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ECOLOGY “” Making Peace With Nature and With Each Other A GREEN PAPER ~ wrt te oe ‘ Lot er Oe With all the current talk about pollution, conservation, and the deterioration of our environment, it ts not always clear how pollution is related to the issues of the war, ‘poverty, social change, and life style. Many government officials see young peoples’ growing interest in "cleaning up the environment” as a happy sign that they will de sweeping the streets and picking up garbage instead of protesting the war in Vietnam. For most government officials and much of the media, “meeting the environmental crisis" ' gmounts to no more than demanding smog-control devices, sewage treatment plants, ' sanitary land fill, and air filtration systems on smokestacks, When, however, pollution, Sarbage, and threatened wilderness are seen as symptoms of a larger “ecological crisis", ' it becomes clear that "cleaning up the environment” involves revolutionary changes -that would make many politicians wish young people were back on the streets only protesting the war. The purpose of this green paper is to examine the traditional ' eonservationist and anti-pollutionist approach to environmental problems, to explain 3 «eand illustrate the new ecology action approach, and to explore the implications of | 4 seeing “non-environmental”™ problems from an ecological perspective. If we ever end ¢ war and poverty, it may be through the back door of ecology. ot ; . Everyone is in favor of peace and against pollution, It is as easy for the same person "to. condemn the evils of air pollution and begin the development of the SST as it is to express a desire for peace while continuing the war in Vietnam. Some people apparently see no inconsistency in declaring that it's "now or never to end pollution” while encouraging a policy that is enabling U.S. oil companies to begin the rape of the State of Alaska. meee” 1 eB eM EL The following are some characteristics of a strictly anti-pollution, conservation approach to the environment: L) Environmental problems are more or less independent of one another. We have air pollution, water pollution, noise pollution, thermal pollution, waste disposal, endangered species, threatened wilderness, etc. Investi- - gative committees, government hearings, and citizen groups are formed around one or more aspects of these problems and deal with them as separate problems. As a result, conservation groups in one area will protest the construction of a hydroelectric dam, asking that a nuclear power plant be constructed else- where, while anti-pollutionists in another area will protest the construction of a nuclear power plant and suggest that a dam be built elsewhere. Meanwhile the need for more power plants is never questioned. Or government air pollu- tion hearings are held, as in Boston last November, where the only matter under discussion was the acceptable levels of sulphur dioxide and particles in the air over metropolitan Boston. Sulphur dioxides are a minor part of air pollution, and air pollution is a minor part of our environmental destruc- tion, yet dozens of conservation groups and air pollution foes spent months planning for a hearing which in the end only legitimized existing levels of ‘pollution. The assumptions of almost everyone at the hearings ~ the conserva- tionists, air pollution foes, government officials, and the polluters - were” that the air was indeed a dump and the only question was how much of a dump it was; that air pollution was an environmental problem more or less separate from any other; that air pollution could be "curbed" without being “unduly burdensome on industry"; and that government establishment of maximum regional