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Saving earth’s equipoise

With continued abuse, the environment of this globe could get out of whack. And that would be rather disastrous for all of us who live here.

With continued abuse, the environment of this globe could get out of whack. And that would be rather disastrous for all of us who live here. Already the evidences of abuse are all too prevalent.

We refer to smog in the cities. To polluted rivers. To the fact that shallow Lake Erie is almost “dead” so far as its self-purification is concerned. To all the waste gases from burning and manufacturing and auto driving which waft skyward and threaten to unbalance the relationship of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. To the overuse of insecticides which lodge perilously in foodstuffs and birdlife. To overfarming of topsoils so that earth’s thin covering is carried down the brown rivers. To the erosion which gradually produces deserts.

For all the delicacy of earth’s checks and balances, it is a hardy old globe. But what the ecologists and the conservationists fear is that one day the waste gases will indeed overwhelm the oxygen supply; or the atmosphere might (due to overmuch carbon dioxide and impurities) so heat up as to melt the polar ice and thus inundate coastal cities. This wouldn’t happen suddenly, but over decades. Yet, these people warn, it might slowly gain momentum, and mankind would take warning notice until the process had perilously passed the point of no return.

Fortunately a five-year study project, called the International Biological Program was launched last year. Some 55 nations will conduct research seeking to understand better the intricate, farreaching relationships of planet Earth, and whether mankind’s processes and profligacy are threatening to upset them.

Meanwhile the United States has enacted legislation to improve the physical environment: the Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act, the Clean Air Law, the Water Pollution Control Act.

These are good beginnings. But with population expanding at a fast pace, with mankind’s gadgets and refuse fouling air and water, and with miserably little understanding of what is going on, there is constant need for each of us to remind ourselves, and each other, that if modern man wrecks his environment, neither moon rockets nor computers nor color television will save him.

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Mark Sappenfield
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Dear Reader,

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