THE AGE OF EFFLUENCE
WHAT ever happened to America the Beautiful? While quite a bit of it is still visible, the recurring question reflects rising and spreading frustration over the nation's increasingly dirty air, filthy streets and malodorous rivers--the relentless degradations of a once virgin continent. This man-made pollution is bad enough in itself, but it reflects something even worse: a dangerous illusion that technological man can build bigger and bigger industrial societies with little regard for the iron laws of nature.
The problem is much bigger than the U.S. The whole industrialized world is getting polluted, and emerging nations are unlikely to slow their own development in the interest of clearer air and cleaner water. The fantastic effluence of affluence is overwhelming natural decay--the vital process that balances life in the natural world. All living things produce toxic wastes, including their own corpses. But whereas nature efficiently decays--and thus reuses--the wastes of other creatures, man alone produces huge quantities of synthetic materials that almost totally resist natural decay. And more and more such waste is poisonous to man's fellow creatures, to say nothing of himself.
Man has tended to ignore the fact that he is utterly dependent on the biosphere: a vast web of interacting processes and organisms that form the rhythmic cycles and food chains in which one part of the living environment feeds on another. The biosphere is no immutable feature of the earth. Roughly 400 million years ago, terrestrial life consisted of some primitive organisms that consumed oxygen as fast as green plants manufactured it. Only by some primeval accident were the greedy organisms buried in sedimentary rock (as the source of crude oil, for example), thus permitting the atmosphere to become enriched to a life-sustaining mix of 20% oxygen, plus nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide and water vapor. With miraculous precision, the mix was then maintained by plants, animals and bacteria, which used and returned the gases at equal rates. About 70% of the earth's oxygen is thus produced by ocean phytoplankton: passively floating plants. All this modulated temperatures, curbed floods and nurtured man a mere 1,000,000 or so years ago.
To primitive man, nature was so harsh and powerful that he deeply respected and even worshiped it. He did the environment very little damage. But technological man, master of the atom and soon the moon, is so aware of his strength that he is unaware of his weakness--the fact that his pressure on nature may provoke revenge. Although sensational cries of impending doom have overstated the case, modern man has reached the stage where he must recognize that real dangers exist. Indeed, many scholars of the biosphere are now seriously concerned that human pollution may trigger some ecological disaster.
Consuming Nothing
For one thing, the impact of human pollutants on nature can be vastly amplified by food chains, the serial process by which weak creatures are typically eaten by stronger ones in ascending order. The most closely studied example is the effect of pesticides, which have sharply improved farm crops but also caused spectacular kills of fish and wildlife. In the Canadian province of New Brunswick, for example, the application of only one-half pound of DDT per acre of forest to control the spruce budworm has twice wiped out almost an entire year's production of young salmon in the Miramichi River. In this process, rain washes the DDT off the ground and into the plankton of lakes and streams. Fish eat the DDT-tainted plankton; the pesticide becomes concentrated in their bodies, and the original dose ultimately reaches multifold strength in fish-eating birds, which then often die or stop reproducing. DDT is almost certainly to blame for the alarming decrease in New England's once flourishing peregrine falcons, northern red-shouldered hawks and black-crowned night herons.
In the polluting sense, man is the dirtiest animal, and he must learn that he can no longer afford to vent smoke casually into the sky and sewage into rivers as he did in an earlier day, when vast reserves of pure air and water easily diluted the pollutants. The earth is basically a closed system with a waste-disposal process that clearly has limits. The winds that ventilate earth are only six miles high; toxic garbage can kill the tiny organisms that normally clean rivers. Today, industrial America is straining the limits.
One massively important factor is that the U.S. consumer actually consumes nothing; he merely uses things, and though he burns, buries, grinds or flushes his wastes, the material survives in some form, and technology adds to its longevity. The tin can used to rust away; now comes the immortal aluminum can, which may outlast the Pyramids. Each year, the U.S. produces 48 billion cans, plus 28 billion long-lived bottles and jars. Paced by hardy plastic containers, the average American's annual output of 1,600 lbs. of solid waste is rising by more than 4% a year. Disposal already costs $3 billion a year.
All this effluence is infinitely multiplied in big cities--and 70% of Americans live on only 10% of the country's total land area. Every day, New York City dumps 200 million gallons of raw sewage into the Hudson River. Each square mile of Manhattan produces 375,000 lbs. of waste a day; the capital cost of incinerating that 1-sq.-mi.-output is $1.87 million, and 30% of the residue drifts in the air as fly ash until it settles on the citizens.
The sheer bulk of big cities slows the cleansing winds; at the same time, rising city heat helps to create thermal inversions (warm air above cold) that can trap smog for days--a crisis that in 1963 killed 400 New Yorkers. Cars complete the deadly picture. While U.S. chimneys belch 100,000 tons of sulfur dioxide every day, 90 million motor vehicles add 230,000 tons of carbon monoxide (52% of smog) and other lethal gases, which then form ozone and peroxyacetyl nitrate that kill or stunt many plants, ranging from orchids to oranges. Tetraethyl lead in auto exhausts affects human nerves, increasing irritability and decreasing normal brain function. Like any metal poison, lead is fatal if enough is ingested. In the auto's 70-year history, the average American's lead content has risen an estimated 125-fold, to near maximum tolerance levels. Arctic glaciers now contain wind-wafted lead.
Air, Water & the Sewer
By the year 2000, an estimated 90% of Americans will live in urban areas and drive perhaps twice as many cars as they do now. The hope is that Detroit will have long since designed exhaust-free electric or steam motors. Another hope is nuclear power to generate electricity in place of smoggy "fossil fuels" (oil, coal), but even with 50% nuclear power, U.S. energy needs will so increase by 2000 that fossil-fuel use may quadruple. Moreover, nuclear plants emit pollution: not only radioactive wastes, which must be buried, but also extremely hot water that has to go somewhere and can become a serious threat to marine life.
Industry already devours water on a vast scale--600,000 gal. to make one ton of synthetic rubber, for example--and the resultant hot water releases the dissolved oxygen in rivers and lakes. This kills the oxygen-dependent bacteria that degrade sewage. Meanwhile, the country's ever-mounting sewage is causing other oxygen-robbing processes. By 1980, these burdens may well dangerously deplete the oxygen in all 22 U.S. river basins. The first massive warning is what happened to Lake Erie, where overwhelming sewage from Detroit and other cities cut the oxygen content of most of the lake's center to zero, turning a once magnificently productive inland sea into a sink where life is catastrophically diminished. With state and federal aid, the cities that turned Erie's tributaries into open sewers are now taking steps to police the pollution, and if all goes well, Erie may be restored to reasonable life in five or ten years.
But the problem goes on. Though one-third of U.S. sewage systems are below health standards, improving them may also kill lakes. The problem is that treated sewage contains nitrate and phosphate, fertilizing substances widely used in agriculture that make things worse in overfertilized lakes. Though nitrate is normally harmless in the body, intestinal bacteria can turn it into nitrite, a compound that hinders hemoglobin from transporting oxygen to the tissues, causing labored breathing and even suffocation.
The Systems Approach
It seems undeniable that some disaster may be lurking in all this, but laymen hardly know which scientist to believe. As a result of fossil-fuel burning, for example, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen about 14% since 1860. According to Ecologist Lamont C. Cole, man is thus reducing the rate of oxygen regeneration, and Cole envisions a crisis in which the amount of oxygen on earth might disastrously decline. Other scientists fret that rising carbon dioxide will prevent heat from escaping into space. They foresee a hotter earth that could melt the polar icecaps, raise oceans as much as 400 ft., and drown many cities. Still other scientists forecast a colder earth (the recent trend) because man is blocking sunlight with ever more dust, smog and jet contrails. The cold promises more rain and hail, even a possible cut in world food. Whatever the theories may be, it is an established fact that three poisons now flood the landscapes: smog, pesticides, nuclear fallout.
Finding effective antidotes will take a lot more alertness to ecological consequences. What cities sorely need is a systems approach to pollution: a computer analysis of everything that a total environment--greater Los Angeles, for example--is taking in and giving out via air, land, water. Only then can cities make cost-benefit choices and balance the system. Equally vital are economic incentives, such as taxing specific pollutants so that factories stop using them. Since local governments may be loath to levy effluence charges, fearing loss of industry, the obvious need is regional cooperation, such as interstate river-basin authorities to enforce scientific water use. Germany's Ruhr River is ably governed this way. A shining U.S. example is the eight-state Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, which persuaded 3,000 cities and industries to spend $1 billion diverting 99% of their effluent to sewage plants.
Similar "air shed" action is starting between some smog-bound states and is considered preferable to federally imposed air standards, which might not fit local climate conditions. Still, far greater federal action--especially money--is urgently needed to help cities build all kinds of waste-treating facilities. In fact, the Secretary of the Interior really ought to be the Secretary of the Environment. To unify federal leadership, he might well be given charge of the maze of rival federal agencies that now absurdly nibble only at their own slice of the pollution mess.
One of the prime goals in attacking pollution ought to be a vast shrinkage of the human impact on other creatures. The war on insects, for example, might actually go a lot better without chemical pesticides that kill the pests' natural enemies, such as birds. One of the best strategies is to nurture the enemies so they can attack the pests; more insect-resistant crops can also be developed. Florida eliminated the screwworm fly not by spraying but by sterilizing hordes of the male flies, then liberating them to produce infertile eggs. A still newer method is the use of sex attractants to lure male insects into traps and thus to their death.
Above all, man should strive to parallel natural decay by recycling--reusing as much waste as possible. Resalvaging already keeps 80% of all mined copper in circulation. But
U.S. city incinerators now destroy about 3,000,000 metric tons of other valuable metals a year; magnetic extractors could save the metal and reduce incineration by 10%. The packaging industry could do a profound service by switching to materials that rot--fast. The perfect container for mankind is the edible ice-cream cone. How about a beer container that is something like a pretzel? Or the soft-drink bottle that, when placed in the refrigerator, turns into a kind of tasty artificial ice? Soft drinks could also come in frozen form, as popsicles with edible sticks.
To cut air pollution, a Japanese process can be used to convert fly ash into cinder blocks. Since the market is too small for commercial success, public subsidies would make sense; recovering waste at the source is almost always cheaper than cleanup later. There are some real prospects of profit in reconstituting other waste. Take sulfur, for example, which is in short supply around the world. While 26 million tons are mined a year, smokestacks belch 28 million tons of wasted sulfur dioxide, which could easily be trapped in the stack and converted to sulfuric acid or even fertilizer. Standard Oil of California is already profitably recovering the refinery sulfur waste that pollutes streams.
To reduce smog over cities, one of the most visible and worst forms of pollution, smog-causing power plants might be eliminated from densely populated areas. Why not generate electricity at the fuel source--distant oil or coal fields--and then wire it to cities? On the other hand, industrialization must not be taken to distant places that can be better used for other purposes. Industrializing Appalachia, for example, would smogify a naturally hazy region that settlers aptly named the Smokies. The right business for Appalachia is recreation; federal money could spur a really sizable tourist industry.
Sometimes pollution can even help recreation. In flat northeastern Illinois, for instance, the handsomest recreation area will soon be Du Page County's fast-rising 118-ft. hill and 65-acre lake--artfully built on garbage fill. One form of pollution could even enhance--rather than spoil--water sports. Much of the nation's coastline is too cold for swimming; if marine life can be protected, why not use nuclear plant heat to warm the water? Or even create underwater national parks for scuba campers?
In Harmony with Nature
Ideally, every city should be a closed loop, like a space capsule in which astronauts reconstitute even their own waste. This concept is at the base of the federally aided "Experimental City" being planned by Geophysicist Athelstan Spilhaus, president of Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, who dreams of solving the pollution problem by dispersing millions of Americans into brand-new cities limited to perhaps 250,000 people on 2,500 acres of now vacant land. The pilot city, to be built by a quasi-public corporation, will try everything from reusable buildings to underground factories and horizontal elevators to eliminate air-burning cars and buses. The goal is a completely recycled, noise-free, pureair city surrounded by as many as 40,000 acres of insulating open countryside. "We need urban dispersal," says Spilhaus, "not urban renewal."
In the search for solutions, there is no point in attempting to take nature back to its pristine purity. The approach must look forward. There is no question that just as technology has polluted the country, it can also depollute it. The real question is whether enough citizens want action. The biggest need is for ordinary people to learn something about ecology, a humbling as well as fascinating way of viewing reality that ought to get more attention in schools and colleges. The trouble with modern man is that he tends to yawn at the news that pesticides are threatening remote penguins or pelicans; perhaps he could do with some of the humility toward animals that St. Francis tried to graft onto Christianity. The false assumption that nature exists only to serve man is at the root of an ecological crisis that ranges from the lowly litterbug to the lunacy of nuclear proliferation. At this hour, man's only choice is to live in harmony with nature, not conquer it.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.