The First Law Of Ecology Is That

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.

No Action Is Without Its Side Effects.

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?

The Modern Assault On The Environment Began About 50 Years Ago, During And Immediately After World War Ii.

In Certain Ways, I'm Not Very Different Than I Was When I Was A Teenager.