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ENVIRONMENT Ecology: The New Jeremiahs THERE has not been a topic for research not only on the minimal needs such worried conversation since of people in cities but also on their op James Baldwin forecast the fire next timal needs. What can we do to help time. Suburban matrons predict the them feel more truly human?" melting of the polar icecaps followed Kenneth E. F. Watt, 40, is a pro by catastrophic Hoods. Busy executives fessor of zoology at the University of and bearded hippies discuss the pres California in Davis, one of the world's ence of DDT in the ilesh of Antarctic major ecology training centers. He is penguins. All sorts of Americans utter also an activist. "How else can you tab new words like ecosystem and eutro a guy who is out making speeches ev phication. Pollution may soon replace ery night and spending every spare min the Viet Nam war as the nation's ma ute writing articles?" A systems analyst jor issue of protest who pioneered the use of computers It is, in short, the year of ecology, a for solving environmental problems. word derived from the Greek oikos, Watt is currently directing a 5174,000 meaning "house.'' In modem usage, ecol Ford Foundation-financed study of Cal ogy is the study of nature's house or en ifornia to examine the effects of pop vironment, including man's complex de ulation growth on urban transportation, pendence on a bewildering variety of pollution, public health and welfare, nat other creatures and life processes. ural resources and law enforcement. "If . Because of their grim warnings about we can't lick the population problem," man's environmental abuses, the once he says, "we'll have to increase the size sheltered ecologists are turning into mod of the planet or put people in eight-by- em Jeremiahs. Who are they? In part, eight-foot cells and feed them algae. they are the descendants of yesterday's I'm not proposing these things, but peo conservationists, who harried the U.S. ple have to face up to the necessity of into setting up national parks and wild birth control if they want freedom to life sanctuaries. But there are significant move around, to be healthy, to have a differences. The old conservationists balanced diet, to live like humans." were nature lovers and esthetes who Crawford S. Hoiling, 33, was once im often seemed devoted to fencing off na mersed in rather abstract research at ture for themselves. Today's ecologists the University of British Columbia are scientists who know that all nature --mathematical models of the relation is interconnected and that any inter ships between predators and their prey. vention has far-reaching effects. They "Three years ago, I got stark terrified are moved to action not only by con at what was goiDg on in the world and siderations of beauty and sentiment but gave it up." Now be heads the uni also by growing knowledge of the pos versity's interdepartmental studies of sibly disastrous consequences of un land and water use, which involve ag thinking intervention. The need for their riculture, economics, forestry, geography expert opinions is being increasingly felt and regional planning. "What got me in Congress, the regulatory agencies and started on this," says Holling, "was the corporations, giving them an influence profound and striking similarities be that promises to match or surpass that tween ecological systems and the ac of the outspoken atomic scientists of tivities of man: between predators and the '50s. land speculators; between animal-pop During the past weeks. Time has in ulation growth and economic growth; terviewed some of the top men in key between plant dispersal and the dif branches of ecology. All agree that ecol fusion of people, ideas and money.'' ogists combat threats to the environment. Eugene P. Odum, 55, of the Uni They differ only in the kinds of actions versity of Georgia, is a specialist on es they would take: tuarine marshes and author of the stan George E. Hutchinson, 66, of Yale, dard college textbook. Fundamentals of specializes in limnology (the study of Ecology. "We have got to stop thinking lakes) and in the puzzle of why closely of ourselves as being in the growth related animals coexist without devour stage of civilization and realize that we ing one another. He is a quietist. "I are in the mature stage," says Odum. tend to concentrate on things where I "Up to now we have been a consump can be uniquely ctfecxive," he says, and tive, destructive civilization. We must his theoretical work in limnology has now learn to recycle and reuse." Under greatly aided the practical work of water- his direction, the University of Georgia's pollution control. Unlike some alarmist Institute of Ecology is studying how tide ecologists, Hutchinson thinks that man water marshes help to produce WS of kind will survive its excesses. "But the the country's seafood--and how to save cost to the satisfactions of life will be the marshes from unthinking land de enormous. There is already a reaction velopers. Odum is working with a young to overcrowding in the cities--riots. The Georgia legislator to protect his state's fact that people can't sit in a garden, coastal wetlands from such destruction, watch birds around them--this is the and is particularly interested in seeing real source of difficulty. We need more ecology taught to students of other TIME, AUGUST 13, 1969 disciplines such as law and sociology. Barry Commoner, 52, chairman of the botany department at Washington University in St. Louis, is a prolific lec turer and writer (Science and Survival) who brings an ecologist's insight and a polemicist's passion to the dangers of en vironmental pollution. "The new tech nological man," says Commoner, "car ries strontium 90 in his bones, iodine 131 in his thyroid. DDT in his fat and as bestos in his lungs. There is now sim ply not enough air, water and soil on earth to absorb man-made poisons with out effect. If we continue in our reck less way, this planet before long will become an unsuitable place for human habitation." At Washington University. Commoner now heads the first of a sc ries of environmental health institutes being established at major campuses by the U.S. Public Health Service. He en visions sweeping changes in the near fu ture. Among them: the outlawing of automobiles with fume-bciching inter nal-combustion engines, and the elim ination of certain chemical fertilizers., which will make farming less efficient and less profitable but also less dan gerous to the environment. "The im portant thing," he says, "is for the public to sense the seriousness of the issues. When they do. the right legislation will be passed." The Old Spirit. Not every ecologist is as active as Commoner. Some arc illequipped to influence political decisions in the right directions. Some risk mak ing ecology more of a passing fad than a permanent force in U.S. life. Nev ertheless, Americans can expect to hear many more expert warnings about the damage they are doing to their en vironment. Vice Admiral Hyman G. Rickover has described ecology as "the key science for correctly assessing the negative aspects of technology." And the new Jeremiahs arc right in the spir it of the old: "I brought you into a plen tiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof: but when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination." PRODUCED Jill-83