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GREEN PAPER ON ECOLOGY - 6 ‘ : a - . : . .. sah . . ¥ } - - In some blighted urban neighborhoods, residents are squatting on land cleared for new highways or will be blockading existing highways to charge tolls that will pay for the damage caused by the highways, noise, and air pollution, © This spring Ecology Walks will begin in several parts of the country. Each walk will last for several weeks. Some of the reasons for the walks are to gain a physical sense of one's regional ecology, and to experience oneself as a part of that ecology, to meet people, to hold ecology festivals and celebrations and programs, and to do direct actions at ecological disaster areas: sites of nuclear power plants, proposed highway routes, polluted rivers, auto junk yerds, marsh fills, etc. — ” Most of these actions are not single-issue actions. Ecology actions usually make | elear the source and context of a problem, and suggest in the style of the action the ' changes that are necessary to solve the probiem. People picketing the opening of the i International Auto Show (renamed the International Pollution Show) arrived by subway, by bicycle, on foot, and other forms of non-polluting locomotion. People who would : ‘ fever protest the war in Vietnam are willing to return all their packaging to super- ‘ markets and to give up driving their cars. Many of these people would never even join a group, but are willing to begin changes in their own lives. When one begins changing one's life style, even in the smallest ways and with the simplest awareness of ecology, one soon realizes how few meaningful, ecological alternatives (organic food, non- polluting yet convenient transportation, etc.) can be offered by our present system. ; Hopefully, the awareness which follows from small actions will be a key to rapid : social, economic, and cultural change. — - § — _ ——— ———w A 1 ‘ 1 . . . Cc eemtes ae ct NE iltett sy arelinailion eR deities (Relat API ash OVERVIEW: CONNECTIONS AND IMPLICATIONS As our economy expands and our population grows and our faith in technology becomes near absolute, the side-effects of our "normal, necessary activities" become disasters, War is one of our "normal, necessary activities." Our weapons are now so "technologically advanced” that any of a number of them could destroy the ecosystems of whole continents 4f not the whole planet. The ecological destruction following a nuclear or biological war, even if millions of people survive, would be total. There is growing evidence that if our ABM defense system were used 100% effectively, all the children in the next generation would die from the effects of the radiation released. Even if these weapons are never used, their testing, such as the underground explosion of a 2 megaton ABM warhead now scheduled for the Aleutian Islands, risks earthquakes, tidal waves, and contamination of air, seawater, and groundwater as possible but apparently acceptable side-effects. A vast underground grid, covéring and disrupting several counties in northern Wisconsin, will be installed as part of our missile communications system. Even non-nuclear war - the saturation bombing, forced urbanization, rapid industriali- zation, paving, and defoliation in Vietnam - is becoming a conscious effort to destroy the ecology of the “enemy country." The addiction to economic expansion and uncontrolled technology, an addiction shared by most "advanced" countries, has lead to the space race and the race to “develop underdeveloped countries," or, in other words, to make "underdeveloped countries” extensions of the social and economic systems of the more advanced countries. For instance, an American diplomat, speaking about Laos, was recently quoted as saying, “To make progress in this country, it is necessary to level everything. The inhabitants must go back to zero, lose their traditional culture, for it blocks everything.” DDT has been exported to the "underdeveloped" countries by the major powers in such quan- tities that DDT residues can be found in almost every living creature, body of water, and area of topsoil on the planet. Little research has been done to develop less catastrophic ways of controlling malaria and other diseases. Such international “ventures as the Aswan Dam and the Mekong River Project are’ threatening to or have already disrupted the ecology of whole regions. The Aswan Dam, built in Egype with