasm into usable substances for the producers. As the key producers, green plants alone have the power to harness the sun's energy and combine it with elements from air, water and rocks into living tissue—the vegetation that sustains animals, which in turn add their wastes and corpses to natural decay. It is nature's efficient reuse of the decay that builds productive topsoil. Yet such is the delicacy of the process that it takes 500 years to create one inch of good topsoil.

The process is governed by distinct laws of life and balance. One is adaptation: each species finds a precise niche in the ecosystem that supplies it with food and shelter. At the same time, all animals have the defensive power to multiply faster than their own death rates. As a result, predators are required to hold the population within the limits of its food supply. The wolf that devours the deer is a blessing to the community, if not to the individual deer. Still another law is the necessity of diversity. The more different species there are in an area, the less chance that any single type of animal or plant will proliferate and dominate the community. Even the rarest, oddest species can thus be vital to life. Variety is nature's grand tactic of survival.

The Domino Theory Applied

Man has violated these laws—and endangered nature as well as himself. When a primitive community ran out of food, it had to move on or perish. It could harm only its own immediate environment. But a modern community can destroy its land and still import food, thus possibly destroying ever more distant land without knowing or caring. Technological man is so aware of his strength that he is unaware of his weakness—the fact that his pressure upon nature may provoke revenge.

By adding just one alien component to a delicate balance, man sometimes triggers a series of dangerous changes. Nature immediately tries to restore the balance—and often overreacts. When farmers wipe out one pest with powerful chemicals, they may soon find their crops afflicted with six pests that are resistant to the chemicals. Worse, the impact of a pesticide like DDT can be vastly magnified in food chains. Thus DDT kills insect-eating birds that normally control the pests that now destroy the farmers' crops. The "domino theory" is clearly applicable to the environment.

In South Africa, for example, a campaign was waged against hippopotamuses. Deemed useless beasts that merely cluttered up rivers, they were shot on sight. Result: the debilitating disease called schistosomiasis has become as great a public-health hazard in certain areas as malaria was 50 years ago. As usual, the missing links in the chain of events were discovered the hard way. It turns out that hippos keep river silt in

motion as they bathe. When they heave themselves up riverbanks to dry land, they also go single file and act like bulldozers, making natural irrigation channels. Without the animals, the rivers quickly silted up; without the overflow channels, periodic floods swept like scythes over adjacent lands. The altered conditions favored a proliferation of schistosomiasis-carrying water snails. Such harsh intrusions on wildlife constitute only one way in which man abuses nature. Another is through his sheer numbers. From an estimated 5,000,000 people 8,000 years ago, the world population rose to 1 billion by 1850, 2 billion about 1930, and now stands at 3.5 billion. Current projections run to 7 billion by the year 2000. Neo-Malthusians like Stanford Population Biologist Paul Ehrlich grimly warn that the biosphere cannot sustain that many people. As Ehrlich puts it: "There can only be death, war, pestilence and famine to reduce the number."

.....

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...78179-4,00.html

[Reba 2]

as my husband says, "I'm rootin' for the asteroid"

That's going to be the only way to eradicate this pestilence called man.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

as my husband says, "I'm rootin' for the asteroid"

That's going to be the only way to eradicate this pestilence called man.

I don't know...not every person or every culture is so determined to give mother earth the finger. It seems that most people need a crisis before they decide something should be done. The hard part is convincing them that that asteroid is heading right towards us.

[Reba 2]

the hard part is convincing them that there is anything wrong with the planet. Quite a lot of people still don't even care to look around and see what's happening. They don't care that the polar ice caps are melting and that polar bears are drowning and starving to death. They don't care that there's dwindling populations of bears and large cats and and and...they don't care that the trees are thinning, and the soil is about used up.

Not until it starts to hurt their own pocket book, or their own lungs, or they can actually see that its harming to themselves will some (most?) people even care. I'm sure that cultures in other parts of the world that rely on the earth for life know whats going on and they care, but for quite a lot of the world's (western) population, I dunno if they even see it yet. There's the shame.

[peejay 327]

I find it interesting that many of the same people that b*tch about ecological degradation in the USA are the same ones with a "let 'em all in" the more the merrier attitude towards immigration. With the US population nearing 300 million, I don't think that most here on VJ realize that the USA is getting more and more populous in a shorter and shorter amount of time. More than our previous history and most of it through legal and illegal immigration. There are projections of 400+ million by mid-century if the proposals of the Senate's S.2611 come to fruition.

All this means more urban sprawl, more cars, more pollution, more habitat loss, less open spaces, more consumption of natural resources, etc., etc.

The government of both parties are more interested in GDP that the quality of life of most Americans. America Incorporated is what the USA has become. And I don't think that the impact on the average American is the #1 priority in this worship of the GDP. Massive freewheeling immigration has become just another moneymaking operation for USA Incorporated.

If anyone wishes to read a prime example of piss poor public policy in the recent history of our country read this book:

The Worst Hard Time

Timothy Egan

It shows how living for the now can have disasterous consequences in the future. I really don't think the US government is any smarter now than it was then when people are in $$$ euphoria.

I think there should always be immigration to the USA, but it must be controlled, regulated, and in sane numbers.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I find it interesting that many of the same people that b*tch about ecological degradation in the USA are the same ones with a "let 'em all in" the more the merrier attitude towards immigration. With the US population nearing 300 million, I don't think that most here on VJ realize that the USA is getting more and more populous in a shorter and shorter amount of time. More than our previous history and most of it through legal and illegal immigration. There are projections of 400+ million by mid-century if the proposals of the Senate's S.2611 come to fruition.

All this means more urban sprawl, more cars, more pollution, more habitat loss, less open spaces, more consumption of natural resources, etc., etc.

The government of both parties are more interested in GDP that the quality of life of most Americans. America Incorporated is what the USA has become. And I don't think that the impact on the average American is the #1 priority in this worship of the GDP. Massive freewheeling immigration has become just another moneymaking operation for USA Incorporated.

If anyone wishes to read a prime example of piss poor public policy in the recent history of our country read this book:

The Worst Hard Time

Timothy Egan

It shows how living for the now can have disasterous consequences in the future. I really don't think the US government is any smarter now than it was then when people are in $$$ euphoria.

I think there should always be immigration to the USA, but it must be controlled, regulated, and in sane numbers.

Does it cure cancer too?

[Reba 2]

I find it interesting that many of the same people that b*tch about ecological degradation in the USA are the same ones with a "let 'em all in" the more the merrier attitude towards immigration.

well, I'm not one of 'em. Tho I disagree with the folks who want to build a wall around the US, I do honestly believe that something needs to be done to curtail illegal immigration, and this "not amnesty" is a load of bullshit. This country, and others, need to sort out their priorities now, rather than leave it to their grandchildren.

[mawilson 2,133]

Our world population of 6 billion people is barely sustainable, let alone the 12 billion

projected in the next 40 years. There's only so much food and energy to go around.

If anything, we need more wars and fatal disease to reduce the numbers.

[cmartyn 0]

I'm the exception that proves the rule I guess. I want to put land mines instead of a fence. Except the Animals will step on them so I'm back to supporting the fence. A double fence with 15 ' Steel shoring and razor wire. Backed up with armed guards ordered to shoot if anyone cuts it.

I also support building green homes, banning the use of pesticides and herbicides. I support the 50' audibility rules for Cars, banning general aviation for entertainment purposes, Banning Sunday shopping. Banning Asbestos in brake linings, Banning assault rifles, #######, If I were president you would be facing jail for throwing a cigarette butt out the window. Id probably hang you if you threw your Micky D sack out the window. Number 2 heating oil would be banned too. Low sulfur NOW! I say. The list goes on of little things we could do but we don't because of the slight impact it may have on some corps bottom line. So we ramble on as a society tossing our ####### in the air. Culturally we continue to promote and celebrate aggressive behavior against each other and the environment.

But I hate the fact we have let Mexico become the de facto source of cheap labor whenever the elite feels it needs it.

I guess I am an anti - elitist. The worst kind of Liberal.

[peejay 327]

I find it interesting that many of the same people that b*tch about ecological degradation in the USA are the same ones with a "let 'em all in" the more the merrier attitude towards immigration. With the US population nearing 300 million, I don't think that most here on VJ realize that the USA is getting more and more populous in a shorter and shorter amount of time. More than our previous history and most of it through legal and illegal immigration. There are projections of 400+ million by mid-century if the proposals of the Senate's S.2611 come to fruition.

All this means more urban sprawl, more cars, more pollution, more habitat loss, less open spaces, more consumption of natural resources, etc., etc.

The government of both parties are more interested in GDP that the quality of life of most Americans. America Incorporated is what the USA has become. And I don't think that the impact on the average American is the #1 priority in this worship of the GDP. Massive freewheeling immigration has become just another moneymaking operation for USA Incorporated.

If anyone wishes to read a prime example of piss poor public policy in the recent history of our country read this book:

The Worst Hard Time

Timothy Egan

It shows how living for the now can have disasterous consequences in the future. I really don't think the US government is any smarter now than it was then when people are in $$$ euphoria.

I think there should always be immigration to the USA, but it must be controlled, regulated, and in sane numbers.

Does it cure cancer too?

What does that have to do with the price of eggs in Pookipsee?

I'm merely stating that contradictory stances on social issues without thinking about how they are related is counterproductive.