The Price of Progress

What is the basic cause of the environmental crisis? The population explosion? Or modern technology? Most scientists are inclined to attribute ecological problems to a combination of the two. But in his provocative new book, The Closing Circle (Knopf; $6.95), Environmental Pioneer Barry Commoner places the blame squarely on technology.

Commoner, a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, bases his thesis on the fact that "most pollution problems made their first appearance, or became very much worse, in the years following World War II." After 1946, he notes, the U.S. population rose by 42%, pollution by as much as 2,000%. Thus, he concludes, to advocate birth control as the solution to the U.S.'s environmental problem "is equivalent to attempting to save a leaking ship by lightening the load. One is constrained to ask if there isn't something radically wrong with the ship."

As Commoner sees it, the deterioration of the environment is caused largely by the kinds of goods now being produced. Since 1946, synthetic fibers have displaced cotton and wool; aluminum, plastic and concrete have captured markets once held by lumber and steel; nitrogen fertilizers have replaced natural manure.

The trouble, Commoner says, is that these products also put harsh new stresses on the environment. For one thing, their manufacture demands huge inputs of energy; the production of that energy causes pollution by itself. For another, when the new materials are discarded, they become litter that nature is unable to decompose. Moreover, many postwar products actually generate more pollution than their predecessors. Detroit's high-powered cars are far more polluting than prewar models. Even worse, pollutants can be synergistic. "If the levels of sulfur dioxide and a carcinogen [cancer producing substance] in polluted air are both doubled," Commoner explains, "the resulting hazard is much more than doubled, because sulfur dioxide inhibits the lung's self-protective mechanism and makes it more susceptible to the carcinogen."

Dangerous World. What all this proves to Commoner is a failure of scientists and technicians, who are concerned only with whether their product will work and whether it will sell. The result is a dangerous new world.

Commoner does not oppose all technology. Indeed, he recognizes the need to develop nonpolluting systems of land transportation, for example, and ways of returning garbage directly to the soil. But he urges a return wherever possible to products that are kind to the environment, and suggests the use of natural rubber instead of synthetic material, and soap instead of detergents. That approach would mean the closing down of huge industries and would be immensely costly--at least $600 billion in the U.S. alone, Commoner estimates, or more likely $40 billion annually for 25 years.

While Commoner's analysis of the basic problem is difficult to fault, the details of his solution seem a little simplistic. He does not say how the financial loss caused by his plan can be absorbed, or how a modern society can operate without aluminum, concrete or plastic. He has also dismissed too lightly the problems other than pollution posed by an expanding world population. Even so, Commoner is optimistic that a technological society can change its ways if its citizens have the facts necessary to make hard decisions. Besides, he says, there really is no choice. Only by respecting nature's laws can man achieve "what no living organism, alone, can accomplish--survival."

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