Too many pigs for one sty
By ALAN T. JONES Kansan Managing Editor
"Oh cancerous for smoggy skies,
For pesticided grain . . .”
So begins a satirical version of "America the Beautiful," sung in protest to the decline in environmental quality of the world.
Ecology action programs such as the one the song emanated from are developing across the nation in an attempt to emphasize the danger man has made for himself. "But, it's just another thing the kids have found to demonstrate about," you say; and if you say it watch out because it is the issue that can radicalize and unify greater numbers than any anti-Vietnam protestor ever thought possible.
Environmental problems, now rampant, threaten the very existence of this country,the world and mankind itself.
In this section of the Daily Kansan we have humbly tried to point out those problems, but to point out the infinitely related problems of environment is a virtually insurmountable task. Beside the fact of the task's difficulty, simply discussing and pointing out the problems is almost totally irrelevant. We are not saying anything new. The first time man discarded an inorganic article into a stream he must have thought something was wrong. Even General Motors published a comic book in the early 1950's about water pollution. I know because I saw one of those comic books floating in the Niagara River.
No, the problems are not new, nor are the arguments, nor are the solutions. They're all available. If you don't believe that, ask Dr. Klepinger in the Human Development department. He started the semester with a reading list of three books for a course in Population and Birth Control Problems and each week he says the bibliography is not complete because he finds more arguments, advocates and discussions.
It begins to look like a Vietnam war discussion. Seldom is anything new said and the people discussing it grow bored with the same old arguments.
Everyone knows there's a pollution problem but the Missouri River runs in six different colors.
Everyone knows there's a pollution problem but an inversion layer can close an airport in St. Louis.
Everyone knows there's a pollution problem but fish still float to the beaches of the Great Lakes.
Everyone knows there's a pollution problem but someone's still drilling for oil off the coast of California.
Everyone knows there's a pollution problem but even in clean Kansas an official saw fit to declare the Kaw River unfit to be touched by human beings.
TALK IS CHEAP.
Evolutionists tell us man won the race for supremacy because of his ability to control his environment. Man, in his great ability to control his environment, has built an environment
That Day
The sun,
cold and red now
spread itself across
the freezing sky
as we drank the silent
empty afternoon away
on that day
Oh, there had been reports the fires in California. (Los Angeles was gone), the massed rodent attacks on the east coast. and it was colder as we drank away the red evening on that day
We saw no people in the streets now and the icy silence crept along the windows and doors causing us to look long at each other and in our own silence we drew closer together knowing— as we drank away the red twilight on that day
And we knew that there were no words now that the words had not come in time and we sat now— the first and last atomic children and did not mourn—the dying of a world we barely knew, but drank away the last red freezing afternoon on that day.
—Bruce Coulson
that is rapidly approaching the control and destruction of man. And, when man reaches the point where his environment controls him, an anthropologist might tell use he will revert to barbarism.
That's fine, except man can't return to the cave because he can't drink the water and in a barbaric state he wouldn't have the purification tablets to clean the water because the technology that polluted the water won't be available to provide the purification.
Also, man cannot revert to Nature because there isn't enough Nature left to support all the men. And soon there will not be enough technology to support him either. Only so many pigs fit in a sty—only so many men fit in a world.
But man will not control himself. No one can tell him how many children to have. He'll go on having all the children he wants until the children want. But when the children want, there will be nothing, no food, no water, no air, no space—nothing.
And the children will want.
As Pogo so eloquently put it, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
The enemy can be defeated. The solutions are available but they're not available to us the consumers, but to them the producers.
I can stop throwing litter on the highway, but factories still defacate into rivers.
I can stop having children but my neighbor will have six.
I can stop driving my car but Bethlehem Steel can puke red dust into Buffalo's skies.
Scientists estimate anywhere from 20 to 200 years before man fills his closed environment with people and garbage. If these estimates are true there is no longer time to talk. There is no longer time for presidential studies. Presidential studies cost $25,000 and end up in wastebaskets.
The people must react. But how? Write your congressman but before you do, read Gahan Wilson's cartoon in Playboy. It depicts a senator at his desk in a smoke-filled room. He is wearing a gas mask as is the clerk who gives him the message—"Senator, there's another damn conservationist here to see you."
Our leaders are afraid of the problem. They will not force business to spend the money for pollution control devices. They will not touch the birth control problem because all the mothers won't vote for them again. They won't touch anything and things have to be touched soon.
What is evident is that the attack must come from the people. People have to tell the corporations they're sick of having them pour crud in the people's rivers and the people's air. It must be done with whatever means are available. Radicals have the means. Scientists have the means and somehow the monied interests in this country must be forced into stopping the pollution and the people must, of themselves, stop multiplying.
If we have to take to the streets we must go to the streets.
I think I'm going to burn my driver's license.