Euell Gibbons: Author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus

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PLOWBOY: Do you have any suggestions about reforming society or the economy to improve the ecological outlook?

GIBBONS: Better birth control methods. All other efforts are going to fail unless that problem is solved.

We also need to get rid of the idea of throwing things away. We have to set up a planet based on recycling everything we possibly can. We're simply running through irreplaceable resources and we don't need to. When you talk about sewage, people say, "Oh, yes, let's put it through secondary and tertiary treatment systems and then turn it into the river." I say let's not run it toward the river, let's run it the other way.

One of the reasons sewage pollutes the river is that it's got too much plant food in it, and the right place for plant food is on plants. Or, if you don't want to eat plants grown in sewage, let's grow forests with it. Let trees purify the sewage and turn it into timber and oxygen. Then we wouldn't have to worry about phosphates in detergents . . . which is a side issue anyway.

A lot of people have the idea that if we stop using detergents, we could safely dump all our sewage in the rivers, but we couldn't. We could put in a little and, strangely enough, it would probably help—there are places in Florida where a pure spring runs out in huge quantities and for a mile or two downstream there's no aquatic life whatever, because the water's absolutely pure and there's nothing for life to live on— but if we overload the rivers they'll die.

We've got to think in terms of balances and there's no shortcut. Of course, I'm not against palliative measures. A lot more fish are living in the Susquehanna as the laws are enforced even a little bit. But palliative measures aren't enough.

In Milwaukee someone said to me, "We'll be all right if we just avoid everything chemical." I said, "You'd have to avoid all of' nature . . . it's the greatest chemist the world's ever seen. We can't duplicate many of the tremendous chemical compound, nature can make."

We have to learn what our role is and there's no easy way to do it, no rule of thumb by which a person can run his life. We have to search for the way, and that requires application, study and experience. We can shorten the process a lot by helping one another, passing on what's discovered. But it's like passing a map to somebody . . . he still has to take the journey.

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