Pollution result of technology
By DENNIS McFALL Kansan Staff Writer
Both the bounty and the destruction of modern technology have their roots in religious and social developments unique to the western world. The way men in a society treat the natural elements of their environment depends on the way they see themselves in relation to the rest of nature. For us, that perspective is dualism—man is one thing, nature is another, and we are the superior.
Francis Bacon, the prophet of "power through scientific knowledge," was one of the first to advocate man's discovery of the secrets of nature through diligent study and the proper intellectual approach. From this knowledge, of course, it is but a short step to control and utilization.
It was nearly two hundred years after Bacon, in the 19th century, that man's recognized ability to use nature was put to widespread practical use in industry. The Industrial Revolution and our present explosive industrial expansion are the showcase of the outlook, based on religious doctrine, that nature exists for the benefit of man.
ANCIENT PEOPLES imagined that nature was
filled with spirits. Lakes, trees, hills, everything in nature had a guardian spirit which man had to keep happy. When they were considering cutting down a tree, they had to first make it right with the spirit of the forest.
Then the Christian victory over paganism relieved Western man both of his fear of reprisal from natural spirits and of his motivation to exercise care in his use of resources. According to Christian doctrine, God made man and made the world for man to live in and to enjoy. Man "enjoys" nature by exploiting it and remaining indifferent to its long-term welfare.
During the early development of the United States men found a situation of enormous plenty in which they could have free rein. Frugality was unnecessary. Endless supplies of bison, water and wide open spaces led to a total, ruthless disregard for nature's worth and vulnerability.
The near-extinction of the great bison by nowlegendary "hunters" and trainloads of men shooting thousands per day, riding alongside the herds, is an accurate example of the wasteful, proud attitude of man in a new Eden.
WE ARE STILL IN EDEN. And we are still destroying it. We drain the swamps for new airports, dam up the canyons for electricity to run our electric knives and neon signs, tear up trees and grass to pile asphalt on the ground, so that we can get where we're going faster in our 1970 El Sporty Asphyxiators.
It is unlikely that anything short of a catalysmic disaster directly related to our mistreatment of the environment will change our approach. We will try, but we cannot solve all of the problems of rampant technology simply by adding more and more technology.
Lynn White Jr., professor of history at UCLA, said:
"Despite Copernicus, all the cosmos rotates around our little globe. Despite Darwin, we are not, in our hearts, part of the natural process. We are superior to nature, contemptuous of it, willing to use it for our slightest whim."
Philosophic and moral revolutions take a long time to assert their influence widely. There is some question whether we can wait that long for a re-appraisal of our place in nature and in the universe.
Man ignores natural law
By DENNIS McFALL Kansan Staff Writer
Lake Erie is sick. Dying. What used to be one of the world's largest freshwater lakes is now a veritable chemical tank. Wastes and sewage from farms, cities and industrial plants have disrupted the normal balance of life in the lake, and there is most likely no hope for its restoration. More significantly, the rest of our environment is afflicted to some degree as a result of the same kind of treatment by man.
But faith in technology, the omnipotent producer of enzyme pre-washes and creator of the plastic bag, remains the principle tenet of the American creed. We have not the least doubt that through science we can do with nature what we want. Now that our "needs"—real or imagined—demand staggering amounts of trees, minerals, water and air, we have not brought into proper perspective the fact that our behaviour does not conform to natural laws. It is not natural, for example, when a species causes such massive biological shocks as those delivered by man to the environment.
The environment shudders when man plants hundreds or thousands of acres of the same crop in a single stretch, or when he kills off an entire species. Only man has ever been able to do that.
NATURAL REPERCUSSIONS to this meddling may not be immediate or violent, but they will come to haunt us sooner or later. And there is increasing alarm among our most competent
scientists that the success itself of our improvements on nature has led us into a juggling act with the natural elements which we may not be able to handle. Man is part of nature, not above it, and he cannot break the rules of nature with impunity.
It is the ecologist who studies those rules, and the ways in which all living things, from the giant whales to man to the microscopic plankton in the sea, are all linked together in an extremely complex web of life. In fact, the word "ecology" is derived from the Greek word for "study of the (natural) household."
The biosphere—where all life on earth exists—is a thin layer between the inert interior of the earth and the cold desolation of outer space. Only about eight miles thick, this zone of life is but a fragile veneer around the planet. We live in a closed, independent system. The earth is like a space ship, except that we are not as careful with our provisions as are the astronauts. We have a limited amount of water, of oxygen, of iron ore, of useable land and of space. There will never be more. We must do with what we have.
IN THE MILLIONS of years of biological history, a complex equilibrium has been established among all of the elements of the biosphere—minerals, water, air and organisms. "As the twig is bent, so grows the tree" applies to any change made in the natural equilibria.
Many of our present difficulties, such as air pollution, dying lakes and streams, the build-up
of DDT in our bodies and extinction of species, have resulted from ignorance or disregard of the basic principle of the interdependence in nature.
WE ARE BEGINNING to see the results of our careless actions. In November, a Los Angeles mackerel fleet suspended its work when it was discovered that samples from 4000 cases of the canned fish contained twice the legal maximum level of DDT. Similar experience elsewhere have led to a ban on non-essential use of the chemical in this and other countries.
IN THE 1950's too little care was given to the danger of fallout from atomic bomb testing. The children of that decade hold in their bodies significant levels of radioactive strontium-90 as a reminder of that mistake.
In evolutionary perspective, our ingenuity has been our salvation. But our evolutionary reliance for survival upon technology and resource depletion may blind us to the possible disaster lying before us.
THE U.S. PUBLIC Health Service says, "Man's skill and ingenuity in manipulating the environment have produced tremendous benefits to human life. But, more and more, these benefits have been accompanied by frightening, and sometimes irreversible, changes in the ecological system of which he is an integral part."
Ecologists are working to find ways to minimize the destruction from man's bent for supremacy not natural integration—in nature.