The First Law Of Ecology

As The Earth Spins Through Space, A View From Above The North Pole Would Encompass Most Of The Wealth Of The World - Most Of Its Food, Productive Machines, Doctors, Engineers And Teachers. A View From The Opposite Pole Would Encompass Most Of The World's Poor.

What The New Fertilizer Technology Has Accomplished For The Farmer Is Clear: More Crop Can Be Produced On Less Acreage Than Before. Since The Cost Of Fertilizer, Relative To The Resultant Gain In Crop Sales, Is Lower Than That Of Any Other Economic Input, And Since The Land Bank Pays The Farmer For Acreage Not In Crops, The New Technology Pays Him Well. The Cost-in Environmental Degradation-is Borne By His Neighbors In Town Who Find Their Water Polluted. The New Technology Is An Economic Success-but Only Because It Is An Ecological Failure.

Perhaps One Of The Most Meaningful Ways To Sense The Impact Of The Environmental Crisis Is To Confront The Question Which Is Always Asked About Lake Erie: How Can We Restore It? I Believe The Only Valid Answer Is That No One Knows. For It Should Be Clear That Even If Overnight All Of The Pollutants Now Pouring Into Lake Erie Were Stopped, There Would Still Remain The Problem Of The Accumulated Mass Of Pollutants In The Lake Bottom.

All Of The Clean Technologies Are Known, It's A Question Of Simply Applying Them.

My Entry Into The Environmental Arena Was Through The Issue That So Dramatically - And Destructively - Demonstrates The Link Between Science And Social Action: Nuclear Weapons.