The Proper Use Of Science Is Not

The Most Meaningful Engine Of Change, Powerful Enough To Confront Corporate Power, May Be Not So Much Environmental Quality, As The Economic Development And Growth Associated With The Effort To Improve It.

Our Assaults On The Ecosystem Are So Powerful, So Numerous, So Finely Interconnected, That Although The Damage They Do Is Clear, It Is Very Difficult To Discover How It Was Done. By Which Weapon? In Whose Hand? Are We Driving The Ecosphere To Destruction Simply By Our Growing Numbers? By Our Greedy Accumulation Of Wealth? Or Are The Machines Which We Have Built To Gain This Wealth-the Magnificent Technology That Now Feeds Us Out Of Neat Packages, That Clothes Us In Man-made Fibers, That Surrounds Us With New Chemical Creations-at Fault?

What Is New Is That Environmentalism Intensely Illuminates The Need To Confront The Corporate Domain At Its Most Powerful And Guarded Point - The Exclusive Right To Govern The Systems Of Production.

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.

The Favorite Statistic Is That The U.s. Contains 6 To 7% Of The World Population But Consumes More Than Half The World's Resources And Is Responsible For That Fraction Of The Total Environmental Pollution. But This Statistic Hides Another Vital Fact: That Not Everyone In The U.s. Is So Affluent.