A Clash of Gloomy Prophets

Though unified by their vision of man's potentially hideous future, environmentalists violently disagree over basic causes and cures. One school holds that an ever-increasing population's demand for higher living standards must also create ever-increasing amounts of pollution. Unchecked population growth is thus the chief villain. Not so, says another, equally vociferous school, blaming runaway technology instead. By dumping its noxious excrement heedlessly, technological society is overwhelming nature's ability to purify itself. Last week, at a Chicago meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, four champions from both camps clashed in direct debate.

Crowds and Crime. Biologist Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University's outspoken population expert, has always predicted war, pestilence and famine as eventual consequences of mankind's proliferation. Citing several studies, he said at the A.A.A.S. meeting that population pressures already are spawning new social problems. In particular, crowded cities seem inevitably to increase agressiveness, which manifests itself even now in general disorder and steadily soaring crime rates.

Garrett Hardin, a human ecologist at the University of California in Santa Barbara, bolstered Ehrlich's argument with a neat analogy. "We have been sold on the idea of economy of scale." he said. "But this economy does not hold when it comes to relational matters. The size of your phone bill goes up with the size of your city. You have to pay for the privilege of talking with more people." The bigger the population gets, he went on, the more vulnerable the phone, mail and other complex systems become.

They are almost sure to fail precisely when they are most needed--in emergencies. Similarly, every rise in population removes citizens further from decisions made by their leaders. As a result, democracy can lose meaning.

While this correlation between population and social ills seems logical enough, the facts to buttress it are far from conclusive. Ansley Coale, director of Princeton's Office of Population Research, noted that crime rates have climbed in Wyoming, South Dakota and West Virginia, though their populations have declined notably. Moreover. Coale continued, both London and Holland have remarkably low crime rates despite their dense populations.

Cop-Out. "Saying that none of our pollution problems can be solved without getting at population first is a cop-out of the worst kind." argued Microbiologist Barry Commoner of Washington University in St. Louis (TIME cover. Feb. 2, 1970). As he sees it, statistical data prove that total pollution in the U.S. increased disproportionately between 1946 and 1966, while population rose by only 43%. Nor is pollution localized in cities where the most people are: radioactive fallout, pesticide residue and fertilizer run-off all pollute the rural environment. The root problem, Commoner said, lies in consumption patterns. Bowing to economic incentives, man now prefers synthetic materials like rayon and plastic to natural ones like cotton and wood. In fact, the number of new products--each of which needs greater inputs of energy and technology --multiplies every year.

Obviously, the way out of the mess is to restrain both population growth and rampant technology. How? Of the gloomy prophets, only Commoner addressed himself to the problem. A start, he said, is to define crucial social issues in a way that emphasizes man's present disruption of nature's fundamental benevolence. "Then it's up to the economist and the social scientist to figure out how we can change social habits. I have no idea how it can be done, but it has to be."

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